Curious Publishing Ethics

Curious Publishing Ethics

What a curious episode in the annals of The Washington Post and its fellow travelers at Newsweek, Time, CBS, ABC, NBC, and sundry other mainstream news outlets that recently put their selective principles on display for all to see.  Did you read the story that broke on Monday, November 23 about prominent climatologists in the UK and the US who have been fabricating and hiding documentation that appears to reduce “Global Warming” from settled science to junk science?  You didn’t hear anything about it if you rely on the mainstream media giants named above.  E-mails between leading climatologists in the US and the UK, which have now been posted on the web, show that the earth is not warming, but rather is in a cooling phase.  Moreover, the hidden data indicates that these acclaimed climatologists have data that indicates the earth has apparently been cooling since the 1960s.  Yet in public, they have continued to assert that the earth is flat, the sky is falling, and that you and I have caused the earth to warm.  These climatologists and their friends in the left-leaning news media say that you and I have to reduce our carbon footprint to avert disaster.  We have to reduce our standard of living and enact painful, job killing taxes to survive. 

When the damning e-mails were released due to their website being hacked or because of a whistleblower (no one apparently knows what exactly happened), were the giants of the mainstream media who got conned outraged?  Did they pour their venom on those who tricked them and the American public?  Did these paragons of self-proclaimed virtue rage at the corruption and dishonesty of “scientists” who have foisted a hoax on the world?  Did these guardians of the public interest shout the news of this scandal from the housetops and over the airwaves?

The answer is no.  The silence was deafening.  There were no front page stories or lead stories on the nightly news.  There was only silence.  Integrity took a holiday.  Their principles were apparently set aside.  There was no righteous indignation.  

The Washington Post sanctimoniously announced that it was above revealing the content of private correspondence.  The other minions of the print and broadcast media took their marching orders and remained silent.  Apparently the public did not have a right to know.
Remember, these are the same folks who are always too eager to publish classified information that can damage the United States and its men and women in uniform.  All the way back to Daniel Ellsberg, the Post has published purloined papers with exuberance and glee because, as they stated, the public had a right to know.  They never hesitated to put stolen classified documents right on the front page.  Scoundrels like Ellsberg were celebrated.

You may recall more recently that the Post eagerly published classified information on Extraordinary Rendition and Waterboarding, in an attempt to put the US in a bad light.  There was no concern for alerting our enemies in the field how to prepare for enhanced interrogation techniques.  No qualms about trashing the US.  After all, the public has a right to know!

Ah, but when the worm turns and their pet Global Warming theory has been exposed as an apparent hoax, intentionally perpetrated by corrupt “scientists,” it's not worthy of any coverage whatsoever.  Did the cat get their tongue?

Who are these climatologists?  They are much quoted men in the US and in the UK, who, according to the now published emails, have not only stonewalled requests for historical climate information, but have also falsified data.  Their cover-up includes deleted e-mails, altered data, and a campaign to deny academic peer review of any paper which would undercut their assertion that global warming is settled science.  Along the way they have vilified legitimate scientists as “skeptics” and even “deniers” (in a clear attempt to equate these men with those who deny the Holocaust).  

As noted earlier, it’s not clear if their e-mail correspondence was “hacked” as they claim, or whether it was a courageous whistleblower inside the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) that posted the e-mails on the internet.  What is clear is that the e-mails are not taken out of context and that Phil Jones (Director of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit) and many renowned climatologists around the globe apparently intended to deceive the public and to discredit any other climatologist who disagreed with them.
These are men of low character.  If it were not for the Wall Street Journal, FOX News, The Washington Times and bloggers as well as those in talk radio, this cover up would never have come to light.  This scandal is far worse in its potential impact than Watergate.  Some of the actions proposed in Europe and in the US could condemn those in third world countries to permanent poverty and squalor.  

Sadly, those who have only been reading the mainstream news media and turning on ABC, CBS and NBC have not heard a word about this scandal.  It apparently reaches into NASA (Gavin Schmidt of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies) and major US universities (Michael Mann, director of the Pennsylvania State University Earth System Science Center).  Moreover, it’s likely that this is just the tip of the iceberg.   Who knows how many other government and United Nations officials, along with other high profile scientists in think tanks and universities, are accomplices to the men already implicated in this cover up?

It’s a nasty, ugly story.  One e-mail even suggests violence against another climatologist because he had the temerity to challenge their data.  Other aspects include attempts to blacklist those who disagree with their argument that the globe is not only warming, but it is caused by man.

Prior to the release of these emails when Michael Mann was asked by the Wall Street Journal about the charge that he and his colleagues suppress opposing views, he said he “won’t dignify that question with a response.”  Perhaps we could now classify his response as arrogant dishonesty.

Where is the liberal outrage at this hoax that has been perpetrated on the American people, and indeed people around the world?  Where is the commitment to disclose the truth?  What about the public’s right to know?

Only one Republican Senator, James Inhofe, has called for a full investigation.  Have laws been broken?  Should there be demands for resignations?  Where is the outrage? 

The fact that the globe is cooling is, as Al Gore might say, an inconvenient truth that gets in the way of the political movement to take more and more freedom from the average American.  Without global warming, what excuse will they have to tell you and I what kind of light bulbs we can use, what kind of cars we can drive, how and when we can heat our homes, how many children we can have, how we can use our property, and all the other restrictions on our freedom that they seek?

Shame on you in the news media who deign to print only what advances your biased point of view.  Shame on you who do not truly believe the public has a right to know.  Shame on those of you who countenance dishonesty.  Shame on you who are willing to compromise the integrity of science to advance your corrupt ideology.

May your readership and your audience continue to decline until you become totally irrelevant.