Bishop Hill There’s something fishy about our journalists
Aug 10, 2014 Media This is a guest post by Danny Weston.
Just a few days ago our old friend, the Telegraph’s Geoffrey Lean, was rightly excoriated on this blog for yet another appallingly biased - not to mention incompetent – screed further justifying his apparent fear of imminent human caused thermageddon. Now it’s not news to any regular readers here that many of our glorious hacks appear to throw out all pretense of professionalism and impartiality when it comes to the issue of the seemingly ever omnipotent CO2 molecule belched from the belly of human industry. Motivated reasoning seems to be the root cause. Or is it? I’d like to propose an altogether more frightening theory – that in many cases it is in fact sheer incompetence that is the driving force and the reliance on climate catastrophist talking points is more an effect than a cause. It gives them a nice, tidy, heuristic for them to hang everything on, minimising their need to do their own research, editing or indeed, even thinking.
To explain why I’d like to talk through a number of personal anecdotes that all tie in together in various ways with both Lean’s article and his behaviour.
First, there’s Louise Gray. You’ll likely remember her as Lean’s younger, more energetic partner in crime at the Telegraph. She became well known for her “churnalism” of environmentalist press releases, which were then passed off as journalism with due diligence. Unfortunately only those regularly commenting on her pieces seemed to be aware of this. I traced a number of her articles online to see how far they would spread and depressingly the major, churned, talking points would be repeated far and wide, backed by the authority of the Telegraph as a trusted brand.
One of my favourite examples to use here of Louise’s incredible cut and pasting was the ‘Llamas help protect an ice age fish’ story.1 It was not only an egregious example of churn – it also demonstrated her complete lack of critical filters on her part. With regard to the former it was mostly copied from an April 12th, 2011 press release from the environment agency. With regard to the latter, it was quickly taken apart both in the Telegraph comments and over at WUWT.2 It’s also apropos to note that despite the cutting and pasting, Louise *still* made mistakes – she somehow rewrote ‘Sprinkling Tarn’ and ‘Sprinkler Tarn’.
I became quite interested in Louise’s work after this point and analysed dozens of her articles for churn, finding significant cutting and pasting from press releases in over 50% of them. I also regularly found those bizarre spelling mistakes and the fact that they occurred in largely copied segments still makes my head hurt to this day. In any case, I eventually confronted her face to face with these findings in public at an event held at the Royal Society last year “Fracking: science and scepticism”. Louise was on the panel. I managed to get a question in, demanding to know why or how she could be trusted given that she copied and pasted much of her content from environmental press releases. She started to open her mouth to respond but I interrupted – telling her not to deny it as I could place the articles side by side with the press releases and show the copied sections in no uncertain terms. She appeared to be gobsmacked and whimpered a quick response that I didn’t catch.
There was a reception afterwards, with drinks. I had taken two friends with me and we were chatting when Louise approached me, setting her pile of notebooks down on the drinks table next to me. My friends took a step back to witness the confrontation. What then followed was a painful hour of her attempting to justify her “journalism” to me. She cycled through three responses – i) it’s standard practice amongst journalists, ii) I shouldn’t pick out individual journalists for attention and iii) she only gets “four hours per story” and as such has to use press releases. As you’ve probably guessed I wasn’t sympathetic to any of these reasons and when pressed she would either not respond or change the subject. Also, the “only four hours per story” excuse rings particularly hollow for me and I’ll get onto that in the anecdote that follows. The encounter ended with her being so flustered that she disappeared, leaving all of her notebooks with me. I didn’t look at them. When handing them into the reception and giving them her details at the Telegraph I couldn’t help wonder if she would have given me the same courtesy had I left my notebooks with her.
This brings me to the next related anecdote. I imagine some of you – like me – immediately chortled at the pressure of having to cut and paste a story in “just” four hours. Given her pace of output at the Telegraph I did also wonder what she was doing for the rest of the time. Anyone who has worked in a genuinely high pressure environment and who has also seen the quality of output here in the blogosphere knows what is possible to do in four hours.
I was bemused at the idea that she struggled for original content so much that press releases were her only resort. Why? A number of years prior to this encounter I had been the administrator of two large EU funded research projects in robotics and AI. During this period I also worked as a researcher in the area, contributed to comprehensive proposals for new project funding and met dozens of academics from across the EU who were juggling numerous EU funded projects between them.
Something that isn’t widely known outside of these circles is that specific deliverables, time and resources are set aside in *every single* project for dissemination and promotion. A part of this is, obviously, the usual game of perverse incentives for academics – the publication and citation record. However the bulk of these deliverables is expressly aimed at reaching the wider public. And it is something that many academics express frustration over in that they find it difficult to drum up interest, even in such apparently “cool” areas as robotics and AI. I can tell you from direct, repeated experience that had a journalist such as Louise Gray called or emailed them, they would have ripped her arm off for interviews, given her project materials and shown her around the lab for photo ops.
It gets better (or worse depending on how you view it) than this, too. If I was a science or technology journalist I wouldn’t have to go looking for my content, I could deliver interesting original material week in and week out on this basis and without churning a single press release. All EU funded research projects are searchable on the CORDIS website.3 And if a project in your particular field (e.g. environmentalism) isn’t live at the moment, no problem. It is possible to search for projects going back to 1990. Many of those scientists and researchers would still be interested in talking to journalists about their previous work and how it may have had an impact since. And just like the spelling mistakes inserted into cut and paste jobs mentioned above, the fact that journalists do not make use of this amazing resource also makes my head hurt.
Speaking of the EU brings me to my third anecdote and back to the subject matter that Mr. Lean managed to ham-fistedly muck up: fish and fisheries. In November, 2012, I participated in a “hackathon” at Google campus, organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation and European Journalism Centre. The theme of the event was to look at data produced by the EU for interesting patterns and stories. There was a lot of interesting material (not least of which was the visualization of the number and location of lobby groups relative to the EU parliament). This included fish subsidy data. Unfortunately the main site that makes this information available in an accessible form, fishsubsidy.org is broken at the moment (check back in future though, it’s worth a look).
There were two distinct patterns we found in the data that shocked everyone there. Both of these related to the pattern of EU subsidy for fishing efforts that failed to catch their specific EU quotas. In these cases the EU would do two things: subsidise a bigger boat (no, really!) and sometimes also pay for the fishing to take place in waters outside the EU. Neither of these pieces of information seem to have reached out to the wider debates, concerns and narratives surrounding fish stocks in the EU. It is civically minded programmers who are digging this kind of thing out, making the data accessible, finding significant stories within the data and so on. And they are casting around for journalists who will run with it. But they don’t. Why?
I look at the rubbish routinely pumped out by the likes of Lean and Gray and have increasing difficulty in believing that they mendaciously cling to the climate catastrophism schtick to drive their journalism as a matter of pure ideology. If that was their primary motivation, they wouldn’t make so many ridiculous mistakes, they could find hundreds of EU Framework Program funded researchers to talk to directly who work on climate related research, and they could find competent hackers (in the positive sense of the term) to make large datasets available to them for free, complete with brilliant scoops. Instead, my current take is that following the collective hysteria and belief in imminent doom provides a fantastic cover if you have the unfortunate combination of being incompetent, a bit dim and looking for an easy ride being employed amongst the commentariat and attending jollies. I think I’d rather have the competent ideologues to contend with, personally.
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[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8444032/Fish-carried-up-a-mountain-on-backs-of-llamas-to-escape-global-warming.html
[2] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/12/climate-change-craziness-of-the-week-a-fish-story-from-llama-land/
[3] http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/home_en.html
Reader Comments (69)
As the saying goes "Never invoke a conspiracy when incompetence will suffice". It is likely that laziness also is involved.
Morley
Or.....To put it another way......Louise Gray isn't a very good journalist.
A suggestion for improving the MSM coverage of science: publish a quick copy, paste and trim of press releases, but after a week or two of research publish another more balanced commentary. If editors (and readers) were to insist on the second version then that would weed out the light-weights that are only capable of gullible copying and pasting.
It may be true that there are "4 h/story" deadlines for copy. She may be obliged to come up with a certain number of articles per week, per newspaper policy.
Environmental NGOs make the job of summarizing and collating grey sources much easier. Their documents become a trusted intermediary between the raw research stories on one side and the looming deadlines on the other. The IPCC previously used and successfully defended the right to use grey sources in the future.
Competence and quality is a product of not just individuals but the zeitgiest as well. If there were competent ideologues or better, just competent journalists, they would likely find themselves faced with a hard time at their job while their dimmer colleagues zip by. Soon they would quit or get shunted out - could well be for not meeting 'targets', ironically.
We need good journalists and better environmental activists.
I spent 2 days trying to persuade Louise that she had got the Met office decadal forecast story wrong. JAN 2013
Which basicall said new forecast would be flat to 2017. Harrabin pointed out that would be a 20 year pause.
louise thought it mean 0.8C and a predicted +0.43C by 2017.. ie 0.8C + 0.43C = 1.24C
she missed repeated attempt to explain.. it was 0.43C above the baseline average.. ie temps flat to 2017. She tbought an extra 0.43C in the bext few years! Equivalent to half the observed warming in the last 150 yrs.. thus she was very wrong
the met office(belated) press relewse spelled this out..
Louise Grey has gone freelance. Hasn't been times environmental correspondent since December 2013.
Her page doesn't have any articles from her time as environmental correspondent. I was looking to see how many articles she churned out in a week.
Another example of this sort of thing, ably chronicled by Paul Homewood, here:
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/coral-digger-disturbs-war-dead-not-climate-change-bbc-remain-in-denial/
Danny, do you know the work of Felicity Mellor?
She is critical of churnalism and lack of balance.
See her talk here at a recent Nottingham meeting, where David Colquhoun is also very outspoken.
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/circlingthesquare/2014/07/15/panel-2-researchers-facing-the-media-david-colquhoun-athene-donald-felicity-mellor-jon-turney/
She also says most media science stories are just recycled press releases.
See also this blog
http://attheinterface.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/the-peril-of-the-press-release/
Clovis marcus
She was DT environmental correspondent, not Times.
She's got a blog at http://www.louisebgray.com/blog/. Go pay her a visit. We all need the hits!
I don't think a lot of folk take the Telegraph seriously any more, particularly since it has become so neo-Guardianesque. They take/took Lean and Gray even less seriously - in fact, Geoffrey lean is invariably good for a laugh. Now they really scrape the barrel with Jenny Jones and Vivienne Westwood, and they're just bonkers.
I am reading Dean Starkman's "The watchdog that didn't bark". It is based around the 2008 financial meltdown but really focuses on the financial media's failure to do their job. He differentiates between access/insider journalism and accountability/investigative journalism. He contends that the emphasis has switched to the former since the early 2000's. His point: media outlets don't want to invest the time and resources in developing a story from scratch so they increasingly rely on media ready content (aka PR) provided by the insiders (with vested interests) which they use to "cut and paste" into articles. I think this also applies to scientific journalism -- and maybe more so given the complexity of the subject matter.
I can understand a lazy journalist doing this but am amazed that the editorial staff lets such shoddy work get published under their masthead. An example from Canada's Globe and Mail where they featured (front page) this ludicrous article on solar power July 26th: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/solar-power-surging-to-forefront-of-canadian-energy/article19786759/. Utter "churnalism" from the solar industry and Government of Ontario -- completely biased and insulting to any reader. I guess guilt set in because August 4th they published this op-ed piece with the facts: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/a-sunny-ontario-experiment-gone-wrong/article19890164/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2012/jul/27/climate-sceptics-conspiracy-theoristsWhat of those people that write in the MSM but are not journalists
Dr Adam Corner springs to mind. He was sent a copy of Lewandiwsky's moon hoax paper. A month before there was even a press release. So his Guardian article was all his own work..
the paper was about psychology in his own field yet he accepted its conclusion without any scepticism or questions. Something that Dr Paul Matthews took him to task for. At Corner's blog Talking Climate
Or all those other people writing in the Guardian.. or The Conversation withthe authority of the MSM behind the article
peoe like George Marshall. John Abrahams. Dana Nuccittelli, John Cook, even Lewandowsky
but they I imagine are cheaper than paying a journalist to do any analysis/research
lots of cheap copy.. the Nafez uy got dropped recently, which was probably a relief for the Guardian's credibility
Four hours per story?
Surely it is four stories per hour!!
I suspect the number of good journalists through history have been few and far between. It’s why blogging has exploded into their world. Passionate amateurs can wipe the floor with jaded, lazy professionals and it turns out that perfect English isn’t so important after all... Not that journalists find it that essential anymore either. One of the accepted routes into journalism is now media studies. Nuff said.
We live in an age where one of the most respected news teams in the World failed to spot and or report on the UK’s most prolific paedophile. I still don’t think the BBC realises what its behaviour has done to its credibility. That there isn’t a bigger outcry over Savile is testament to an already tarnished reputation. It seems that harbouring an immense pervert wasn’t that incredible.
I suppose Louise Gray is just a journalist who copies and pastes but will never be a reporter who researches and writes.
Lets not forget Scotland's own example of the breed, Rob Edwards. I have no idea of his competence as a journalist as I have never seen him produce anything other than rehashed press releases from his buddies in FoE and WWF etc.
You could say that's another theory. It's not that they're incompetent, although they are. The thing that is scary about it is that it is directed incompetence. Scientific developments that could enhance everybody's lives they dismiss or oppose. Tales of impending doom resulting from man's untrammelled capitalist greed they'll devote pages and pages to, repeatedly, even when there's no story. The dangers of fracking. The dangers of pesticides. The dangers of nuclear power. The dangers of GMOs.
It was all foreseen many years ago.
@Mike Jackson. Doh...Telegraph.
I had a look at the blog. Bit quiet, but she did get called out on her commentary on AR5.
I thought that four hours was the length of a journalist's lunchtime(O'Booze)
Louise Gray told me this article was written by a 18 year climate denial groupie who works for BP. Don't shoot the messenger.
you know I think that it would be nice to investigate the membership of environmentalist organizations and others, such as the Club of Rome etc by Science and Environmental journalists, government advisers, civil servants. Maybe a new definition of subversive needs to be added to exclude them from their positions.
Danny Weston is getting to it - journalists really are not very smart or particularly well educated. Just look at the entrance requirements for J-school. J-school is where you go if you can't pass the L-SATs or don't like reading English Lit. Never be surprised by the depth of ignorance or lack of analytical skills demonstrated by journalists.
Danny: what an interesting opinion piece, informed by your experience of the hackathon at Google, inspired by the UK's Open Knowledge Foundation. The way I see it there have been a real fault line in this area (climate and the open knowledge movement) - something I tried to bridge (or push wider, depending on your point of view!) by introducing Steve McIntyre to Glyn Moody, openness journalist and OKF veteran, when Steve was in London in July 2010. It was fun to see how they got on as individuals but Glyn remains a convinced catastrophist and nobody in the upper reaches of OKF has taken a stand with Steve in challenging the lousy record of non-openness he's uncovered since starting to investigate the hockey stick and paleoclimate generally in 2002.
You're right about the idealism of many programmers working in this area, I believe. I also find your view of the likes of Lean and Gray pretty convincing, though I'm not sure how much it matters what makes them the way they are. What matters is the open knowledge community in the UK and elsewhere realising that we are very natural allies. This will probably take some time and you're right I think to go for practical alliances with programmers who wish to open up data. Well done and best of luck. (And Paul Matthews is no doubt pointing at another important ally.)
History can be a lazy writer too, particularly when it comes to plagiarizing from itself. It has long been observed that ideologies in power breed mediocrity. A famous example available online is in Macaulay's marvelous _History of England_ (originally from the 19th century, now from http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1468):
"We may be certain that very few persons, not seriously impressed by religious convictions, applied for baptism while Diocletian was vexing the Church, or joined themselves to Protestant congregations at the risk of being burned by Bonner. But, when a sect becomes powerful, when its favour is the road to riches and dignities, worldly and ambitious men crowd into it, talk its language, conform strictly to its ritual, mimic its peculiarities, and frequently go beyond its honest members in all the outward indications of zeal."
Incidentally, some other observations there about historical ideologies in power may also seem familiar to a student of modern ideologies. E.g.,
"But his zeal for the rights of conscience ended with the predominance of the Whig party. When fortune changed, when he was no longer afraid that others would persecute him, when he had it in his power to persecute others, his real propensities began to show themselves. [...]"
Seems to be a modern extension of "Them as can do. Them as can't, teach", it now reads "Them as can, do. Them as can't teach. Them as can't do and can't read, go to churnalism skool"
It wouldn't be so bad if they would churn equably, but all the examples quoted only churn PRs from green advocacy groups whose views they support, and there is evidence to suggest that many of their sources are in fact friends of theirs who move in the same political circles and share the same convictions.
The regurgitation of Press Releases as "News" effectively amounts to laundering of advocacy opinions by shills in the MSM in order to manufacture a cloak of reliability.
Even Wikipedia recognizes that Press Releases amount to "self published" sources, which are in the general category of "questionable". Cut and paste them into a newspaper <I>et voilà</>, "3rd party verification".
Another pernicious influence: Often times a scientific paper will be accompanied by a press release. One of the authors will often make a comment about the work that is not in the paper. This comment will then be repeated in the media accounts and "google-morph" into "peer reviewed literature", but it is nowhere in the paper. Indeed, I often suspect that the author would have <I>liked</I> to have had it in the paper, but the referees wouldn't allow it.
Journalists must be keen to make the story as sensational and newsworthy as possible. Then add the risks of copy and paste plus a bit of original comment. Then add the incompetence factor or perhaps a failure to understand any technical content or the meaning of the statistics. Finally, add the bias that everything to do with climate change must be true and helping to get the message across to these nasty deniers is a noble cause.
The result is the garbage that we see regularly in all forms of media.
And more sloppy reporting from the Telegraph here
Whatever is "battering" Britain today and whatever name it might have been given a week ago, 40mph does not a hurricane make and nobody gives names to what is at best a severe gale.
The UK has been catching the tailend of hurricanes from the other side of the pond since forever and with modern mapping and forecasting techniques it is probably the one thing that the Met Office ought to get right nine times out of ten.
But please can we stop the media reporting gale force winds as if they were the end of the world?
First they repaint the scenario to make the story seem topical and important and they go to press when the public are 'coming round' from the previous propaganda overdose. They're just jerking the readers away from reality and keeping good journalism out of the picture.
While incompetence undoubtedly plays a large role, I'd reserve some of the fault for the desire not to rock the boat, and not to make a scene about something you hold no real views on either way. Journalists live within the media bubble, which is largely leftist in tone. Unless you wish to 'kick against the pricks' (as the Bible so memorably puts it) and position yourself contra to the mainstream view, its a lot easier to just go along with flow. Unless you have strongly held views as to one or other side of the argument, the majority of people just want an easy life. In environmental journalism that means going along with the mainstream, and never questioning it. Just like 'no-one ever got fired for buying IBM' no-one ever gets fired for going along with the pro-AGW camp.
A combination of stupidity, laziness and naked self interest usually covers most sins.
The reason the British establishment is so committed to AGW fraud is this.
London's financial centre is the main home to the incipient global carbon market. Prof Heal believes that in a decade, the trade could be worth trillions of dollars.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8359397.stm
Traditional media dealing with dwindling revenues, reluctant to develop their own stories from scratch, are prime targets for the enormous number of PR professionals staffing advocacy pressure groups. The temptation to go for the precooked story, "news, ready to heat and eat" must be huge.
Competition from outfits that allow anyone to have their own automated website "news feed" by providing prefiltered "information nuggets" tailored to your profile lower the culinary standards dramatically.
Then there are the "push" organizations like Climate Central with targeted programs like "TV Mets" to pressure television weatherpersons to link all "abnormal" weather to Climate Change. They say the program "leverages the power of trusted messengers". High quality graphics are free for the taking.
http://www.climatecentral.org/wgts/heat-is-on/HeatIsOnReport.pdf
At the strategic planning level are nodes like the Stonehouse Standing Circle, PR pro, James Hoggan and DeSmog Blog financier John LeFebvre (whose fortune came from processing illegal internet gambling money) and David Suzuki's global meeting place to coordinate the choir by well tested methods of "framing the conversation" and controlling the message and forging and feeding contacts within the media.
http://stonehousesummit.com/climate-crossroads-research-based-framing-guide
For the average journalism student anxious to "make a difference" and save the planet, convinced that an "Non Profit" or government funded organization is morally superior to the grubby capitalist offerings, what is not to like?
Doesn't even bear thinking about.
It's probably a combination of green ideology and journalistic laziness - the best of both worlds, then.
To write on the subject in the first place requires an interest. (Just as you have an interest in the subjects you cover, Bish') However hacks like Lean and Grey have all the fodder they could dream of churned out by a huge environmental media lobby.
Frankly, why would they need to 'do an Andrew Gilligan' on anything green-related, when anything and everything they could ever dream of is right there on-tap, and usually be traceable back to 'official sources', too, so (in their view) their stories will always have sufficient credibility to justify publication.
It's the same at the Guardian - they breathlessly spout endless 'new studies' that 'confirm', 'say', 'suggest' or 'prove' that X is happening and 'it's worse than previously thought!'
Stories on tap - 'verifiable' and 'official'. Why re-write the book when you can simply re-publish the message in its entirety, especially when you agree with the central thrust of the message as well?
Fascinating stuff! Loopy Lou, as I believe she is known as in the trade.
In 2009 when we organised The Copenhagen Climate Challenge Conference (www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org) I managed to get through on the phone to Louise G. She did manage a couple of paras in the DT, pretty garbled but no worse than most. However her piece then had an interesting future. It was used in an A level General Paper as 'source' material for an essay on, yes you guessed it, Global Warming. It was this paper that a very bright student failed because he presented a clear and coherent case against AGW (hich Booker highlighted a couple of years back.
Tony O: "Never be surprised by the depth of ignorance or lack of analytical skills demonstrated by journalists."
I am certainly sympathetic with the sentiment. But science is hard, and even those who are apparently conversant with much of the science have a hard time distinguishing careful analysis from junk. I've seen firsthand the same mechanism operating in a respected skeptic blog, where the proprietor is ostensibly immersed in the science. The slant arises from their endeavoring to protect their readers from what they see as error, and it colors their coverage.
So, yes, the shallowness of much if not most journalistic output is appalling, but it's a difference in degree, not in kind, from what occurs on sites we tend to respect.
The Guardian has discovered that you can bypass the journalist, cut out the middlewoman and go straight to the PR source.
Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, the Guardian "environment writer" who boosted math Phd candidate Safa Motesharrei Collapse of Civilization into orbit (actually did it's job of flaming across the ecoverse and disappearing) by adding the "secret hot sauce" of "NASA funded!".
" @Nafeez Ahmed My NASA study exclusive has not just gone viral, it's gone global and is making headlines in national newspapers all over 7:30 AM - 17 Mar 2014"
Dr. Ahmed is actually a very well connected principal (once listed as a founder) of Unitas Communications which offers services such as:
"Media positioning: By drafting newsworthy press releases, op-ed pieces, media articles and proactively pitching media stories globally, our press team ensures our clients messages are positioned in online, broadcast and print media outlets within UK and international press that can reach your target audience."
http://www.unitascommunications.com/services/
Ahmed seems to have been an advisor on the launch of this paper as he received it in draft before it's publication.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2014/03/21/popular-guardian-story-collapse-industrial-civilization/#.U-ffhvk-6So
The money quote headline: "Nasa-funded study: Industrial civilization headed for ‘irreversible collapse’? " eventually prompted NASA to issue a disclaimer that they had anything to do with it. The NASA claim by Ahmed was based on math grad student Motesharrei's "expropriation" of a program, (left lying around the department) which was NASA funded for an entirely unrelated field..something to do with irrigation patterns it's grant description seems to say.
Ahmed's ability to deploy another of Unitas specialty skills "Reputation Management" was actually not needed as the NASA disclaimer was hardly noticed in the continuing barrage of apocalyptic fireworks.
"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit, Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
There is a
goodsuperb follow up post from Ben Pile. He expands on Danny's view of dim mediocre churnalists, then expands this to suggest that the left has given up its serious intellectual arguments against capitalism on favour of a catch-all "capitalism is destroying the planet" meme.At the end he comes up with a new term for the likes of Lord Deben.
Danny: Nice piece. I especially like the personal confrontation of LG. However, I think there remains plenty of room for ideological driven "pot banging". I raised a similar issue elsewhere last week.
"Lazy journalists, sloppy thinking and/or pot banging?
It is becoming evident to me at least that climate change has become the equivalent of "God's Will" when it comes to explaining unwanted events. Just as God was blamed for poor hygiene and poorly designed or maintained structures, so our present day "plagues" are blamed on the one cause that rules them all, "Climate Change".
During the last week, I have looked at the data behind two recent events highlighted in separate New York Times' articles: Declines in Pacific Oyster production in Washington State and water shortages due to toxins from algae blooms in the water supply for Toledo from Lake Erie. In both instances, explicit claims were made that climate change was a major contributor to these problems. The actual data (pH levels of the water for Oysters and water temperatures for Toledo's algae bloom contaminated water supply) do not support the various authors undocumented assertions.
In both instances, thanks to the Internet and on-line US Government databases, it took me less than an hour to find, collate and analyze observational data that clearly undercut the proffered explanations. Such sloppy thinking can lead to bad public policies since the real causes can be easily masked or ignored."
I sometimes think that if there is any truth in the maxim that we get the journalism we deserve, then I must have been very naughty in a previous life.
Following up on the comment on Ben Pile's blog as mentioned by Paul Matthews, I think many serious journalists of the left gave up a long time ago. Their employers saw the financial success of the likes of the Murdoch Empire during the Thatcher years and eventually decided "if you can't beat them, join them".
The resulting tabloid-ization of many commercial media outlets was, of course, often a matter of simply doing what it takes to survive in difficult times when technology is changing the industry. What the BBC's excuse was, I'm not entirely sure. But it probably started with an obsession of chasing ratings (hence "EastEnders") and not being labelled as 'elitist'.
to visit Louise Gray's blog, click this hyperlink:
Louise Gray blog
That way, if she is capable of reviewing her blog's stats, she should be able to see all the visits which came from Bishop Hill. Might easily quintuple her traffic and might also inspire her to spend a few minutes here learning something.... one can dream!
Monday August 11, 2014 @ 0720 GMT a day for the history books
Gridwatch reports wind generation at 4.47GW or over 14.4% of National Requiement!
Truly a day in history.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
I would put this in 'unthreaded' but as that part of this site requires 20:20 vision and good hearing I've put it here.
Please understand I give those 'captr' character ruining method just 2 chances to know I'm right.
Also worth considering that the shift from print to online media has brought with it online comment and debate on an article.
Revenues from online advertising, as well as placement decisions, are driven by visitor numbers and page impressions. Alongside that is the amount of time a site visitor spends at the site or at a particular page - both of which influence ad revenue.
Thus the more controversial an article is the more debate there is and the more time people spend at the page (or returning to it) all of which enhances the revenue potential. So it may not simply be laziness or incompetence on the part of Lean and Gray, although they both appear to lacking in understanding and critical appreciation skills, a controversial piece of reporting is likely driven by its revenue creating potential.
It would be interesting, if nobody has done this, to do an analysis of articles in the MSM before and after the development of online MSM and see if these have become more sensational and controversial post online journalism.
"collective hysteria and belief" indeed. Powered among other things by lazy journalism, incompetence, emotional commitment to cause, fear of peer scorn, unhealthy alliances with those one should be investigating, etc. Memes think for us if we let them.
Geoffrey Lean was and probably still is, the Editor of the UNEP magazine, "Our Planet" This was their "Rio + 20" edition in 2012, www.unep.org/pdf/op_feb_2012/OP-EN-FEB-2012.pdf
If you really want to see what we are up against, check this out. Scroll down, the list of green gunk goes on for ever.
"Our Planet: The First United Nations Environment Assembly, http://issuu.com/unep/docs/op-en"
The only question you should be asking is "Why is Lean still at the Telegraph ?"
The simple answer is that Shell want him there.
When the "Age of Energy" series, run by Shell's David Hone and "chaired" by Geoffrey Lean ran in the Telegraph starting on Saturday 13th August 2011, it was a a blatant and highly successful attempt to prevent fracking in the UK and involved Cameron's "Minister of State for Policy" Oliver Letwin, along with Ed Miliband, Chris Huhne, Caroline Lucas, even the Bishop of London, and the then Chairman of Shell UK, Graham van't Hoff.
I have the "hard copy" still but all mention online has "disappeared".
You have no need to ask why a company with huge investments in Qatar Gas would be keen to inhibit the exploitation of the UK's shale gas reserves.
Geoffrey is also Cameron's favourite "Environmental Correspondent" which helps to explain why Geoffrey said :- "might Greenpeace rename one of its ships SAMANTHA CAMERON after its former supporter".
Good article - and entirely credible. I have no doubt that the environmental movement has well run, professionally trained PR orgainsations and staff publishing ready made and easy to use material all the time. It is intended as useful, consumable fodder for lazy or time strapped journalists.
It is not new, of course. Before the internet was invented, smart organisations employed skilled PR people, often former journalists themselves who understood their market for news stories, who published material in a form that made cut and paste easy for the print media. What has changed is not the message but simply the wider array of media techniques now available and unleashed by the internet, including social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and comment pages on the media themselves. What has also appeared, fortunately, is the blogosphere where propaganda or lazy journalism or Big Lies can be dissected and exposed for what they are - no doubt the reason why those in positions of authority want to control it.
Selective outrage-- or perhaps it's really selective skepticism-- fascinates me. One big example some of you may have missed:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2199284/Wind-farms-Are-wind-farms-saving-killing-A-provocative-investigation-claims-thousands-people-falling-sick-live-near-them.html
That was quite a bang-up investigation, wouldn't you say? Or is wind turbine syndrome not a suitable subject for exploration on this blog?
BTW, this particular alarmist variant has found its way to Scotland, which I'm sure Bishop Hill is quite aware of. Here's just the latest example.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/497525/An-ill-wind-blows-as-the-surge-of-turbines-stirs-fears-of-silent-danger-to-our-health
How would you characterize that story? Or if you find the wind turbine syndrome issue amusing, here's something for fun:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2013/04/18/anecdotal-evidence-of-wind-turbine-syndrome/#.U-j2FigwL18
Because we're *broadly* sceptics, and because we're critical of wind power, we're supposed to apologise for the excesses of people peddling Wind Turbine Syndrome.
That is the logic of environmental correspondents.
This is a heartfelt post, and it strikes me as also a very important one. Opinions that are ready-made and can be slipped on like an off-the-peg overcoat are surely appealing to many more folk than just journalists of the feeble type such as Lean and Gray. The climate establishment and those guiding and/or exploiting them for financial or political purposes, have seen to it that entire careers can be constructed around parroting the standard lines. This surely is another piece in the jigsaw that will one day be assembled in the People's Great Encyclopedia of Explanations for the Climate Scare's Astonishing Success.