Journalistic Misfeasance

By Alan Caruba

The Gallup Organization has just released the results of a poll that, for the fourth straight year, reveals that the “majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% who now say this is a record high by one percentage point.”

Those that do express trust in the media (43%) tie a record low. “Nearly half of Americans (48%) say the media are too liberal…Overall, perceptions of bias have remained quite steady over this tumultuous period of change for the media, marked by the growth of cable and Internet news sources.”

A perfect example of the reason for this mistrust is an October 3rd article in The Washington Post by staff writer, Juliet Eilperin. “Threat of global warming sparks U.S. interest in geoengineering.”

There is no threat of global warming. The Earth has been a cooling cycle for a decade.

Unless Washington Post editors and this reporter have been living in complete isolation for a while, it would have been impossible to ignore the fact that we are coming up on a one-year anniversary of the leak of thousands of emails between the handful of scientists responsible for the global warming hoax. These were the men who provided misleading and false data to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The leaked emails led to the complete collapse of last year’s Copenhagen international climate conference.

Why, then, is the reporter referencing global warming as if it had any basis in fact? Perhaps because, on October 6th, in Washington, D.C., the Woodrow Wilson Center will be the site of a presentation by James Roger Fleming, a professor of science, technology and society at Colby College and author of “Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control.”

If, as the Washington Post article suggests, there is an interest in geoengineering, Fleming writes that “Geoengineering is in fact untested and dangerous. We don’t understand it, we can’t test it on smaller than planetary scales, and we don’t have the political capital, wisdom, or will to govern it.”

The key words here are “political capital” as clearly, without it, geoengineering cannot garner the billions equivalent to those squandered on the many scientists who received taxpayer funding for utterly bogus research to demonstrate that everything and anything was caused by global warming.

Ms. Eilperin covers herself nicely by noting that “For years it was considered downright wacky in official Washington to discuss geoengineering; altering the climate by reflecting sunlight back into the sky, sucking carbon dioxide from the air or a host of gee-whiz schemes.”

The reason for this is that it is wacky. That, however, did not deter Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu, from suggesting that global warming could be deterred by painting roofs and highways white!

The primary method put forth to stop a non-existent global warming is to limit "greenhouse gas emissions", especially carbon dioxide (CO2). Ms. Eilperin cited the fact that the British government will spend $4.5 million over the next three years on geoengineering research, but neglected to mention that the Royal Society just backed off its support for global warming, sending a small shock wave through the international scientific community.

The bad news for Americans is that a Cap-and-Trade bill to control CO2 emissions awaits a Senate vote and, failing that, the EPA intends to exert control.

This article and all the thousands that preceded it, claiming a global warming threat, is nothing more than journalistic misfeasance. It is deceptive. It picks and chooses the information it imparts but neglects to mention that the Earth is cooling, not warming.

Little wonder that the public holds U.S. media in such low esteem. The so-called mainstream media has earned it.

Happily, people seeking to make sense of the news and issues of the day turn to Internet news and opinion sites they do trust.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Today's Prelutsky Quote and Another Call for Obama's Resignation

By Alan Caruba

One of my favorite blogger/commentators is Burt Prelutsky. A Hollywood denizen, he is a conservative among crazed liberals. He is also one of the funniest writers around these days, having honed his talent writing for many famed sitcoms. Here's the lead paragraph to his latest post:

"I believe it was Freud who was first got credit for saying he didn’t know what women wanted. Frankly, I don’t think he was half-trying. Quite simply, women want a man who is rich, handsome, sexy, is as interested in fabrics and color as they are, who can get weepy at sunsets, tear up at Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow,” and whose favorite movie is “The English Patient.” In short, they’re looking for a very successful interior decorator. I say, good luck to them. But it’s no wonder that so many married women feel they wound up settling."

Another blogger friend is J.D. Longstreet, a nom de plume for a true southern gentleman and fire-breathing conservative. His commentary today calls for President Obama's resignation and quotes from my June 2009 commentary that suggested early in Obama's first term that he was a disaster. I suspect Longstreet and I are going to be joined by many others in the weeks and months ahead.

The Internet has challenged the mainstream media and is contributing to the loss of circulation among newspapers and news magazines. It has transformed the political process. We are fortunate to have talented men and women whose voices now reach millions without being subject to the media gatekeepers.

A "Secret" Known to the Russians and Chinese!

With a hat tip to Don Holtzinger, editor of a great website, Thought You Should Know News, the photo above is the X-47B, a new drone by Northrup Grumman, designed specifically as a carrier-based unmanned aircraft.

It is, for all intents and purposes, a "secret" that is known to the Russians and the Chinese whose media have carried news of it, but not to Americans whose media has failed to take any public notice of it. Despite a Google search, Don was unable to find any U.S.-based reporting on this remarkable new weapon.

The Information Deficit

By Alan Caruba

To those who have mostly known the Internet as their source of news, the notion that there is an “information deficit” may seem an odd judgment, but it is one that an old friend and longtime observer of the public relations profession recently made.

What Jack O’Dwyer, publisher and editor of Jack O’Dwyer’s Newsletter and PR Report, doesn’t know about public relations is probably not worth knowing. Ebullient and feisty, Jack has long been the nemesis of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), an organization that has managed to render itself irrelevant to the profession it proposes to represent.

So I pay attention when, in a recent blog, Jack concluded that “What the U.S. is suffering from, besides a trade deficit, is an information deficit. The root of the current financial collapse is secrecy—including ‘dubious assets’ hidden in off-balance-sheet entries.” Not all business news is devoid of insight or even outrage, but too much comes after the fact.

When you tie secrecy to the death throes of newspapers and magazines these days, you get a public that is increasingly distrustful of a government that manufactures false statistics about jobs, extends the protection of the U.S. Constitution to Islamic terrorists seeking to replace it with Sharia law, and is filled with “czars” given power to influence and determine national policy without any accountability to Congress.

You get a mainstream media so in love with Barack Obama that the protests against his administration are mocked and reports fail to address their issues.

Jack’s blog examined the findings of former journalist, Richard Sine, who received a fellowship grant to conduct a study of business journalism. He concluded that journalism schools should “close down” because students might as well study “blacksmithing, bloodletting or steamship design.”

Jack quoted Art Stevens, a former president of the PRSA, who believes that both journalism and PR are in a state of collapse.

As a longtime PR counselor, I concur because PR has long been dependent on a thriving base of newspaper and magazine outlets, in addition to broadcast outlets. As that base erodes, the capacity to inform and influence the public through them declines in tandem.

Add in an economy in freefall due to insane government “stimulus” and “bailout” programs, choking government regulation, the prospect of increased taxation, debt unto the third generation to come, and I can personally attest that the market for PR services has been in serious decline.

Public relations which had its beginnings in the early 1900s had been peopled with former journalists and thus was generally based in journalistic standards of accuracy and the free exchange of information. An early PR practitioner, Ivy Lee, counseled corporate clients to be responsive when the press came calling.

“In today’s strictly controlled environment,” Jack wrote, “PR pros jeopardize their careers by meeting with journalists or even talking to them on the phone.” He placed the blame on corporate lawyers, chief financial officers and even the marketing departments for shutting off the information spigot. Ironically, this applies as well to the five advertising and PR conglomerates as well.

When you put together the secrecy practices, the failures of government oversight, and the inadequacies of business reporters from recent generations of J-school and PR graduates, you end up with a perfect storm that culminates in the sudden collapse of the financial system that no one was monitoring sufficiently to protect the public.

It has largely been left to trade associations, think tanks, and ad hoc groups such as the Tea Party organizers, to make essential information about the conduct of national affairs available. They frequently have been forced to by-pass traditional journalism outlets in order to reach the public via Internet news and opinion sites, blogs, newsletters, and other means.

This explains why traditional journalism outlets continue to report on “global warming”, “greenhouse gas emissions”, and other bogus “science” while the public observes that, wherever they are, the climate is getting colder. This disconnect continues to undermine the diminishing credibility of most mainstream media outlets.

The forthcoming Copenhagan UN climate conference will be reported as “news” instead of being exposed as an effort to use false science to initiate a one-world-government treaty and the creation of a market for bogus “carbon credits.”

This explains, too, why Bernie Madoff was able to fleece investors of billions with his bogus hedge fund until the unraveling of the economy exposed him when neither the Securities Exchange Commission, nor the mainstream business press took notice of his ponzi scheme.

This explains why the mainstream press continues to avoid “offending” Muslims and, like the Obama administration, avoids the fact that a segment of fanatical Islam threatens the world with terrorism to advance its goal of a global caliphate. Destroying the U.S. is the key to their plan.

You are reading this on the Internet. Neither Jack’s, nor mine, nor other experienced, knowledgeable public relations professional’s, nor business reporters’ insights and information is available in a mainstream press that continues to censor the truth.

Editor’s note: For those seeking PR counseling and editorial services, you are invited to visit my website, www.caruba.com.