By: Joseph L. Bast
If nearly 1,000 people gather at a hotel in downtown Chicago to hear 72 speakers from 23 countries explain why global warming is not a crisis, and not a single mainstream print outlet or network news station reports it, was the meeting any less important or successful? Nope. But it does speak volumes about what’s wrong with the old media.
A Media Boycott
Heartland’s first International Conference on Climate Change generated 124 print articles with a total circulation of 9 million readers. It was covered as news by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, three of the four television networks, and dozens of publications outside the U.S.
This year’s event took place on May 16- 18 in Chicago. Not one news story about it appeared in print or on network television.
The event certainly seemed to merit the old media’s attention. The topic is whitehot, with national and international developments on the front pages of newspapers and the covers of magazines. A record 67 organizations cosponsored the event. We had record attendance – nearly 800 – traveling from nearly 30 countries.
We had world-famous physicists from Russia, Israel, and the U.S.; two astronauts, including one (Harrison Schmitt) who walked on the moon; the two men who exposed Michael Mann’s “hockeystick” fraud (Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick); the British reporter and bloggers who broke the Climategate story; 80 state elected officials; and many more.
More than two dozen warmists were invited, though only two attended. We had disagreements and debates beginning from the first keynote speakers and ending with the last question from the floor two-and-ahalf days later. It was exactly what a scientific conference should be.
Other types of media thought the event was newsworthy. More than 50 bloggers and camera crews from six countries were on the scene. The proceedings were broadcast live by Pajamas Media TV (and can be watched at its Web site at www.pjtv.com as well as our own sites, www.heartland.org and www.globalwarmingheartland.org).
It Really Is a Conspiracy
How can we explain the decline in print media coverage from 124 to zero, despite the issue being hot, a superior line-up of speakers, larger attendance, and extensive attention paid by new media outlets? It is inconceivable to me that all the reporters at all the media outlets we contacted decided independently not to cover the event. I think, perhaps, someone sent a memo.
A standard definition of “conspiracy” is “a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.” There’s nothing illegal about a group of journalists agreeing to refuse to cover an event that most objective folks would consider to be newsworthy, but it is surely “wrongful.”
The Society of Professional Journalists has a code of ethics on its Web site that says the duty of the journalist is to provide “a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” “Journalists,” it says, “should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.”
The journalists’ code of ethics also says journalists should “tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience boldly, even when it is unpopular to do so. ... Examine their own cultural values and avoid imposing those values on others. ... Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant. ... Give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid. ... Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.”
It is unethical for a reporter to refuse to report that so many prominent scientists and policy experts believe the fear of global warming is overblown. It is unethical to boycott an important event with major public policy importance. It is also, alas, entirely to be expected from the old media.
In the Tank for Obama
Conservatives and libertarians have long lamented the liberal bias of the oncecalled “mainstream media.” That bias has been documented by the conservative Media Research Center, the liberal Pew Research Center, and various authors, including former CBS producer Bernard Goldberg in such books as Bias (2002), Arrogance (2004), and my favorite, A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media (2009).
A 2004 poll by Pew found five times more journalists described themselves as “liberal” as said they were “conservative.” A poll that same year conducted by the University of Connecticut found journalists backed John Kerry over George W. Bush by a greater than two-to-one margin.
The media’s bias became a matter of universal recognition in 2008 when virtually all of the mainstream media went “in the tank” for Obama. Pro-Obama stories vastly outnumbered either critical articles about Obama or positive articles about his opponent, John McCain. A Pew poll conducted shortly before the election found 70 percent of voters thought journalists wanted Obama to win the presidency versus 9 percent of voters who said reporters backed McCain.
Since Obama and the Democrats favor cap-and-trade legislation and higher energy taxes, their pets in the media dutifully parrot their claims that the debate over the causes, extent, and consequences of global warming is over. Biased coverage of the global warming debate follows directly from the politicization of old media.
The Media Research Center looked at 205 network news stories about “global warming” or “climate change” between July 1 and December 31, 2007, and found “only 20 percent of stories even mentioned there were any alternative opinions to the so-called ‘consensus’ on the issue.” Skeptics were outnumbered 13-to-1 by alarmists. The ratio at CBS was an amazing 38-to-1.
This isn’t journalism, it’s advocacy. Only 15 percent of the alarmists who appeared on network news programs were scientists. The rest were “politicians, celebrities, other journalists and even ordinary men and women.”
Old Media Dying
Liberal bias and incompetence are killing the old media. More than 120 daily newspapers shut down in 2009 alone. Daily newspapers in Philadelphia, Seattle, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Chicago are bankrupt or heading toward bankruptcy.
Even The New York Times and its subsidiary Boston Globe are laying off staff and trying to stave off what seems to be inevitable bankruptcy. Circulation of nearly all print newspapers (except The Wall Street Journal) is falling.
Network television is collapsing, too. According to a 2007 PBS report, “the popularity of the nightly network news has plummeted in the past decade. In 1993, 60 percent of Americans reported that they regularly watched the CBS, ABC or NBC evening news – today it’s 28 percent. And only 9 percent of people under 30 tune in to the networks’ nightly newscasts.”
It’s difficult to exaggerate the collapse in the quality of content offered by the old media as it slides into oblivion. The once-great Chicago Tribune, for example, is worth reading only if you enjoy comics, need to buy a mattress, or care about sex crimes. Television news is a parody of the sober reporting some of us grew up watching.
Other television programming is wallto- wall “reality” shows that mostly involve sex-crazed celebrities or obese men and women with lots of tattoos. This lowest-commondenominator garbage is interspersed with “documentary” films that increasingly blur fiction and political correctness with facts, a toxic combination for younger viewers especially.
_New Media Rising
The good news coming out of all of this is the rise of Internet-based media – the socalled “new media.” More people now say they rely on the Internet for news (40 percent) than rely on newspapers (35 percent). Eighty percent of us are online, and we spend an average of 33 hours a week online. YouTube reports 100 million videos a day are viewed on its site. Americans conduct 14 billion Internet searches per month.
There is a lot of inaccurate and malicious junk posted online, and a few far-left sites such as Huffington Post, so in this respect it resembles old media. But there also are plenty of higher-quality and center-right sources of content, such as Examiner.com, which posts hundreds of articles online every day and attracts more readers than the Washington Post.
Search engines such as Google have emerged as their own hybrid media, with multi-million-dollar enterprises such as Associated Content and Demand Media generating content specifically to appear when keywords and questions are Googled.
Thousands of blogs and Web sites offer podcasts and frequently updated content that convey more high-quality information than any newspaper or television station. Even amateur Internet users can choose favorite sites, set up RSS feeds, and program Google to automatically send search results to tailor the stream of information to topics of interest and sources that are trusted.
Best of all, most of the new media is free of the suffocating conceit and arrogance of the liberal old media that makes most news stories unreliable and every opinion editorial predictable. If the price of the rise of new media is the death of the old, then I say it is a bargain.
The old media lost any pretense of objectivity on May 16-18. May they – and their lies – rest in peace.
Joseph L. Bast is president of The Heartland Institute. He can be reached at jbast@heartland.org.