The Uber-Rule Of Journalism

When the real news trends bad, the reported news tends to get lighter and fluffier. The extreme case of this is, of course, the behavior exhibited by the press in totalitarian societies, which aren't permitted to print anything the rulers think might excite unrest. But when the real news trends good, the reported news tends to get darker and grimmer, trumpeting all manner of disasters and crises. That's because people generally won't read newspapers or watch news programs that tell them that what they see around them is just as swell as they think; they'd rather do something more entertaining, like jumping their wives.

This comes to mind this fine morning because of this little bit of idiocy:

Invoking news coverage of recent extreme weather events, environmentalists are urging the public to sign a petition to pressure major television networks to do more coverage of climate change.

The petition, by the League of Conservation Voters, is aimed at executive producers of nightly news programs for major broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — who the groups say don’t focus enough news coverage on climate change issues and, when they do cover the issue, portray the issue as a “two-sided debate” by featuring climate skeptics.

“What’s almost worse is that when these networks have covered global warming, they have often treated climate change as a ‘two-sided debate’ rather than what it really is: an issue in which there is overwhelming scientific consensus,” writes Vanessa Kritzer, online campaigns manager for the League of Conservation Voters.

“By bringing on climate-denying politicians and pundits, and giving them as much ‘expert’ status as actual climate scientists, the networks perpetuate the false debate that polluter-funded think tanks have instigated to cast doubt on whether we should take action to address the climate crisis at all.”

The League's problem is, of course:

• That global temperatures haven't risen measurably since 1998;
• That the supposed " overwhelming scientific consensus" is a bunch of grant-hustlers with tendentious computer simulations;
• That the aforementioned grant-hustlers have been caught committing several offenses against science and scientific integrity, from which there is no escape.

So of course, the LCV wants to pressure the networks into slanting coverage toward the "global warming" chimera. The sad thing is that the networks are ideologically and occupationally disposed to favor such a cause...because the real news about so-called "climate change" is overwhelmingly good. In particular, the most recent and best peer-reviewed studies indicate that human contributions of CO₂ to the biosphere do not correlate with a trend of any sort in global temperatures.

The LCV knows that full well. And the news organs know that they can't keep us reading and watching if we're confident that there's no crisis afoot. Besides, a crisis would give politicians -- the news media's favorite subjects for "journalism" -- a fresh reason to orate and demand "action." So my money is on a collaboration between the two, in defiance of the truth, to undermine that confidence....to create a new "climate crisis" in defiance of the data.

Yet millions of people are utterly unable to explain the "revolving doors" that connect politics and journalism. It is to laugh.