I have long maintained that reporters and news journalists should do one thing: present information without putting their opinions into it.
All too often, in my opinion, news journalists and reporters allow their own personal biases and their egos to creep into their writing or reporting, using their medium to sway public opinion.
Swaying opinion is not the job of the media.
The job of the media is to report the facts as they become available.
How many people out there realize, just for instance, that the Spanish-American War at the turn of the twentieth century was media driven? The New York Journal created the war with their "reporting" and sent our nation into war with the Kingdom of Spain.
Have things really changed so much over the past century? It doesn't seem to be the case. "Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it." We are a nation doomed. Why? Because we still allow ourselves to fall victim to "yellow journalism."
Isn't it HOT outside today? I was just outside a bit ago and saw a dog looking at a cat WISHING it was cool enough that he could chase it. Anywhere you go in the continental United States today you'll find one common thing going on: it's damned hot outside. The news is FULL of stories about the heat, about global warming, about the high temperatures, so forth and so on.
Global warming.
I'm going to let you all in on a little secret, something that you may not realize because the media CERTAINLY seems to have overlooked it. Ready? This is startling and may shock you, so brace yourself. It's AUGUST. It's the middle of SUMMER. OF COURSE it's going to be hot. I hear people my age saying all the time "I don't remember it being this damned hot when I was younger." Of course you don't, when you were younger you could handle the heat better and didn't give two hoots in hell whether it was hot or not you were going to do what you were going to do and that was that.
But the media and certain of our politicians are in a virtual FEEDING frenzy trying to convince you that YOU are the reason that things are getting hotter.
Now, before you start rolling your eyes at me, I will confess that I do believe that there is such a thing as global warming. I also believe in another concept called global cooling. Why? Ask any GOOD geologist or paleontologist and he'll tell you why. The Earth goes through cycles of heating and cooling. Let me give you two PRIME examples, and I'll put them into concepts that the general public can relate to.
Remember the Jurassic Park movies? Scientists had used genetic engineering to recreate dinosaurs. Do dinosaurs live where it's cool? No, so the dinosaurs had to be created on islands along the equator. The equator is the middle of the earth, from north to south, and the place where the planet is closest to the sun. Why did they choose the equator? Why not, oh, say, the Everglades? The southern tip of Florida, hot as it is in the summer, is not close enough to the temperature of the earth at the time OF the dinosaurs.
Remember the movie Ice Age? My kids loved that movie. Ask yourself this, though. Can you imagine saber tooth tigers or wooly mammoths vacationing in Hawaii? Cancun? I don't think so. Why? Too damned hot. They were creatures best fitted for cold weather.
Periods of global warming, periods of global cooling. How many of you know that Mars is undergoing global warming as well? Both Earth and Mars are coming out of ice ages, ours being what is called a "little ice age."
We, humans, have less impact on this than the alarmists would have you believe, and any time something comes out contrary to what the left wishes to spoon feed you, it's attacked.
From Newsweek: (Via memeorandum)
Greenhouse Simplicities
By Robert J. Samuelson
Newsweek
Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week's NEWSWEEK cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It's an object lesson of how viewing the world as "good guys vs. bad guys" can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story. Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.
If you missed NEWSWEEK's story, here's the gist. A "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change." This "denial machine" has obstructed action against global warming and is still "running at full throttle." The story's thrust: discredit the "denial machine," and the country can start the serious business of fighting global warming. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.
So Samuelson knows better than scientists.
Right.
HE ADMITS BIAS in the opening statement of his article. That is a presentation of the facts?
Here is a bit FROM that "misleading" article.
The Truth About Denial
Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine
By Sharon Begley
Newsweek
Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."
Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."
Honestly I fail to see what Samuelson is whining about in his article. It seems to me that the original article was written with enough leftist slant that nothing further needed to be said to claim the opposite of what the article seems, at first glance, to discuss.
Yellow journalism at it's finest, I tell you. I'm sure Al Gore is sitting somewhere in one of his big ass houses, riding in an SUV, or flying around in a private jet somewhere feeling very proud indeed.
We're an arrogant lot, and sometimes we have to have that pointed out to us. We may take offense at it when it happens, but by God that doesn't make it any less true. Here's one such instance of it being pointed out. I happen to very much agree.
Mark Steyn: Warm-mongers and cheeseburger imperialistsMARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
Something rather odd happened the other day. If you go to NASA's Web site and look at the "U.S. surface air temperature" rankings for the lower 48 states, you might notice that something has changed.
Then again, you might not. They're not issuing any press releases about it. But they have quietly revised their All-Time Hit Parade for U.S. temperatures. The "hottest year on record" is no longer 1998, but 1934. Another alleged swelterer, the year 2001, has now dropped out of the Top 10 altogether, and most of the rest of the 21st century – 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004 – plummeted even lower down the Hot 100. In fact, every supposedly hot year from the Nineties and this decade has had its temperature rating reduced. Four of America's Top 10 hottest years turn out to be from the 1930s, that notorious decade when we all drove around in huge SUVs with the air-conditioning on full-blast. If climate change is, as Al Gore says, the most important issue anyone's ever faced in the history of anything ever, then Franklin Roosevelt didn't have a word to say about it.
And yet we survived.
So why is 1998 no longer America's record-breaker? Because a very diligent fellow named Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.com labored long and hard to prove there was a bug in NASA's handling of the raw data. He then notified the scientists responsible and received an acknowledgment that the mistake was an "oversight" that would be corrected in the next "data refresh." The reply was almost as cool as the revised chart listings.
[...]
As Pogo said, way back in the 1971 Earth Day edition of a then-famous comic strip, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Even when we don't do anything: In the post-imperial age, powerful nations no longer have to invade and kill. Simply by driving a Chevy Suburban, we can make the oceans rise and wipe the distant Maldive Islands off the face of the Earth. This is a kind of malignant narcissism so ingrained it's now taught in our grade schools. Which may be why, even when the New Republic's diarist goes to Iraq and meets the real enemy, he still assumes it's us.
Having said all of that, I'll say this, leaving this posting with the source of my title for this piece. Lewis Carroll was an amazing wordsmith, and could show us through his writings how words can be used to manipulate, to compel, and to convince. If you remember reading
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, or watching the Disneyized version
Alice in Wonderland, you'll immediately recognize the source of my title for today. If not, for the sheer amusement of reading the works of one of the great masters, I'm including
The Walrus and the Carpenter:
The Walrus and The Carpenter
Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done--
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead--
There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"
"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."
The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.
"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."
"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?
"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"
"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"
"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
Don't be oysters, people.
Once and Always, an American Fighting Man
.
