Meanwhile the Copenhagen conference has become a “trending topic” on Twitter, a gauge of popularity on this social media site along with topics like “Tiger Woods” and “Santa” (we kid you not). Following the Twitter threads (try #Copenhagen or #COP15) provides a quick Rorschach test of how the social-media crowd feels about the conference. There is, of course, much hand-wringing about the Danish text leak: “First we had the Danish cartoons. Now we have the Danish text. What’s wrong with this country?” wrote a distressed @danish_novelist.
But others quickly dismissed the leak as much ado about nothing. A popular RT (retweet) came from @drgrist: “What to make of the “leaked draft” in #Copenhagen? Like most ‘news’ out of #COP15 for next 2 weeks it is a nothingburger.” @drgrist is, of course, David Roberts, a Seattle-based blogger for Grist. His longer post on the leak is an irreverent putdown of the “journo-hype” that results from thousands of herd media jumping on every twist and turn in Copenhagen:
The place is choked with journalists, not to mention folks from think tanks and NGOs who are supposed to be blogging. There are thousands of people crammed in a small area, all under instructions to update frequently with fresh news, all exhausted and stressed out, all hungry for something to write about… Every bit of pre-positioning gossip and bluster will be blown up to billboard size. There is, in short, immense incentive to exaggerate the significance of every piece of ‘news.’ Keep that in mind as you wade through the deluge of stories over the next two weeks. It’s a marshmallow puff with a few nuts inside; when all’s said and done, nobody will remember much of it. The only story of lasting importance is the shape of the agreement forged at the end.
Grist is part of an interesting experiment in digital collective journalism under way in Copenhagen dubbed the Copenhagen News Collaborative. Liberal-leaning media like Mother Jones, The Nation, and Treehugger have banded together to create an alternative newswire aggregating Copenhagen coverage from about forty reporters, editors, and commentators. Publish2, which pioneered this platform, explains how to go about constructing “the Web’s largest newsroom.”
A handy guide on “How to stay up to date with #COP15 #Copenhagen” using social media comes from @earthsite, a group that provides “new-media” strategies for green businesses. It links to the official Web site for the conference, hosted by the Danish organizers, which provides social-media opportunities in addition to the standard fare of program, documents, and speeches. The U.N.’s Web site, hosted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), also has opportunities for “virtual participation in COP15”. It provides a convenient menu of choices, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter (@UN_climatetalks, @COP15), Flickr, and Google Maps.
There are also some catchy gimmicks for citizen participation, including casting an online vote urging world leaders “to seal a fair and effective climate deal,” or sending “Climate Greetings” via a virtual postcard that conference organizers are displaying on large screens throughout the conference venue. A running slideshow of the more than 9,000 messages to date is available on the conference Web site. They run the gamut, from a fierce Tongan prayer (“O Vanguard of the Climatariat, smite the denialists and lead the masses. O forward-looking shepherds of a mindless flock, go forth and cool the earth”) to a more casual American greeting: “Okay, guys, this climate thing is serious. Please do what’s right for future generations, not for ourselves.” It’s signed, ahem, “Ernest W. Cooler III.”
On April 3, 1980, Walter Cronkite himself introduced a news segment regarding the greenhouse effect and the risk of global warming to the nationwide and top-ranked audience of the CBS Evening News.
That was nearly 30 years ago! John Lennon was still alive and singing, and the world hadn't even heard of Madonna (except in the religious context), as it would be a few years before Madonna the performer introduced her initial album.
Yet here we are, today. We read things like "Disarray in Denmark?" I'm not critiquing that part of the headline, of course. Instead, I'm pointing out that it does illustrate the problem on a much broader scale.
The whole passage of nearly 30 years, and a consideration of "where we are now" and the current media situation, taken together demonstrate and underscore a HUGE FAILURE of journalism and the news media. HUGE. And that's putting it mildly.
As it is CJR's job and task to examine and improve journalism, I'm appealing to CJR to do so, quickly and effectively and with no more hesitation or "kid gloves".
As I've mentioned before, I'd be happy to help. You know how to reach me.
Be Well,
Jeff
#1 Posted by Jeff Huggins, CJR on Thu 10 Dec 2009 at 08:49 PM
There charges are, respectively, wrong, out of context, wrong, and wrong (please refer The Observatory’s initial review of the controversy to understand why; or see Marc Ambinder’s factcheck of Palin’s op-ed at Atlantic.com).
When phrases like "Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline" appear as comments in the code used to perform statistical analyses on weather station data, it just might lead some reasonable people to believe that some climate researchers might be more interested in verifying preconceived notions than generating an accurate climatologically record, Tim Lambert’s “Baghdad Bob” impersonations aside.
#2 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 11 Dec 2009 at 05:12 PM
"There charges are respectively, wrong, out of context, wrong, and wrong .."
"There"?.... Come on! We don't expect you "watchdogs" to get the facts straight, but you could at least get the grammar right!
Secondly... The charges are valid- the AGW pseodoscience is unravelling left and right in one of the biggest stories of the century, and you "watchdogs" are tripping over yourselves to defend this anticapitalist fraudulent nonsense by hiding from the truth.
There is no consensus that greenhouse gases are causing warming. Indeed, there is not even any consensus that atmospheric CO2 levels have risen over the last 150 years:
"To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.
In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.
The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091230184221.htm
#3 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 1 Jan 2010 at 10:15 AM