Chris White Tech Reporter
November 18, 2019 9:11 PM ET
- More than 200 media outlets and journalists partnered together with activists to coordinate and hype climate change news before the 2019 U.N. climate summit.
- Two of the largest media outlets — BuzzFeed News and HuffPo — did not disclose their role in the project to their readers, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found.
- The project raises questions about whether journalists should work side-by-side with activists to hype climate change.
Over 250 news outlets and journalists partnered with Columbia University School of Journalism’s flagship magazine to shape control of “climate crisis” coverage in the lead up to the United Nations climate conference. The coverage-coordination initiative included directing how much time, space and prominence should be devoted to the coverage, and asking that climate “news” be added to seemingly unrelated stories.
Some of the biggest media outlets in the country, such as CBS and Bloomberg, joined the effort. But others, such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, declined to participate in a project they reportedly feared appeared activist in nature. More troubling, a number of the major outlets that joined did not disclose participation to their readers.
In addition to CBS and Bloomberg, the effort, called Covering Climate Now, involved BuzzFeed News, HuffPost, The Daily Beast, the Center for Public Integrity, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Slate, Vanity Fair and The Weather Channel, among many others. BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post were among the major outlets that did not disclose the coordination. When asked by the Daily Caller News Foundation, the lack of disclosure was criticized by the Society of Professional Journalists.
The coordination effort was organized in part by Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), a nonprofit that represents professional journalists and was traditionally focused primarily on journalism ethics. Covering Climate Now’s founders hope to continue elevating climate news even after the project ends. The effort’s target was the lead-up to, and coverage of, the U.N. “Climate Action Summit,” held Sept. 15-23.
BuzzFeed News reached more than 27 million unique views between September and October, according to Quantcast, a website measuring audience size. BuzzFeed is owned by Jonah Peretti, an internet entrepreneur who founded the outlet in 2006 to track viral online content, and the left-leaning HuffPo is owned by Verizon Communications. Media tycoon Arianna Huffington originally founded HuffPo in 2005 with the help of Peretti.
Covering Climate Now’s founders kicked off the project in April and announced in May that they would ask partners to devote a week to climate-related news, starting in September. The Nation environmental correspondent Mark Hertsgaard co-founded the project under the assumption that the news outlets don’t cover climate change as urgently as he thinks they should.
WaPo and others did not contribute because they believe Covering Climate Now has the “aroma” of advocacy, he complained in September.
“We believe that every news organization in America, and many around the world, can play a part,” CJR posted May 22. Sometimes that will mean committing your newsroom to important and high-impact stories. Other times it will mean sharing your content, engaging your community, or adding a few lines of climate information to stories that wouldn’t otherwise have them.”
Covering Climate Now has not responded to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Much of the group’s coverage leading up to the U.S. climate summit focused on Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old girl who traveled to the U.S. in August on a racing yacht. Her visit was designed to galvanize American support for policies that seek to tackle climate change.
Thunberg’s activism and Covering Climate Now’s media blitz seemed to fall flat with the crowd of United Nations diplomats: No major promises were made to tackle climate change at the summit. The European Union, for instance, didn’t go along with environmentalists’ wishes and set a goal to be carbon neutral by mid-century out of fear that such ambitions would tank its member state’s struggling economies.
“Large parts of the mainstream media have stopped pretending to strive for objectivity in their reporting,” Myron Ebell, a climate skeptic and director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, told the DCNF. “On the climate issue, many outlets and reporters are now publicly boasting about the fact that they are promoting their own prejudices on the grounds that increasing global energy poverty is a noble cause.”
Ebell was not the only energy advocate to criticise the program. “This is nothing more than what used to be known as ‘civic journalism’ … or propaganda for the left dressed up as news reporting,” Steve Milloy, JunkScience.com publisher, told the DCNF. He also suggested the media are being hypocritical. They would thrash the fossil fuel industry if it attempted to recruit reporters in a quest to support natural gas, Milloy said.
Much Of The Content Was Not Disclosed
BuzzFeed News and HuffPost did not divulge their participation in Covering Climate Now in any of the articles they published on climate change during that week, according to a DCNF review of the project. They never mention the words “Covering Climate Now” in any of their posts during the week-long coverage leading up to the climate summit.
HuffPost did not respond to numerous requests for comment while BuzzFeed News said the partnership did not affect the outlet’s coverage. “Our coverage of climate change is year-round and unaffected by outside partnerships,” Matt Mittenthal, a spokesman for BuzzFeed, told the DCNF.
Covering Climate Now published a list of articles on its website throughout September that promoted climate coverage.
Nearly 40 of the articles on the list of 128 failed to mention the project. The list included pieces from CBS News, Bloomberg News and The Nation, all of whom produced pieces that failed to mention their participation in an outside project designed to direct their editorial bent. Many of the articles on the list bore labels containing the words “Covering Climate Now” but do not otherwise explain what the project entails or which groups are involved.
CBS News, which has not returned requests for comment, produced a Sept. 21 feature on clear cutting in Oregon that did not include a disclosure. The title of that feature was “Who should be in charge of America’s ancient forests: industry or environmentalists?” which discussed the impact clearing U.S.’ forests has on the environment and if private companies should be allowed to use forests.
CBS News included disclosures on articles throughout September that discuss how Americans feel about climate change. The channel also mentioned its participation in a Sept. 17 feature highlighting how U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is considering a summit to discuss ways of re-invigorating the Paris Climate agreement, which he says needs to be re-booted.
Bloomberg News, for its part, published a statement on Sept. 16 announcing its role in the project, but the outlet still produced content that did not contain disclosures. The outlet published a Sept. 22 article titled “Big Oil Prepares to Defend Big Gas as Climate Week Begins,” which discusses how the oil industry is defending the use of natural gas as a clean alternative to coal. The article did not mention the outlet’s participation in Covering Climate Now.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg founded Bloomberg News. Bloomberg, who flirted with the idea of running for president in 2020 and filed in the paperwork to participate in Alabama’s Democratic primary, has devoted much of his philanthropic work to funding various anti-coal projects. Bloomberg News has not responded to the DCNF’s request for comment.
The Nation, Covering Climate Now’s co-founder, published a 2,400-word article on Sept. 18 with an alarmist headline suggesting that Americans are “fueling the next global extinction.” The piece did not contain a disclosure but notes that it was originally published by Tom Engelhardt at TomDispatch.com, though the DCNF was unable to locate the article on Engelhardt’s website.
The Nation, which announced the project in a July post, also published a journalistic piece on Sept. 19 by Nation associate editor Zoe Carpenter that fails to mention Covering Climate Now. Nobody from the outlet has responded to requests for comment.
Wealthy Climate Activists Also Participated
Covering Climate Now was aided by wealthy advocacy groups, some of which help journalists edit and craft stories discussing climate change from an alarmist perspective. One nonprofit group associated with the project is Climate Central, which provides extensive guidance to reporters.
“We contribute data and charts plus a science reporter and an editor,” the group’s website notes. “For a text story, we help craft a feature in a way that puts climate change in appropriate and accurate context. For broadcast media, we provide story and interview suggestions and help develop and review scripts.”
Climate Central has not responded to the DCNF’s request for detailed information about how it contributes to journalists’ content. The group is funded in part by the Energy Foundation, a charity providing grants to various groups with the hope of transitioning the U.S. away from fossil fuels.
Is This Ethical?
Reuters did not participate in the project, yet its editors did not object when Yereth Rosen, a freelancer for the wire service, contributed. Reuters, which opposes advocacy journalism, dismissed any suggestion that Rosen’s contributions are inappropriate.
“We do not see this cause in conflict with the Trust Principles. All stories, under the Trust Principles, are required to be accurate, fair and free from bias. Ms. Rosen’s work for Reuters has been exemplary in this regard,” Brian Ross, Reuters’s ethics and standards representative, wrote in an Aug. 15 email reviewed by the DCNF.
Ross was responding to an Aug. 13 email complaint from a former reporter who was concerned about Rosen’s role in Covering Climate Now. The person made the complaint through the outlet’s online support option. Reuters was more circumspect in later emails to the DCNF on the subject.
“While we do not comment on individuals in our newsroom, all Reuters journalists, including freelancers, are bound by our Trust Principles of ‘integrity, independence and freedom from bias,’” Heather Carpenter, a spokeswoman for Reuters, told the DCNF.
“Our journalists are to remain free from personal conflicts on the subjects they are assigned to cover,” she added. Reuters has not made Rosen available for comment nor did it address whether it is appropriate to allow an external group to dictate what content its reporters publish.
The Society of Professional Journalists, however, criticized the lack of transparency. (RELATED: UN’s New Report Shows There’s ‘Little Basis’ For A Favorite Claim Of Climate Activists)
“We encourage journalists to be transparent,” Lynn Walsh, a national member and former president of the Society of Professional Journalists, one of the oldest groups representing journalists, told the DCNF. “If they did not include any disclosure there is nothing we can do though. SPJ is not a regulatory body.” She went on to say that any group involved must explain exactly what the project entails.
Why Didn’t WaPo And The NYT Contribute?
Most legacy media are unwilling to break away from the idea that journalism should not advocate for a position, according to Hertsgaard, who co-founded Covering Climate Now in part to impress upon journalists the importance of covering climate without feeling compelled to provide a platform to climate skeptics.
“The New York Times is not on there, The Wall Street Journal is not on there, The Washington Post is not on there,” Hertsgaard said in a September podcast with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR. Hertsgaard was referring to the major outlets that did not contribute content to Covering Climate Now.
“This has an aroma — in their minds — of activism,” Hertsgaard continued, explaining why the big three legacy outlets preferred not to join. He and Pope noted Covering Climate Now intends on breaking up that perception by wrapping climate coverage in the blanket of science rather than politics.
The Post refused to comment for this story. The NYT, WSJ and Hertsgaard have not responded to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Advocacy-style journalism is the new in-thing, according to David Blackmon, an independent consultant and analyst who has nearly 40 years experience in the energy industry.
“I don’t think that anyone would object to any of it if they were upfront about their agenda,” he told the DCNF. “There’s no effort to properly identify agenda-driven pieces. They are backed up with factual information, but it usually tells just half the story. It’s become the norm.”
Blackmon, a Forbes contributor, noted that much of the reporting is one-sided and focuses exclusively on one narrative: Climate change must be stopped at any cost. Such reporting rarely gives coverage to the economic consequences of climate activists’ preferred policies, he noted.
“We are at a point where we were at the turn of the 21st century,” Blackmon told the DCNF. “You had partisan affiliated outlets and almost no objective journalism at all. We’ve gone to that place after a period of time.
Mark Hertsgaard’s daddy (Rolf) was a popular anchorman/news reader in the 1960s and ’70s for Baltimore’s NBC affiliate.
Unfortunately, Mark did not inherit his father’s insistence on and reputation for unbiased, non-partisan journalism.
Mark is, in fact, a nitwit.
THAT Mark Hertsgaard: http://gelbspanfiles.com/?tag=mark-hertsgaard His hype about ‘industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists receiving too much media balance’ dates back to 1997. He’s a one-trick pony.
I raised an eyebrow at this paragraph:
“This has an aroma — in their minds — of activism,” Hertsgaard continued, explaining why the big three legacy outlets preferred not to join. He and Pope noted Covering Climate Now intends on breaking up that perception by wrapping climate coverage in the blanket of science rather than politics.
So…science is a blanket? You wrap science around something? What is the “something” science is wrapping around?
It is sad to see science reduced to wrapping paper.
Liberals have a problem with boundaries, in this case the boundary problem is a lack of ethics and virtue.
…it’s all one big freak show
I’m still trying to figure out how drag queen story hour….promotes gay rights
But they believe that anything is OK in pursuit of their noble cause because they are always right. They never apologise when they are shown up to be wrong. Venezuela is a mess because it wasn’t done right and the US interfered.
“This has an aroma — in their minds — of activism”. In my nose, it stinks.
Was that an Eric “Big Gas” Swalwell crack? 😉
Presented with no comment…
https://twitter.com/i/status/1197235876658647041
I presume you’re pleased with this development.
Oh dear, how did that happen? Wrong link. This is what I intended.
https://twitter.com/CarpeDonktum/status/1196636466027347968
Infra red scan of the video settles the question of his denyin’ and supplin’ it:
https://twitter.com/cpernell8521/status/1196753210045816832?s=20
They have been doing this every year for what 25 years?
Sure, the players and lead actors change, but the media has been hyping climate doom leading up to the COP since there have been COPs.
Quite. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.
It is no use getting paranoid, they’ll get you if they want to…
…you can put it down just to stupidity, laziness or plain greed. No other explanations required.
Well, you might also add the existentially desperate need to be seen as ‘making a difference’ by your peers in order to justify your otherwise tenuous presence. This ‘noble cause presstitution’ signals a selfie-virtue that exceeds every higher consideration, from honoring your privilege to broadcast truths to upholding freedom of speech against its suppression.
There used to be a considerate dictum against yelling ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater. Now for desired effect the way has been opened to shamelessly igniting one there!
Nature and The Economist also participated
I’ll just leave this here:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unifor-says-parliament-must-act-225800107.html
Relevance?
What do unions, Liberals and woke journalists have in common?
“The union advocates for all working people and their rights, fights for equality and social justice in Canada and abroad, and strives to create progressive change for a better future.”
Kinda says it all.
Andrew
As a former(retired) member of this union and its 2 predecessors I can only say that when any organization becomes too large and diffuse it no longer responds to its membership and their real needs. The place for unions is in the workplace, not the political arena, with a few very limited exceptions regarding working conditions. Trying to support an industry which no longer knows what its market is does not qualify.
Something like the saying:
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
Read a great quote from one of the Smothers Brothers: first its done for fun, then its done for money, then its done.
Of course, he was talking about comedy, but I think it fits most enterprises.
I wouldn’t worry too much, there is a reason why people call the MSM fake news, and journalists are simply called the gutter press. Ultimately, the old media is dying and the new media will replace it, the MSM are too much in their little bubble to realise how they’ve dropped the ball.
In the US, “The Deplorables” have these imbeciles well pegged and shuffling around in their little fantasy world, eyes closed and fingers in their ears.
In Oz “The Quiet Australians” just quietly go out to vote, increasingly early so they can switch off the crap fest for a couple of weeks, and likewise leave the loal imbeciles sctracting their heads as to WTF went wrong.
In the UK “The Leavers” voted Brexit only to have their parliamentary representatives deliberately try to stuff it up, strgangle it, starve it etc. We shall see in a few weeks how they respond to that prolongued insult.
Basically the msm is the last refuge of all the acid head revolutionaries from the 60’s and 70’s. ‘Scoundrels’ does them no justice at all. ‘Arrogant, empty headed, treacherous scum’ is much closer to the mark. Virtually all that they espouse is contrived not to articulate the case for some proposition but rather to get them laid more than anything and always was. Plus ca change.
“STRGANGLE”, I’ll steal that one, thank you. “To forcefully deprive a person of oxygen without having the courage to lay hands on said person.” Seems a fitting definition. Alternate definitions welcome.
You mean like Jeffrey Epstein?
What is the new news media?
Fake news is brain dead news that pushes an agenda, regardless of reality.
That is what we have now with very few exceptions.
CNN, PBS, BBC, and so forth are brain dead institutions that repeat angry rhetoric pushing an agenda which appears to be to elect Left wing governments that promise to spend a gazillion dollars to fight climate change along with a long list of other promises.
The Economist has become an opinion piece where the opinion brainlessly supports say spending a gazillion dollars on wind and sun gathering ignoring the fact that Germany has proven that sun and wind gathering is critically flawed, limited at the point where batteries/energy storage is required.
Thirty years ago the news media would be require to have facts and logic to support positions. In the old days media would investigate problems and provide neutral background of the conceptual issues.
Breitbart is one of the few news outlets that does research and includes common sense criticism of Left wing ideology and policy.
Liars, damned liars, and reporters.
Add – lazy, un-curious, twitter-miners.
“There’s no effort to properly identify agenda-driven pieces. They are backed up with factual information, but it usually tells just half the story. It’s become the norm.”
That is the tool is see used most often, half-truth reporting from the media now. Probably the biggest is reporting “costs” of fossil fuels minus the enormous benefits they continue to provide. Myron Ebell points this out with his comment, “[many journalists apparently believe] that increasing global energy poverty is a noble cause.
Telling only half the truth on climate change and storm attribution are the most often used tools by academic Climate Hustlers like Mann, Dessler, Hayhoe, Overpeck, and their ilk. In some cases it’s simple old fashioned science fraud of cherry picking data to discard the half that doesn’t support the narrative. In other cases, it is ignoring equally plausible alternative explanations for their data and that of others. Half-truths are frequently used as the basis “unprecedented” claims for things like wildfires and hurricanes by citing property damage in dollars rather than underlying physics, atmospherics.
The reason half-truth telling works for them is because the reporters writing about their claims rarely if ever dig past them and ask them uncomfortable questions. So the part told/reported is factually true, but the omission of other facts is specifically intended to mislead the reader or audience.
That they base most of their alarmist climate claims on half-truths is the reason they will not debate informed skeptical colleagues like Drs. Curry, Spencer, or Christy. Because they know that they know the whole story will call them out on the parts intentionally neglected/omitted to make alarmist or questionable science claims. That is also why rags like the WaPo and LATimes have editorial policies not to print any climate change skeptical Op-Eds. They can’t handle the whole truth without inducing a sever case of cognitive dissonance discomfort on their brainwashed readers, who then threaten to cancel subscriptions etc.
A series of such half-truth claims followed by “the rest of the story” would be a good counter-thrust tactic/strategy.
I’m surprised that this is particularly newsworthy. Journalism has been infiltrated by internal activists for years. The fact that this activism was intensified in the lead to climate conference discussions I had assumed was the norm. This activism is present every single day with the public broadcasters in Australia and the Uk and every single day and is accelerated by politicians and activists who find platforms for their extreme views. When you have desperate governments acquiescing to a 16 year olds request to declare a climate emergency I don’t blame the activists for deliberately lighting the alarmist fire which is then used by complicit politicians and media who provide the fuel to cause most damage. Without the fuel the activist strategies no matter how coordinated would not have such impact. Without internal activists being already in the media ( not just at Buzz feed and Huff Po ) then the climate extremists would not have much impact. It’s the lack of push back by all the outlets not part of the coordinated campaign that is the real issue. The fact they weren’t part of Covering climate Now doesn’t exonerate them if they didn’t refute the ridiculous claims of the group . I thought what has happened over recent months is really just pretty normal.
What is surprising here in the size of the consortium, self stated as consisting of more than 250 media outlets for “Covering Climate Now”….. anything else and it would be pilloried for bias, try “Covering Racism Now” , “Covering Fundamentalist (fill in any religion) Now”, some countries would imprison the reporters….WUWT and other climate blogs have virtually zero hope to counter such well financed hype with today’s tablet reading “news” consumer.
I think there are15,000 media outlets in the USA alone and controlled by about 6 families, mostly anti Trump.
It’s newsworthy that neither the NYT or Washington Post would agree to participate.
It’s the huge scale of the propaganda coordination that’s stunning.
Street gangs always want more members to increase their power over more territory.
abc aus took full advantage of the offer to provide warmist agenda handouts as did science alert
who at least DID do a feature on the fact they supported and wwere running a full week of agitprop on warmist agendas
not sure if many like me just refused to read their pages that week but it did stop abruptly
adelaide news/herald sun also ran some of the specially tailored(docotred) articles too.
They are swarming, angrily buzzing in panic like yellow jackets before a hard frost and for the same reason–somebody read the tea leaves and discovered we’re entering the cooling phase thanks to the solar minimum, which is going to make this crap impossible to sell in a couple of years. Therefore, they need to lock in the grants, funding, tenures, and contracts before the snow hits the fan!
Counter narrative needs to be heard.
For a dozen of years in my area of the SW London we had plague of parakeets, this year there are none, all gone. In my garden I have few Mediterranean shrubs (olive tree, oleander and buganvilia), however this year despite the few hot summer days there was no usual volume of flowers.
Cold climate is on the way back.
Vuk,
Here, a mile or two inside the M25 [London orbital car park, for those out of Town], we still have the parakeets.
Seem to be adaptable little blighters. And colourful for the UK!
Auto
The rose-ringed parakeets seem to be able to survive almost anywhere, once they’ve escaped captivity. There’s a colony living just outside Johannesburg, South Africa, and living off the wild (and cultivated) fruits around.
The climate “monster” is real:
https://twitter.com/parents4future/status/1187451456221265920
Because frightening children with bogus monsters is healthy, and a sign of good parenting.
And notice the not-so-clever ploy here: that those who deny that these monsters exist are, by implication, not only bad parents, but liars as well.
Drain that swamp (the corrupt media one in this case).
The media’s role in the climate movement as described by the media itself.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/06/24/cjr/
This type of behavior is why I often abandon all news, isolate myself from the wider outside world for months on end. For example the first 6 months of this year was one of my isolation periods. I had not heard of Extinction Rebellion until July of this year.
Gary you might enjoy the No Agenda podcast with John Dvorak and Adam Curry. They have been doing news deconstruction for over 12 years.
Highly entertaining and informative.
Possibly the journalist,Presstitutes in my view, are as stupid as they appear.
As reporters they are ethically required to disclose their affiliation with those they “report” on.
Yet they do not,as Can-Ahh-Duh is famous for,our failing media is bailed out with taxpayer money and government favour,yet none will report on this state of corruption.
“Fake News” say President Trump and the media collude to prove him right.
Reporter /media persons get on their high horse lecturing and demeaning viewers, for failing to agree with the POV of the mouthpiece..then they complain that purchases of their “product” are falling.
The search for the “Alt Right Nazi White Supremest” continues in our media,yet these ficticious creatures only exist in their fevered imagination.
Who was it that said:”Never ascribe to malice what incompetence will explain”?
”Never ascribe to malice what incompetence will explain”
In the case of MSM, we have both.
I completely concur with Gay. The media is a cesspool of biases and activism. I nearly threw up every time I looked at my cell phone “news” feed – unti I removed the app!
The Greta Thunberg issue is even much more serious. How is it possible that a 17-year old could take the center stage at a major UN meeting? Who invited her? And what was the reason for this invitation? Why was there no scientists present? Why no questioning?
The press outlets stated in this article are free to publish what they want on their pages. The UN however is supposed to by an unbiased organization, funded by tax-money.
16 year old at the time, not sure when her birthday is.
She will turn 17 on January 3. Put this on your calendar if you’d like to send her a gift or card.
The AGW scam is a long con that has evolved over 340 years to produce a total income stream of (some say) 1 1/2 to 2 trillion dollars a year. Say 2% of world GDP. Right now is the payoff. Every second that the world is distracted is another $50,000. Greta and Extinction Rebellion are both diversions and bullying, threatening activities to make everyone a little less likely to attack the con.
Various organisations are blatently adjusting temperatures to hide a slight cooling. Record cold spells are difficult to hide. Any decent audit would kill the con. Trump is a godsend, Scott Morrison, not so much.
40 years
well Morrison IS refusing to play their game wont run the emergency crap.
our medicos need a kick in the ass or heads though
see theiyre all whining n getting ABC airtime today making insanely stupid and UNproveable claims over warming n increased health risks
not ONE reporter has asked for data or details of these wild claims however
Speaking of “wild claims,” what species are supposedly going “extinct?” Show us the bodies, please, ER, or you’re exposed as lame street theater, shrieking to the skies about exactly nothing.
Where are these extinctions taking place? Whole genus extinctions of macrofauna? Where?
These people should be easy to expose as a crock of . . .
Way back in high school in the 80s I was given the “everything’s rosy” side of the environmental debate.
I was horrified: all my classmates read, as I had, “The Fate of the Earth”, and “Entopy”, and had to watch “The Day After” (no, not the “Day After TOMORROW” but another apoca-porno).
Then…I started reading the actual science.
When one of my (soon to be former) friends started with the “we’re doomed because of all the extinction” I hit her with”:
“Can you tell us how many species there are now?”
“Between X and Y” (i.e, one million and ten million or something)
“That’ number is bit…elastic, isn’t it?”
“Mumble mumble, death and destruction, we’re all gonna die…”
“And if you can’t get the denominator correct by a two decimals…”
“Point of order!!!!”
“…and then your numerator is also a bit…stretchy”…complete with wide arm movements.
Etc.
Anyway, I got all the laughs, a C in the debate (lefty teachers), but my math teacher did tell me in an aside later that my math was correct.
Which was good enough for me.
On the “Covering Climate Now” website is this statement:
“Covering Climate Now is made possible by a generous grant from the Schumann Media Center.”
And who is the Schumman Media Center and what do they fund?
First you need to know that Bill Moyers is and has been its President since 1990. If you know who Bill Moyers is and his background that is all you need to know about the heavy bias in how Schumann decides what to fund. Basically how Liberal-socialists infiltrated these deep pocketed “old-money” philanthropies that they now run and dole out millions every year to Progressive causes.
Moyers has a long history of biased reporting and is about as Left-wing activist as one can get in the media. His “journalism” at PBS was frequently criticized for lack of balance. Moyers is member of the Bilderburg Group, a group that purports to further American – European ties, but makes no effort to hide their true agenda of a One-World Government, a world order run in a socialist manner by elites and un-elected bureauicrats, EU style, and dictating to the masses (Bloomberg-style) what they should eat, drink, and think.
Some background on Moyers: He was LBJ’s Press Secretary, then went into Left-wing activist journalism. He didn’t hide his hatred for Conservatives or Limited roles for government, especially during his time on PBS. Furthering the nepotism that is rampant in these liberal organizations, his son founded TomPaine.com with a big fat grant from his the Schumann Center he runs. That tomPaine no longer exists, it has melded several times now the uber-Left activist group: https://ourfuture.org . It’s a real treasure chest of Liberal lies and DoubleThink.
From Wikipedia, some very old data from 18 years ago on the Schumann Media Center can giove you a sample of the Hate America groups they have funded:
The foundation reported 2001 assets of $60,963,043 and expenditures of $5,096,495. Recipients of recurring Schumann Foundation grants during the 1990s, ranging from under $100,000 to more than $5 million annually, include the Tides Foundation and Tides Center, Environmental Working Group, Union of Concerned Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council, Western Organization of Resource Councils, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the Center for Media and Democracy, The Nation, Mother Jones, In These Times, TomPaine.com, and The American Prospect.
Keep in mind John Schumann was former GMAC President in the 1950’s. He died in 1964 after a fall and his wife, the uber-wealthy heiress to the IBM founder’s fortune (her father was one of the founders of IBM) started the foundation in the 1961 to “strengthen democracy”. She passed away in 1991 at age 99, probably to senile to understand what putting Moyer in charge would bring. So it is now run as a very Liberal “Progressive” funding entity to where “strengthening democracy” has been turned into a cause for socialism and to destroy capitalism, bring about One World Governance, and most especially now to destroy the US energy independence.
John, Sr. and Florence would probably be quite unhappy to see how their money in their names is now being used to destroy the US economic strength. An economy that pulls hundreds of millions out of poverty, here in the US, and fossil fuels around the world that pulls billions out of poverty.
From the article: “Over 250 news outlets and journalists partnered with Columbia University School of Journalism’s flagship magazine to shape control of “climate crisis” coverage in the lead up to the United Nations climate conference.”
And what is the major focus of these news outlets and journalists? Smearing skeptics is their main focus. They don’t want to argue the science, they just want to tear down the opposition using personal attacks.
Quite typical for the Left and their mouthpiece, the Leftwing News Media. Character assassination is their stock in trade.
I notice that all of the media outlets mentioned as participating in this appear to be U.S. based? No media from other countries at all jumping on this particular bandwagon?
From a Canadian perspective, I think that two of the three main TV networks here, CBC and CTV, might as well go *officially* whole hog on the climate alarmism bias. Just watching those channels, I know they thump away on the climate catastrophe issue anyhow, every chance they get! So it would make sense if they took some explicit direction from an organized inter-media cabal, I would think.
These so called journalists, editors, and publishers have sold out. They are no better than Soviet aparachiks. They should be treated with the disdain they have earned.
And the state funding of such “fourth estate” (or rather fifth column) should be discontinued, be it direct, through CIA “cloud” contract (I thought the intel community hated the risks of clouds, even “private” ones), through NGOs, etc.
Since the lamestream media fell in love with Creepy Porn Lawyer’s thesis that paying for the silence of Stormy is somehow an election spending, when does climate/bad weather/storm propaganda by a news agency founded by a potential presidential candidate count as one?
What about the foreign interference axis? When the BBC does climate propaganda, does that count as election interference?
What about the Trump impeachment thesis that opening an investigation (or announcing one) constitutes a thing of value?
The former FEC chairwoman loudly said that a “thing of value” for the purpose of an election campaign isn’t just a material good, a commercial service, or a transfer for an immaterial thing that has a price on market, but can actually be pretty much anything material or immaterial, with or without a fair market value.
If information is a thing of value, and the Ukraine President saying he will fight corruption also is (!!!), then how is alarmist propaganda not a thing of value that is offered to some candidates?
According to some legal “expert”s, a potential “collusion” (whatever that is) of a candidate with “agents” of a foreign government might affect “intangible right of honest services”(!) that is a “fair” election – whatever that could ever mean: when was public debate “fair”?
Lots and lots of violations of many laws if you can use in legal analysis:
– election spending limits
– foreign support of candidates
– anti fraud law
– FARA (why not?)
(Would the BBC journalists be required to register then?)
Would Greenpeace be considered a foreign agent and accused of bribery of public official, since according so many “republicans” what President Trump might have done to obtain an investigation of Burisma can be described as one?
And BTW when will NGOs be considered “agents of a foreign government”? Many gets quite a lot of funds from governments and state related entities. (Who funds the Academies of Sciences? Are they agents of a government?)
I can’t wait to see some of these new legal interpretations applied generously.
And that was just for the existing laws.
Does meeting with a scientist paid for studying specific subjects that have alarmist value, that is whose work product might constitute a “thing of value” for an alarmist politician, a scientist paid by grants given by a foreign nation, or an “NGO”, or a lobbying body (sorry for the repetition), trigger potential reporting requirement (to the FBI? CIA?) according to the last laws voted by the House?
I’m overwhelmed by the legal issues. I think I barely scratched the surface. Let’s put the finest lawyers on that (you might have to pretend “Trump cronies” met with Ukrainian scientists to get them to find articles of laws that might apply to climate alarmists).
Seek help.
Wut?
And then there’s research
“The coordination effort was organized in part by Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), a nonprofit that represents professional journalists and was traditionally focused primarily on journalism ethics.”
Great how the ethics watchdog is the one arranging the ethics violation.
The propaganda has a a lower opportunity to misinform if you tell people in advance that you are feeding them propaganda…
That it was all propaganda was obvious even to my DOGS. No trigger warning required.