Weekend Question 1: Why Is “Climate Change” Is Such a “Great” Term for Enviros?
Answer: They can shift from global warming to global cooling on a dime without interrupting their efforts to stifle economic development and control people’s lives.
After all, as The Business & Media Institute notes, theories on whether we’ll burn to death or freeze to death change frequently:
Thanks to the release of Al Gore’s latest effort on global warming – this time in book and movie form – climate change is the hot topic in press rooms around the globe. It isn’t the first time.
The media have warned about impending climate doom four different times in the last 100 years. Only they can’t decide if mankind will die from warming or cooling.
As the noise from the controversy has increased, it has drowned out any debate. Journalists have taken advocacy positions, often ignoring climate change skeptics entirely. One CBS reporter even compared skeptics of manmade global warming to Holocaust deniers.
The Society of Environmental Journalists (isn’t that a redundant term? — Ed.) Spring 2006 SEJournal included a now-common media position, arguing against balance. But that sense of certainty ignores the industry’s history of hyping climate change – from cooling to warming, back to cooling and warming once again.
The Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute (formerly the Free Market Project) conducted an extensive analysis of print media’s climate change coverage back to the late 1800s.
It found that many publications now claiming the world is on the brink of a global warming disaster said the same about an impending ice age – just 30 years ago. Several major ones, including The New York Times, Time magazine and Newsweek, have reported on three or even four different climate shifts since 1895.
“Climate change” also can be used to generate alarms when storms become more frequent, more violent, less frequent, or less violent; when rainfall or snowfall goes up, or goes down; or even when days are more sunny, or less sunny. In other words, it can be twisted into whatever shape is needed any time “weather happens” to give people the impression that the world is falling apart, and that (of course) it’s our fault.
Siting something called the Society of Environmental Journalists for bias is a little like using the Media Research Center (a conservative watchdog group) to refute them.
Oh, you didn’t mention their possible bias, did you? How odd.
And thanks for not posting or responding to the Star-Telegram piece I sent you.
I’m sure you’ll chalk that up to media bias, too.
BIZZYBLOG NOTE: The article in question was posted HERE:
http://www.bizzyblog.com/?p=2186#comment-11761
Comment by Theo — May 20, 2006 @ 9:28 am
#1 — Aw geez, you have so sense of humor. Lighten up.
What the MRC found in past publications isn’t affected by their bias; the info was either there or it wasn’t.
I have no duty to be unbiased here. My biases are clear, unlike the so-called Mainstream Media which pretends to be unbiased and is lying.
Comment by TBlumer — May 20, 2006 @ 10:41 am
Just saying, “going after” the SEJ (a group even an evil liberal like me had never heard of) is like shooting fish in a barrel.
And didja ever notice both the left and the right refer to big media as “the MSM” and can’t stand the content? Nobody’s ever going be happy.
The difference between the MRC and Media Matters & Think Progress is that the MRC is constantly on the hunt for “bias” while MM & TP point out factual errors.
Seriously, anyone who’s ever listened/watched Brent Bozell for more than two minutes knows he’s a bit of an ideological nutjob.
Comment by Theo — May 20, 2006 @ 11:14 am
#3, that’s easy. The right is right about media bias, the left is mostly wrong. :–>
As to MRC and facts, a quick look at the NewsBusters home page:
- ABC Reporter Raves Over Gore Film, Compares Gore to Shakespeare and Dante (fact: she did)
- NBC Producer Mocks Official-English Bill, Suggests Latin in D.C. Has Got To Go (fact: she suggested it)
- CBS’s Schieffer Shows Disdain for Guantanamo: ‘More Trouble Than It’s Worth’ (fact: this supposedly “objective” reporter said it)
- MSNBC’s Countdown Sees GOP ‘Hard Turn to the Right’ Alienating Middle America (fact: he said it)
- NBC Highlights Charges Against Torricelli, But Fails to Tag Him as a Democrat (fact: it was omitted)
- Journalists Worried about Loss of Credibility from USA Today Phone Story (contains factual quotes, though I don’t know what they’re worried about — they don’t have any :–>)
TP OTOH says that Rumsfeld “Exploits 9/11″ by mentioning its cost. There’s a fact for ya.
As to MM, you’re not going to claim that Duncan Black and Oliver Willis are objective angels, are you? Their pics are in the dictionary by the term “blindly partisan.”
Comment by TBlumer — May 20, 2006 @ 12:16 pm
Most of the stuff you cited is, like I said, bias hunting.
“She/he said it” doesn’t make them factually wrong - it’s just an opinion counter to your ideology.
Maybe because the righties get stuff wrong more of the time, MM & TP have more real material to work with. :)
I’ve heard of Oliver Willis and Duncan Black. Don’t visit either of their sites.
It’s a little disappointing to see you wear your bias like it’s a badge of honor.
Sometimes your ideology, the things you’d like to believe, are just flat wrong.
I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong - it’s just one of the things that makes me a better human being than our President. :)
If you’re looking for employment as a Republican shill, great - more power to you. They dig blind loyalty.
But don’t we have enough people regurgitating talking points?
Comment by Theo — May 20, 2006 @ 12:31 pm
#5 you don’t have to “hunt” for bias, all you have to do is have your TV on for 2 minutes, and by that time I’ve normally been smacked 2-3 times.
“She said it, he said its” are factual statements of proven bias, often in supposedly objective news progrmas.
And you’d make a great MSM reporter, I never said I wear my bias like a badge of honor, I said I have biases; I acknowledge them, unlike MSM reporters who pretend to be even while they recycle language straight from DNC press releases.
Despite my biases, I make every attempt to be fair and to go where the facts lead. I think my record here shows that. If you think I have “blind loyalty,” you haven’t been reading this blog enough, or perhaps you’re not comprehending it.
When I’m wrong, I admit it. When you find a president that has admitted he was wrong about something while he was in office, I’ll get excited about the fact that Bush hasn’t. I can think of one, but I won’t give it away.
Comment by TBlumer — May 20, 2006 @ 1:24 pm
“Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.”
- Bill Clinton, 1998
“I wish you’d have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it.
John, I’m sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could’ve done it better this way or that way. You know, I just - I’m sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn’t yet.
…I hope - I don’t want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I’m confident I have. I just haven’t - you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.”
- George W. Bush, 2004
Comment by Theo — May 20, 2006 @ 1:43 pm
#7, Bill Clinton was acknowledging what everyone knew, AND he committed PERJURY in the matter shortly before or shortly after this “brave” admission.
George Bush doesn’t have a moral obligation to prostrate himself on the floor and recite whatever mistakes you THINK he might have made. And most of the things the Left thinks are mistakes, aren’t; they are at best up in the air. For example, the Left thinks we shouldn’t have gone into Iraq. I think we didn’t go in forcefully enough. Who’s right? History will judge.
But here’s a mistake he admitted; he withdrew Harriet Myers’ nomination. The withdrawal is the admission. Does he have to say “I screwed up” to Theo and the gang before it counts? No.
The Clinton-Monica statement isn’t what I was thinking of. The one I’m thinking of is this (6th quote at link):
http://www.trettel.com/ccrc/quotes/quotesClinton.html
“Probably there are people in this room still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much too.”–Bill Clinton, remarks at Houston fund-raiser, 10/17/95
He had five years to fix his admitted mistake and didn’t.
This would appear to mean that you should be thanking President Bush for taking taxes back down to a level perhaps closer to where Mr. Clinton thought they should be in 1995. In fact, Bush’s cuts were so relatively puny, in historical perspective, compared to Kennedy’s and Reagan’s, it’s possible Clinton was thinking he should cut even further when he said what he did in 1995. :–>
Comment by TBlumer — May 20, 2006 @ 2:13 pm
You’re adorable when you rationalize for the President.
And that “history will decide” talking point? Priceless.
“History” is remembering Clinton quite fondly when compared to Dubya.
He’s had six years to make “history”, three years in Iraq — when’s the good news comin’?
Oh, that’s right - it’s that darn MSM who aren’t reporting on Iraqi schools because the situation on the ground is so bad they can’t get to them.
Comment by Theo — May 20, 2006 @ 4:15 pm
Nice non-substantive remark.
Clinton’s place in history is so secure that he spends seemingly every waking moment reminding us of …… what?
He will be remembered as the president who let the terror threat grow, and as the only elected president ever to be impeached. That’s his legacy.
Bush’s legacy is still a work in progress. Come back in 5 years. If his legacy lacks, it will be because he didn’t follow conservative principles consistently, or often enough.
Comments on this thread are over, and I should never have allowed them to stray from the original topic, which I will work to avoid in the future.
Comment by TBlumer — May 20, 2006 @ 4:25 pm