The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism

[SteveMDFP]

... FOX has become as much of a state propaganda outlet as RT is for Russia or PressTV is for Iran. There is a revolving door between the White House and the network: Hope Hicks went from the administration to the network, Bill Shine from the network to the White House. Sean Hannity, who speaks regularly with the president, initially vowed to simply “cover” him as a member of the press but then began actively campaigning for Trump. Jane Mayer’s exhaustive reporting in the New Yorker has showed that FOX and the White House have a symbiotic relationship, both collaborating to push a far right agenda. FOX has realized that Trump is lucrative, and Trump has realized that FOX will say anything he wants them to say.

Fox News (FNC) is actually a uniquely toxic business-political model in the world.  Anyone with critical reasoning skills knows that RT will advance Putin's agenda, PressTV the Ayatollah's, and so on.  But FNC doesn't get its operating budget from Trump.  Its revenue is from advertisers, just like traditional networks and cable outlets.  This means that the viewpoints it presents, a priori, ought to be comparably objective and professional.

[vox_mundi]

... But FNC doesn't get its operating budget from Trump.  Its revenue is from advertisers, just like traditional networks and cable outlets

Actually, FNC gets most of its revenue from cable subscriptions and streaming service so it's closer to a self-funded echo chamber.

That's why boycotts of advertisers has little levarage.

The old model of free TV paid for by advertisers is being replaced with paid subscriptions bundled into your cable bill

Even if you don't agree with them; your forced to support them. Kinda like State propaganda.

[blumenkraft]

NY Times obituary describes David Koch as a “philanthropist” who furthered a “libertarian” agenda

[nanning]

Philanthropist?? 
Has the NYT been bought and turned it into a 'Murdoch paper'? More massive lies everywhere. Next they're going to write that Bill Gates is a philanthropist as well.

Funny info: This guys grandfather (Hotze Koch) emigrated from this province (Fryslân) in 1888.
https://www.omropfryslan.nl/nijs/903955-konservative-amerikaanske-multymiljarder-mei-fryske-roots-david-koch-ferstoarn

His granddad came from this town: https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=netherlands%2C%20warkum#map=13/52.9714/5.4511
Not a nice guy, bad roots; he already was against unions and against the policies of F.D.Roosevelt.
He was already rich. In the United States he bought a Texan newspaper and started an oil business.

Here is evidence that monsters can pop up from anywhere. The evil crazy seed is within us all, waiting to spawn.

[blumenkraft]

There are two kinds of philanthropists. The ones who inherited wealth who do bogus shit with their money and the ones who earned a shitton of money themselves who do bogus shit with their money.

[nanning]

Words have meaning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philanthropy
Quote
philanthropy attempts to address the root cause of the problem

So that means a philantrophist is someone against capitalism, against colonialism, against neo-liberalism and against the poor/rich, the man/woman and the white/brown/red/green/blue/yellow skincolour divides.

Those are the root causes of the problems of and from civilisation. Of course you may disagree. It is not important anymore. And off-topic.

(I went further back to before civilisation to the real roots of the problems in the "Is man the unnatural animal?" thread.
To add: I'm certain now that the root cause of living nature's problem of having humans was our ability to create fire.)

edit: added blue colour to not upset the Smurfs

[blumenkraft]

Words have meaning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philanthropy
Quote
philanthropy attempts to address the root cause of the problem

TIL!

Dict.cc translates it to:
-Wohltäter {m} (benefactor)
-Menschenfreund {m} (friend of mankind)

Amazing how this word is used wrongly to elevate moronic villains with too much money.

[nanning]

Thanks blumenkraft.
I have read and, as a final off-topic, would like to recommend this very good book:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-Trousered_Philanthropists

[Tom_Mazanec]

Well, we all knew youtube was not exactly the best journalism, didn't we?

Climate change deniers dominate YouTube searches on warming crisis, study finds
https://theprint.in/science/climate-change-deniers-dominate-youtube-searches-on-warming-crisis-study-finds/281051/

The study was conducted by a senior researcher at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and published last month in the journal Frontiers of Communication.

The study involved a search for videos on climate change using 10 keywords, including climate change, climate manipulation, and geoengineering. Two keywords commonly used by opponents of mainstream science — chemtrails and climate hacking — were included as well.

Of the 200 videos subsequently analysed — 20 for each keyword — 107 challenged the consensus about climate change, with 91 found to peddle outright conspiracy theories.

Only 93, or around 46.5 per cent, presented the mainstream scientific consensus.

And as far as AGW goes, we all knew Fox News was the worst, right?
FOX NEWS HOST EXPRESSES FRUSTRATION THAT YOUNG AMERICANS BELIEVE IN CLIMATE CHANGE
https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-frustration-young-americans-believe-climate-change-1454016

"The left says it all the time, it is their religion," Hegseth said Tuesday morning on Fox News morning show Fox & Friends after a clip of Sanders classifying climate change as the "major national security issue" for the U.S. was played. "They want to fight the weather. The rest of us want to deal with real threats that want to take away our freedoms."

Hegseth then made a comparison to President Donald Trump working to destroy the extremist group the Islamist State (or ISIS). "That's taking on a real threat directly," Hegseth said.

[blumenkraft]

Noam Chomsky: The Alien perspective on humanity - Jung & Naiv

[nanning]

Thanks blumenkraft. Downloaded for watching tonight
I first watched Chomski from a youtube link posted in an asif thread: "Chomski. Global Warming's Worst Case Projections seem increasingly likely" which very much impressed me. To me he stands out in a very positive way.

[Rob Dekker]

Here is a GREAT effort to examine mis-information on social media :

https://medium.com/@katestarbird/content-sharing-within-the-alternative-media-echo-system-the-case-of-the-white-helmets-f34434325e77

This study analyses the reports in social media (specifically Twitter) about the White Helmets, a first-responders group in Syria, which records all their operations, and as a result records the Syrian war as perceived from the ground, documenting all the war-crimes of the Assad regime and their Russian military support.

Assad and Russia don't like that, and thus the Syrian and Russian media mounted a relentless propaganda effort to discredit the White Helmets, and portray them as a "terrorist organization" (without a single thread of evidence).

The researchers found a very clear separation of mainstream media (who report mostly positively about the Syrian First Responders group), and a group of "alternative" media driven mostly by Russian, Syrian and Iranian state media centers, but fanning out into a wide group of web-sites and news outlets that form an echo chamber harshly negative of the White Helmets.

The social media propaganda effort against the White Helmets is truly massive, as you can see in this graph from the article, which suggests the anti-White Helmets effort is 4X larger than all reporting of all mainstream media combined.

Here is a graph of the distribution of the clusters :



It is concerning that the 'alternative media' (driven from the Russian/Syrian/Iranian state media reports) is a factor 4X larger than the regular mainstream media...

That is reality at this point, folks :

Propaganda trumps fact-based journalism.

And if you believe that the blue cluster has (some) facts on their side, then answer this one question :

On which exact occasion did the White Helmets ever did anything wrong ?

[Tom_Mazanec]

FLICC: 5 Techniques of Science Denial
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4691

F: Fake experts
L: Logical fallacies
I: Impossible expectations
C: Cherry picking
C: Conspiracy theories

We see the FLICC techniques all the time. In this episode, we're going to take three common versions of science denial and use each of the five FLICC techniques for each. These three denied sciences are global warming, genetically modified crops, and vaccines.

[blumenkraft]

F: Fake experts
L: Logical fallacies
I: Impossible expectations
C: Cherry picking
C: Conspiracy theories

Wait, this is the right-wing playbook also! Can this be the same people? 

[Tom_Mazanec]

It's both left and right wing playbook.
AGW deniers and GMO opponents use the same techniques.

[wili]

Perhaps some GMO opponents do (though you have not presented any evidence supporting this claim, which is of course very unscientific of you! )

I know many people who are wary of GMO's yet understand and accept all the (best) relevant science in the matter.

Can we try to avoid the logical fallacy of false equivalence, too?

[Tom_Mazanec]

The evidence for GMO fear is in Skeptoid I linked to (as well as anti vaccination).

[blumenkraft]

It's both left and right wing playbook.
AGW deniers and GMO opponents use the same techniques.

Point taken, Tom! 

[sidd]

As practised, the tech of GMOs is intimately linked to the agriculture-industrial complex.

Look at roundup. They swore up and down roundup resistance wouldnt spread to other plants,  that roundup was totally safe ... that groundwater contamination wasnt an issue ... they lied and they lied and they lied.

And they lie and lie and lie today.
 
It ain't GMOs per se, it's that whole damn industry pushing it. As a farmer, all i got to say id screw them. I'm pushing heirlooms and land races. At least they're non patent and you can save your seeds and replant.  But it's an uphill battle.

sidd

[sidd]

Taibbi at rollingstone on the new mighty wurlitzer: Petagon pushes another plan to take over media

"Fake news has a long history in America. Its most pernicious incarnation is never the work of small-time scam artists. The worst “fake news” almost always involves broad-scale deceptions foisted on the public by official (and often unnamed) sources, in conjunction with oligopolistic media companies, usually in service of rallying the public behind a dubious policy objective like a war or authoritarian crackdown."

"From the sinking of the Maine in 1898, to rumors of a union-led socialist insurrection before the Palmer raids in 1919, to the Missile Gap in the late fifties and early sixties (here is the CIA’s own website admitting that one was “erroneous”), to the Gulf of Tonkin lie that launched the Vietnam War, to the more recent WMD fiasco, true “fake news” is a concerted, organized, institutional phenomenon that involves deceptions cooked up at the highest levels."

"If there’s a fake news story out there, it’s the fake news panic itself. It has the hallmarks of an old-school, WMD-style propaganda campaign."

"It includes terrifying pronouncements by unnamed “intelligence officials,” unprovable, overblown, or outright fake statistical assertions about the threat (like the oft-cited claim that fake election news had more engagement than real news), open conflation of legitimate domestic dissent with foreign attack, and routine dismissal of experts downplaying the problem "

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/darpa-fake-news-internet-censorship-879671/

Reed at wsws has more: DARPA request for proposal to

"develop technologies to automatically detect, attribute, and characterize falsified multi-modal media assets (text, audio, image, video) to defend against large-scale, automated disinformation attacks."

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/09/06/cens-s06.html

sidd

[vox_mundi]

Welcome to the Panopticon

--------------------

From Mind Control to Murder? How a Deadly Fall Revealed the CIA’s Darkest Secrets
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/06/from-mind-control-to-murder-how-a-deadly-fall-revealed-the-cias-darkest-secrets

Frank Olson died in 1953, but, because of clandestine US government experiments, it took decades for his family to get closer to the truth. ...

-----------------------

After reading this (and other similar reports about practices in NAZI Germany, the Soviet Union, China, etc.) this excerpt from Animal Farm stuck in my head ...



... "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

- George Orwell - Animal Farm

-----------------

Definitely worth the read! ...

[sidd]

Oldie(2014) but a goodie:

https://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm

sidd

[sidd]

Interview with Snowden on France24:



sidd

[Hefaistos]

Sidd, thanks.
The links/info in those two last posts were really good!

[Tom_Mazanec]

How to Fight Fake Climate Science on YouTube
https://therevelator.org/climate-science-youtube/

A new study finds that fake science videos get millions of hits on YouTube. But scientists can help fix misinformation about climate change and other scientific topics.

False statements about climate change trip people up
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02637-x

Respondents in survey couldn’t always tell climate facts from falsehoods — even when they were sure they were right.

[vox_mundi]

+1 Snowdon

------------------------------

Facebook fact-checker finds UK Conservatives ran ads with altered BBC headline
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1VZ00Z

UK fact-checking charity Full Fact found that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's party has been funding ads on Facebook that link to a BBC article with an apparently altered headline that reads "£14 billion pound cash boost for schools."

The actual BBC story is headlined "School spending: Multi-billion pound cash boost announced," and instead puts the number at £7.1 billion, criticizing the government's use of £14 billion pound figure as not the usual way of calculating spending.

... Facebook confirmed that headlines can be altered when running ads on the platform.

"We are working to put safeguards in place to ensure publishers have control over the way their headlines appear in advertisements," the Facebook spokesman told Reuters.

[nanning]

^^
Just wow. I didn't know it worked that way. Un-F*-believable. What a chaos.

[kassy]

The whole thing was despicable from the beginning. Long ago when it started you could do nice stuff like find old classmates. And other people through some other ways (any group that wanted to organize in an easy way) but you need little data points for triangulation.

Then of course anyone could steal whatever data to abuse and if headlines are editable someone built something for that.

If the service is free you are the product.

 

[Tom_Mazanec]

Understanding Climate Change
http://crashoil.blogspot.com/2019/09/entendiendo-el-cambio-climatico.html

Recently I participated in the recording of a program of a Spanish television (at the moment I can not tell you more about the program in question, unless it is broadcast this Sunday). At one point, the host of the program asked me what I thought about a manifesto released a few months ago, in which a group of Italian scientists poured critical vitriolic against what they consider "the climate change scam" and who denounce that it It is real because several factors (cycles of the Sun, volcanic eruptions, etc.) have not been taken into account. I replied that within the scientific community that is dedicated to studying Climate Change there is practically consensus (97%) that Climate Change is real, anthropogenic (caused by man with greenhouse gas emissions) and accelerated; and that all these people who "denounce" that this or that factor has not been taken into account, because all these factors are considered in the numerical models used to predict the climate of the future.

GUEST COMMENTARY: We need to face it: Global warming is a disaster
https://www.columbiamissourian.com/opinion/guest_commentaries/guest-commentary-we-need-to-face-it-global-warming-is/article_13aac750-d66d-11e9-a00b-3395e1bae8fa.html

Now let’s get some baseline facts straight:

First, global warming has been growing ever more evident for decades now.

I first learned of greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect in my undergraduate plant ecology course in 1970, but this phenomenon has been known since Joseph Fourier described the greenhouse effect in the 1820s.

Over the course of my career in forest health, I’ve witnessed the developing crisis that we now face, and it is real.

Second, global warming is a disaster of human creation (disproportionately American on a historic and per capita basis).

[sidd]

Buttistoni on Latour in dissent magazine:

"What if the global ruling class was intentionally destroying the climate? Think about it: educated in the world’s most expensive institutions, they must understand what climate change means. They might understand its implications so well, in fact, that they have set out to make sure they are protected from it at the expense of everyone else. Having lost faith in the long-promised world of prosperity, and recognizing that the planet cannot support all of us, elites have deregulated the economy and dismantled the welfare state while lavishly funding the denial of climate change."

"Latour is not interested in talking about climate science any longer. Of course we know climate change is happening, of course we know it is bad. Instead he is interested in how these facts are received, why they are accepted—or not—and, ultimately, in how we should face them."

"Nature is no longer a distant ecosystem that we can choose to care about or not, but terrestrial: what is now threatened is the very ground beneath our feet. "

“We don’t have to choose between workers’ wages and the fate of some little birds,”

“What do you want? What are you capable of? With whom are you prepared to cohabit? Who can threaten you?”

"The obvious problem is that we may not like the answers."

"Latour is adamant that Europeans are in no position to keep refugees out."

"It’s bracing to see him flirting with class war. If only he had better advice on how to win it."

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/material-world

sidd

[sidd]

Farell at the conversationalist on abusive relationships in this brave new world:

“We love our phones, but we do not trust them. And love without trust is the definition of an abusive relationship.”

"What our smartphones and relationship abusers share is that they both exert power over us in a world shaped to tip the balance in their favour, and they both work really, really hard to obscure this fact and keep us confused and blaming ourselves. "

"They tell us they work for and care about us, and if we just treat them right then we can learn to trust them. But all the evidence shows the opposite is true. This cognitive dissonance confuses and paralyses us. And look around. Everyone has a smartphone. So it’s probably not so bad, and anyway, that’s just how things work. "

" while looking at our relationship with our phones through a feminist lens may be disconcerting, it’s incredibly useful, and in a deliciously counter-intuitive way."

"Feminists know about power. Specifically, they know a lot about unequal power relationships"

"Abuse isn’t just pathological. It’s political. "

"just as we don’t fix climate change by individually eschewing plastic straws, we don’t fix our smartphones’ designed-in lack of trust by individually trying to spend a bit less time on Twitter."

"There’s a clear parallel between the emotional labour of women under patriarchy and the ‘attentional labour’ extracted from all of us under surveillance capitalism. "

"everything is impossible until it’s inevitable."

"A smartphone worthy of both our love and our trust would be a smartphone that is primarily loyal to us. It wouldn’t share our data with random companies that want to exploit or manipulate us, or with governments whose acts can harm us. It would tell us in plain language what it’s doing and why. It wouldn’t run background software on behalf of organizations that don’t work for us, and it wouldn’t hide what it was doing because it knew we wouldn’t like it. It wouldn’t be pockmarked with vulnerabilities that hostile agents exploit and sell to the highest bidder."

"Instead of monetizing our distraction, a trustworthy smartphone would help us do the sustained intellectual and creative work that gives our life meaning. It would deepen and broaden our relationships, not exploit them for a social graph. It would dive into immersive storytelling and communication with the goal to make new ways for us to love and be loved."

"Using a feminist lens brings the unequal power relationship into focus, shows just how weird it is and reminds us how we’ve dealt with this kind of problem before."

I have difficulty designating a smartphone as an object of love, but read the whole thing:

https://conversationalist.org/2019/09/13/feminism-explains-our-toxic-relationships-with-our-smartphones/

sidd

[sidd]

Macleod at fair on the difference between oligarchs and businessmen: (Spoiler: Russians are oligarchs)

https://fair.org/home/russia-has-oligarchs-the-us-has-businessmen/

sidd

[nanning]

Great posts sidd, thanks.

“We love our phones, but we do not trust them. And love without trust is the definition of an abusive relationship.”
Beautiful! 

I love the feminist lens aspect. You can gain many new insights from looking through the 'lens' of oppressed groups.

Other lenses: nature animal lens, child lens, LHBT lens, poor people lens, old people lens, ill or disabled lens, indiginous people lens, prostitute lens, whistleblower lens, human rights fighter lens, nature defender lens and last but not least, the lens of history.

----

What if the global ruling class was intentionally destroying the climate?

Funny that you mention this.
I have a good 'theory' of their fantasyworld and deep believes:

Via mystic, symbolic, 'secret society', illuminati, scientology and other sources these global ruling class shitpeople are convinced that 'The space aliens' say that they, the shitpeople, are the chosen ones; the winners. And of course deserve to enter the aliens' fantastic beautiful paradise but to make this possible, first the Earth has to be cleared of that simple stupid DNA based life it has now. Before the superior space aliens can conquer the planet.

Please don't for a moment think that it is not possible for those people to believe these things. What they believe is very likely far more extreme and insane than I sketched. This is not a joke.

[blumenkraft]

Business oligarch

Business oligarchs are generally business magnates who control sufficient resources to influence national politics.[1][2]
A business leader can be considered an oligarch if they satisfy the following conditions:
- they are among the largest private owners in the country
- they possess sufficient political power to promote their own interests
- they control multiple businesses, which intensively coordinate their activities.

Link >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_oligarch

[Jim Hunt]

An example of extremely bad journalism (IMHO!), in an organ of News Corp down under. Normally you'd have to pay to read (and comment on) this garbage, but thanks to the great god Google:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_5Z5hto1lSYJ:https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/ship-of-fools-6-global-warmists-rescued-from-icebound-ship/news-story/4c2c99d47230dff226cdb035f61d36fd+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

Yet another ship of fools:

Arctic tours ship MS MALMO with 16 passengers on board got stuck in ice on Sep 3 off Longyearbyen, Svalbard Archipelago, halfway between Norway and North Pole. The ship is on Arctic tour with Climate Change documentary film team, and tourists, concerned with Climate Change and melting Arctic ice. All 16 Climate Change warriors were evacuated by helicopter.

Rescued by helicopter? But what about all the emissions?

Zero "due diligence", apart from all the other failings! For further information please see:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2019/09/ship-of-fools-iii-escapes-arctic-sea-ice/

[Tom_Mazanec]

Only 7% of the questions at ABC's Democratic primary debate were about climate change
https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/only-7-questions-abcs-democratic-primary-debate-houston-were-about-climate

Discussion of the climate crisis and solutions to address it have thus far been lacking in Democratic presidential primary debates. Climate change was the topic of 9.5% of questions during the two-night debate hosted by CNN on July 30 and 31. During the two-night debate hosted by NBC in late June, less than 6% of the questions were about climate.

[Neven]

10 days ago, but another beauty in the long line of the special branch of bad journalism called Russiagate:

[blumenkraft]

Trumpism is a form of backlash politics fueled by white rage at a perceived loss of privilege and power in a more diverse and cosmopolitan world. Trumpism is a temper tantrum along the global color line fueled by anxieties about power and social dominance.

research on right-wing psychology points toward big trouble ahead
Trump's supporters want chaos and destruction. When their bad drug high finally wears off, it won't be pretty

The researchers asked the subjects if they agreed with the following statements:

- I fantasize about a natural disaster wiping out most of humanity such that a small group of people can start all over
- I think society should be burned to the ground
- Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things
- There is no right and wrong in the world

People who measure high in “Need for Chaos” are also more likely to circulate conspiracy theories online.

Donald Trump’s movement is a type of political body. The brain consists of ideologues, whether they work in the White House (like  Stephen Miller), right-wing think tanks and interest groups, the Republican Party, Fox News and other elite groupings. These people see Trumpism as their best chance to destroy America’s multiracial democracy, profit from environment disaster, gut the social safety net, destroy the commons, slash taxes on the wealthy and large corporations, or (in extreme cases) install a Christian nationalist regime

Donald Trump delivers human cocaine for his followers. He is is both a cult leader and a political drug dealer. Inevitably, Trump’s voters will come crashing down from their political cocaine high. Unfortunately, they will not suffer alone in well-deserved and hard-earned misery. Instead, we can expect them will lash out against the rest of the American people and the world in a fit of destruction and chaos.

Trumpism is a form of backlash politics fueled by white rage at a perceived loss of privilege and power in a more diverse and cosmopolitan world. Trumpism is a temper tantrum along the global color line fueled by anxieties about power and social dominance.

Link >> https://www.salon.com/2019/09/17/donald-trump-king-of-chaos-new-research-on-right-wing-psychology-points-toward-big-trouble-ahead/

[Jim Hunt]

research on right-wing psychology points toward big trouble ahead
Trump's supporters want chaos and destruction. When their bad drug high finally wears off, it won't be pretty

Thanks for the heads up!

It's the perfect overview for our nascent research project:

https://www.researchgate.net/project/Social-and-Political-Psychology-of-the-Ship-of-Fools-meme

The hypothesis? That the Trumpism playbook is a clone of the climate change denial equivalent.

Make the Ice on the Sea Great Again (MISGA for short) is our clarion call!

[blumenkraft]

Welcome, Jim.

Trumpism playbook is a clone of the climate change denial equivalent

I know, right? It's always the same pattern with them.

[Jim Hunt]

It's always the same pattern with them.

Thanks B. More from the Salon intro:

Donald Trump is the King of Chaos. He has lied at least 12,000 times since becoming president of the United States.

These lies are often obvious and lazy — such as incorrectly claiming that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama and then forcing scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to parrot his lies. Trump’s lies are made no less dangerous when they happen to be lazy and obvious.

Trump is unapologetic and unabashed in his contempt for American democracy and the rule of law. Many mental health professionals have concluded he is unwell. He lacks impulse control and evidences sociopathic behavior.

[blumenkraft]

Yes, this actually happened...

CNN Books Lewandowski Hours After He Said He Has ‘No Obligation’ To Be Honest With Media

Link >> https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/corey-lewandowski-cnn-media

Corey Lewandowski: The Mueller report was very clear. There was no collusion… no obstruction.
Alisyn Camerota: That's not what the Mueller report said.
Corey: It absolutely says that.
Alisyn: Did you read the Mueller report?
Corey: No, I never did.

[sidd]

Pyrocene: fire past, fire present and fiery future

Pyne at history news network on the burning new world:

"humans turned from burning living landscapes to burning lithic ones in the form of fossil fuels."

" Fire disappeared as an integral subject about the time we hid fire into Franklin stoves and steam engines. "

"Our firepower became unbounded."

"We are taking stuff out of the geologic past and unleashing it into the geologic future.  "

"when a people shift to fossil-fuels, they alter the way they inhabit landscapes.  "

"The Pyrocene is moving from metaphor to descriptor."

"A couple of centuries ago we began hiding our fires in machines and off site, which can make it difficult for modern urbanites to appreciate how profoundly anthropogenic fire practices inform Earth today. "

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/172842

fire fuel beneath, fume exhaling
killing heat from heaven falling
on our hapless children wailing
with the world about them failing
as they curse our names.

sidd

[vox_mundi]

In Media Coverage of Climate Change, Where are the Facts?
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-media-coverage-climate-facts.html


Five Facts

... Public polls show that Americans, whether agreeing or disagreeing with the idea that human activity is changing Earth's climate, lack an understanding of the basic facts leading to this conclusion, says climate scientist David Romps, a University of California, Berkeley, professor of earth and planetary science. A large percentage of the public doesn't know that global warming is happening now, that it's caused by record levels of CO2 from fossil fuel burning, that 99% of climate scientists agree on this and that the changes are effectively permanent.


The percentage of climate change articles in The New York Times since 1980 that mention five basic facts about global warming.

... the fact that climate change is permanent (...in human civilization context) is mentioned in only 0.4% of articles.

"We are talking about an alteration of the planet's climate, and in all of my conversations with people, no one has ever asked me how long it lasts," Romps said. "I don't understand how people can have any sort of opinion about global warming without knowing that fact: that it is effectively permanent.

... "We have this major problem: that people don't seem to have a solid grasp of the fundamental ideas. And why would that be?" he asked. "There has been a well-funded campaign to spread misinformation and sow doubt about global warming, which has been very successful. On the other hand, climate scientists are not necessarily out there communicating effectively to the public."

"After you finish school, you learn about science primarily through the news," he added. "And if you are not getting appropriate context from that news coverage, you are going to be confused."

... "If The New York Times isn't doing it, my guess is that it is just not happening across print journalism," Romps said. "One of the hopes is that, by at least pointing this out, it might occur to people to take a look at what kind of context is provided in news coverage of climate change."

Open Access: David M Romps et al, Climate news articles lack basic climate science, Environmental Research Communications (2019)

[Tom_Mazanec]

#sacrifice2survive
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/09/19/Sacrifice-2-Survive/

It’s easy to feel hopeless when you tune in to the news media’s coverage of the climate crisis.


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Each week it seems there’s a new story about how many millions of people will die and how many thousands of species will go extinct because of global heating. With each story, the world becomes more uncertain and more uncontrollable.

So, instead, we tune out. And that’s because journalists aren’t covering this disaster like they would any other disaster. But there’s something you can do today to help change that.

[Tom_Mazanec]

When you have to refute a bad denier argument in the media, here is a good crib sheet:
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php

[blumenkraft]

Very nice!

[Tom_Mazanec]

here's another good source of good and bad journalism:
https://climatecrocks.com/

[Jim Hunt]

When you have to refute a bad denier argument in the media, here is a good crib sheet:

What do you make of this journalism Tom?

https://skepticalscience.com/transformational-climate-science-exeter-university.html

Yours truly on Skeptical Science!

I had a good old chinwag with Gavin Schmidt and Reto Knutti afterwards as well.

[Tom_Mazanec]

What do you make of this journalism Tom?

EXCELLENT!