In 2007, News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch unequivocally acknowledged the reality of climate change and launched “a global energy initiative across News Corporation to reduce our energy use and impact on the planet.”
But while corporate pursued his green dreams—Dow Jones, for example, installed a 4.1-megawatt solar installation on its New Jersey site that could supply up to half of its energy needs—the company’s leading news outlets, including Fox News, the New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages, kept right on deriding climate change as a liberal fantasy.
Their crusade has gathered steam since late 2009, when hackers stole thousands of e-mails from leading climate scientists, and the climate-change-denial community claimed those missives proved scientists had conspired to suppress doubts about climate change. (A subsequent investigation proved otherwise.)
The scientists “mani-pulate[d] the peer-review process” for money, asserted Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens. His piece was one of more than 50 wsj op-eds and editorials that made reference to so-called Climategate between December 2009 and the end of 2011. The columns called the scientists “alarmist,” “unethical,” and “conniving,” and suggested they were involved in “misconduct,” a “fiasco,” and a “scam.”
Fox News aired 37 Climategate segments in this period, in which it characterized climate research as a “scam,” a “hoax,” a “swindle,” or a “fraud.” The Post published 26 pieces, online and in print, some of which referred to the scientists and policymakers as “alarmists” or members of a “cult” who had either “fudged data and gagged critics” or “cooked the books,” ostensibly for “a big payday.”
The anti-intellectual cause was served. In 2007, when Murdoch acknowledged the reality of climate change, 77 percent of the public said there was “solid evidence of global warming,” according to a Pew poll. By mid-2010, after the barrage of denial from Murdoch’s newsrooms, a Yale University poll found that only 40 percent of Americans were concerned. Quite a climate change.
more on climate change
#1 Posted by dimity torbett, CJR on Fri 16 Mar 2012 at 12:23 PM
No to be a prick, but this whole article is garbage.
Of particular rankness is the following that tries to link different unrelated trends to Murdoch’s climategate coverage.
2007, when Murdoch acknowledged the reality of climate change, 77 percent of the public said there was “solid evidence of global warming,” according to a Pew poll. By mid-2010, after the barrage of denial from Murdoch’s newsrooms, a Yale University poll found that only 40 percent of Americans were concerned. Quite a climate change.
The Pew poll you cited, “is there solid evidence of global warming” breaks down like this:
July 2006: 79% yes
Jan 2007: 77% yes
April 2008: 71% yes
October 2009: 57% yes
October 2010: 59% yes
I couldn’t find any historic data on the Yale poll, but Gallup does have some historic numbers. “Do you worry a great deal about global warming”
2007: 65% yes
2008: 66% yes
2009: 60% yes
2010: 52% yes
2011: 51% yes
The CRU emails were made public in November of 2009. Clearly, these three event, collapse in public belief in global warming, Americans concern about global warming and Murdoch’s coverage of Climategate are in no way linked as the dramatic change in public opinion preceded the leak and the coverage. Could it be more plausible that the public isn’t as worried because the economy fell off a cliff?
No wonder you didn’t elaborate on those poll numbers …. kinda would have destroyed your argument.
#2 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 16 Mar 2012 at 12:30 PM
Ms. Armoudian wrote: "when hackers stole thousands of e-mails from leading climate scientists"
padikiller asks: Ms. Armoudian, do you have any evidence that these emails were actually stolen by hackers? You know, any of those "fact-thingies" that "professional journalists" purport to employ in their neutral and detached reporting?
All indications are that the documents were aggregated and released by some activists on the inside at CRU... A "somebody" who would be called a "whistleblower" by the CJR "watchdogs" if the same activity had furthered the end of Warmingism.
Oh... And there is the "inconvenient truth" that the British government has ruled that ALL of the subject emails were public documents, subject to production under FOIA.
So we are the in state of "professional journalism" where one of its self-proclaimed "watchdogs" is mischaracterizing the nature of public documents and maligning the person who made them available to the public.
You guys are doing Pravda proud!
Typical liberal hackery from the world's self-proclaimed premier journalism review.
Pitiful.
#3 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 16 Mar 2012 at 02:23 PM
Yes, there has been a downgrade of climate issues on the scale of public priorities since the 2008 global economic crash, but if that alone were the case, it would have resulted in a drop of priority alone, not in the trust in the conclusions of many many many scientific bodies that man made climate change is real and a clear and present danger.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116590/increased-number-think-global-warming-exaggerated.aspx
Unfortunately, since Al Gore's movie elevated this issue from the discussion of science to the discussion of policy level, the political reporters have been terrible at reporting this issue in an accuarate way. The public perception is way out of line with the reality and that's mainly a result of the poor quality of information providers, not the public - a problem that appears on a host of issues.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 16 Mar 2012 at 04:55 PM
The simple, undeniable, irrefutable, immutable, FACT of the matter is that average global temperature in 2011 was LOWER that the average global temperature in 1998.
PERIOD.
Guys like Thimbles can huff... They can puff... They can dodge. They can weave.
They can talk about different cherry-picked time periods instead.
They can talk about ocean acidosis or trash gyres or some other nonsense.
But one thing they CAN'T do is to change the plain REALITY that 2011 was COLDER than 1998, according to NASA data.
We are dealing with a 13 year GLOBAL COOLING trend...
This is just one of those "inconvenient truth" thingies.
The public will get a lot more interested in global warming... If and when the globe actually starts warming..
#5 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sat 17 Mar 2012 at 01:01 AM
"Guys like Thimbles can huff... They can puff... They can dodge. They can weave."
Ever thought of a career in movies? You could be a projector.
I'm not going to rehash the dozens of trolly threads you've been debunked on, since this is a topic on polls and public disinformation.
But yeah, when you've lost Pat Michaels and Fred Singer, the guys who are paid to obfuscate for your side:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/singer-criticises-deniers.html
I don't need to say anything.
Except can you, for the love of Krishna, keep it on topic?
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 17 Mar 2012 at 03:37 PM
REPEAT.
The world was COOLER on average in 2011 than it was in 1998.
PERIOD.
#7 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sat 17 Mar 2012 at 03:44 PM
*Gives PADI a cracker*
PERIOD.
#8 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 17 Mar 2012 at 05:23 PM
i think the CJR online readers should find padi a job. It does not appear to have one, or it would not be posting so often. Maybe with Breitbart's organization? I hear there is a vacancy.
#9 Posted by lauran, CJR on Thu 17 May 2012 at 02:34 PM