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When the Press Favors Secrecy
· Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Here's a dirty little secret about The New York Times: It likes to leak things. Important things. Things that change the course of the public conversation. From the Pentagon Papers to the ruined terrorist-surveillance programs of the Bush era, the Times has routinely found that secrecy is a danger and sunlight is a disinfectant.
Until now. A troublesome hacker recently released e-mails going to and from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain, e-mails that exposed how the "scientific experts" cited so often by the media on global warming are guilty of crude political talk, attempts at censoring opponents and twisting scientific data to support their policy agenda.
The e-mails prove just how dishonest this left-wing global warming agenda truly is. And now suddenly, The New York Times has found religion and won't publish these private e-mails. Environmental reporter Andrew Revkin, who's more global warming lobbyist than reporter, quoted -- sparsely -- from the e-mails, but declared he would not post these texts on his "Dot Earth" blog on the Times website: "The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won't be posted here."
That rule didn't apply to things like the disclosure of the SWIFT global bank monitoring program against terrorists.
Unlike our secret terror-fighting efforts, there is no grave matter of national security to protect here. There is only a danger of shredding the undeserved reputation of some global-warming alarmists as nonpartisan, nonideological, just-the-facts scientists with no preconceived environmentalist or statist agenda.
The networks also have ignored this emerging scandal with all the ignorance they could muster. But in the seven days after The New York Times revealed the existence of an NSA program to monitor communications to terrorist cells abroad, the three networks ran a combined 23 stories about the program, more than one story, per network, per night.
Revkin's story in the Times did have some truncated quotes with ridiculous details. In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing apparent climate patterns over the last two millenniums, Phil Jones of the CRU said he had used a "trick" employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to "hide the decline" in temperatures.
Dr. Mann confirmed the e-mail was real, but told the Times "the choice of words by his colleague was poor but noted that scientists often used the word 'trick' to refer to a good way to solve a problem," and not as something secret.
Doesn't a network correspondent just smell the fraud when scientists start offering lame excuses for the words they somehow didn't mean? Don't just listen to conservatives. Try Nate Silver, a statistician and liberal-media favorite, recently named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People. He says the scientists in this exchange were unethical:
"Dr. Jones, talking candidly about sexing up a graph to make his conclusions more persuasive. This is not a good thing to do -- I'd go so far as to call it unethical -- and Jones deserves some of the loss of face that he will suffer." But then he adds the typical liberal disclaimer: "Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that happens all the time in both academia and the private sector -- have you ever looked at the graphs in the annual report of a company which had a bad year? And it seems to happen all too often on both sides of the global warming debate."
When conservatives are wrong, conservatives are wrong. When liberals are wrong, everyone does it, don't you know?
It's also important to note that these folks play a rough game of hardball. This isn't about science. It's politics -- the brass-knuckles sort. In another e-mail from Jones to Mann, reported in The Washington Post, there's talk of cutting skeptical scientists out of the official United Nations report: "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal to reject the work of climate skeptics, perhaps with a boycott: "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann writes. "I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor," Jones replies.
This kind of censor-your-opponents activity ought to disgust a journalist who values openness and rigorous debate above all. Every day the networks avoid this story, they're saying they don't really care about either of those values. In fact, they become willing accomplices in a cover-up of global proportions.
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Jimmy D
This stuff pains me.
Raised left and rebelled even lefter, till I ran into a hard walls of lies, I am a conservative now, from an extended family of liberals, who can't fathom the possibility that they might be wrong.
Lying is at the heart and essence of statism.
The first lie is that there is no God to be found and obeyed, as per His will, one soul at a time. Lacking that, what is there, but the governance of men?
The second lie is that there is no adversary, no Devil, no spirual enemy.
The third lie is that I have no sin...no, no, not me, I'm a good guy, just dandy, thanks!
The first lie leaves men impotent, hungry for power, and futile, willing slaves, trying, but failing, to be satisfied with power by proxy.
The second lie the Devil himself advocates with nearly endless brilliance, hiding, strengthened, and laughing behind the cloud of the dispersion of his own myth.
The third lie leaves us naked and defenseless against the ruler of this world.
There is no help possible from a God denied.
There is no safe haven to be found from evils that refuse, in men's sorry minds, to exist. Even when the the virtuous truth is screaming, obvious, impossible to miss!
Hug a liberal today.
Then shake him, rattle him and beg him in the name of the Lord, to confess that lies have consequences.
Posted November 25, 2009 at 9:05:02 AM
Rex Peddy
Wish I could express my thoughts as eloquently as Jimmy D. He masterfully exposed the essence of liberalism.
Posted November 25, 2009 at 9:57:46 AM
T Bone
I agree with Rex! Jimmy D seems to be an excellent writer. Articulating thoughts into words is a gift that should be used to expose the liberal's lies. Perhaps another blog by Jimmy D? We need to turn the table on the libs and use the media to espouse the virtues of conservatism.
Posted November 25, 2009 at 10:22:34 AM
Craig B
I have to agree with Rex. Jimmy D has written a great post. I enjoyed it as much as the article itself.
So now that we have proof the science is not there to support global warming, let's start revealing those that are hoping to profit from this lie. No one lies like this for no gain.
Posted November 25, 2009 at 10:23:36 AM
Ileana
I think liberalism is evil, dangerous, and ignorant at the same time. I would like to send every liberal in this country to North Korea or Cuba for six months to live as cuban or north korean citizens. I want to see how long it will take them to convert away from liberalism after their experience with hunger, beatings for having opposing views to their government, rapes to teach girls lessons on how to behave, no access to religion and prayer, hunger from lack of food in the stores, forced labor in rice paddies or tobacco fields, imprisonment for being gay, forced classes of Scientific Socialism, singing praises to father Fidel and father Kim Jong Il, forced communist marches, forced volunteer work every vacation, forced harvesting of crops in the fall without pay, living without electricity, heat, or running water, reading no books or newspapers because there are none to be read except the communist propaganda, and basically having no hope for anything in life or even for a tomorrow.
Posted November 25, 2009 at 10:33:15 AM
Joanna
More applause for Jimmy D! I also hope you will start a Blog, or better yet, apply for a journalist position with a liberal paper or magazine--of course, they would soon fire you, but at least you could get the word out to the liberals that read them before you have to leave! You are an intelligent (without being snobbish and elitist), knowledgeable, articulate guy. I say "Amen"! to all you wrote!
Posted November 25, 2009 at 5:33:42 PM
Brian K
I don't often post comments to blogs or websites, usually because I become so irate at the vast amounts of ignorance floating around the ether that my language becomes rather coarse. But I just have to agree with Jimmy D. I wish I could be as eloquent. Remember when the media used to be objective? When they merely reported the news? Those were the days. This "ivestigative news" trend, I think, started with the Watergate scandal. And then we allowed the press to endorse political candidates. If we must have "seperation of church and state", why don't we have "seperation of press and state"? Why isn't anyone decrying the press' involvement in politics the way they are anything even remotely resembling religion?
Posted November 25, 2009 at 5:38:05 PM
MichaelSSEC
The fact that global warming is a hoax is a huge problem, but it's not even the biggest issue revealed by this scandal. What's at stake here is far bigger than the Statist fantasies of Liberal lobbyists and politicians.
Here we get a peek inside the corrupted machinery of science. And it ain't pretty.
Science is supposed to be about the truth. It's supposed to be conducted by a set of rules called the Scientific Method. Among those rules is a system of peer-review that functions as a check-work to make sure scientists are doing honest, credible, accurate work. Usually, what most concerns peer-review is whether a scientist's equations are correct, not whether he FAKED his research.
You go out and collect data. Analyze that data to look for patterns that might explain an observed phenomenon. Based on that analysis, you form hypotheses that fit the data and possibly explain the observation. If better data comes along that contradicts an hypothesis, you scrap or modify the hypothesis as needed. That's called learning about the world around us.
In global warming "science" you start with a preconceived theory -- that the Earth is warming due to man-made pollution -- and you go out to collect data that support your theory. When you find data that contradict your theory you don't modify the theory, you delete or falsify the DATA. That's not science.
Odd the way Liberals who are so openly hostile to religion should treat global warming exactly as the most fervent believer treats religion, yet they have no problem with that hypocrisy. Is there any Liberal hypocrisy Liberals ever have a problem with?
Posted November 27, 2009 at 6:32:48 PM