The biggest purveyors of “misinformation” and “disinformation” in America today are those who profess to be journalists, especially when it comes to “reporting” on climate issues.
It would be understandable to counter this by saying, rather, that it is politicians and their appointees who are the ones conveying falsehoods on climate. Indeed, so many politicians, by nature practice false witness by speaking half-truths, omitting known facts, or flat-out lying. The euphemism for such behavior is called “spin.”
Nonetheless, the degree to which politicians can lie or “spin” so pervasively is enabled by a mostly pliant media or worse, a cheerleading media that parrots and advances falsehoods uncritically and readily accepts politicians’ claims of a “climate emergency” and all that goes with such.
President Joe Biden is the most prominent politician in America and is relentlessly dishonest about climate. Examples abound, including his repeated assertions about climate change supposedly causing unprecedented storms wildfires in Maui, and that carbon emissions from oil, coal, and natural gas are cause-and-effect warming the planet and threatening humanity while ignoring other natural factors. He talks this way because he can, without fear of being challenged or contradicted by the largest media sectors.
Climate fanaticism is now dogma in the Democratic Party. Not a few Republicans also embrace a climate-lite approach where they accept the bogus premise that climate change is a negative phenomenon that can and should be addressed, except they haven’t (yet) gotten to the point of embracing destructive policies.
Would a president and an entire major political party in the U.S. spout provably false climate assertions if true journalism existed by merely conducting its constitutional role?
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, in part, that “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed press freedom, most famously in the 1971 ruling, New York Times v. United States. The outcome of this case allowed the publication of the “Pentagon Papers” that were leaked to the Times. These were a series of internal documents prepared by Kennedy and Johnson administration officials that early on were critical of Vietnam War policy and dubious of America’s ability to prevail, even as President Johnson and senior officials publicly said otherwise and expanded the war effort.
Justice Hugo Black, in his concurrence to the majority opinion of the Court, wrote:
Government’s power to censor the press was abolished [by the 1st Amendment] so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.
Does any of this remotely describe what has become of journalism in 21st-Century America, especially regarding climate change (and Covid-19)? Rather, most national media has long become a government echo chamber on climate, with such a reality no longer subtle. In fact, they are urging as much, and embracing censorship of contrarian facts.
Last September, for example, a conference at Columbia University’s School of Journalism entitled The State of Climate Journalism: Issuing a Call to Action was organized by the group Covering Climate Now (CCN). It’s one thing for some extremist non-profit entity to oppose any pretense of professional, fair-minded journalism; it’s deeply disturbing when a litany of “mainstream” media participants agree, including ABC, CBS, and Time, plus more obviously slanted media groups, Vox, MSNBC, HuffPost, and others.
As reported by Collin Anderson of the Free Beacon, during the conference, the national environmental reporter for CBS, David Schechter, and Time magazine reporter Justin Worland urged their colleagues to portray climate change as a do-or-die issue that transcends media industry norms and standard practices of journalism. Worland claimed it was “misinformation” to write that so-called green energy was more expensive than fossil fuel energy, and Schechter urged against “thinking that there are two sides to this [climate] story” or that climate change is a subject of “meaningful scientific debate.”
In other words, when 1,800 scientists and other professionals in the CLINTEL foundation issued a declaration last summer that there is “no climate emergency” and provided reasons, it should be ignored by journalists
By contrast, even the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) still aptly describes what should be the role of the media: “A free media functions as a watchdog that can investigate and report on government wrongdoing. It also is a vibrant marketplace of ideas, a vehicle for ordinary citizens to express themselves and gain exposure to a wide range of information and opinions.”
Oh, how far journalism has fallen. The purpose of Covering Climate Now and its mendacious media partners that reach millions of Americans is to deny actual science and instead spread misinformation and disinformation about climate. In psychology, this is called projection. In everyday layman’s terms, it is called dishonesty.