{"id":1195,"date":"2010-02-11T11:11:54","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T16:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/02\/11\/swiftclimateboating-the-media\/"},"modified":"2010-02-11T11:11:54","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T16:11:54","slug":"swiftclimateboating-the-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/02\/11\/swiftclimateboating-the-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Swift\/climate\/boating the media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having published the results of its 12-part investigation into the leaked\/hacked climate scientist e-mails<\/a> at the University of East Anglia, the Guardian is now inviting “web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy<\/a>.” It’s a kind of public version of peer review for something that has been so public already that the issues at stake have gotten lost in the din.<\/p>\n

I haven’t read the full report, which concludes (not surprisingly) that the whole fracas was a PR disaster for climate science, but that it has not at all damaged the solidity of the scientific case for anthropogenic climate change. (Yet the silliness continues<\/a> even in Fox News et al’s weather reports.) But The Wonk Room’s assessment of it as A Case Of Classic SwiftBoating (How The Right-Wing Noise Machine Manufactured \u2018Climategate\u2019)<\/a> captures at least part of it. If you recall, the attack campaign by “Swift Boat Veterans Against John Kerry,” much of it based on unproven allegations and unsupported smears, helped sink the 2004 Kerry presidential campaign, leaving his campaign team with too little time to turn popular response around. The mass media reaction, then as now, involved too little critical analysis of claims and too much “following the leader.” This only tells us what we already knew about the American media, though it strengthens the case for a stronger left and progressive presence in the media landscape.<\/p>\n

U.S. television’s few spaces for progressive-leaning critical analysis are already dwindling, with Bill Moyers and David Brancaccio both scheduled to end their shows on PBS. The significant exception is MSNBC, whose conversion to the liberal left still surprises me, given the network’s ownership by armsmaker General Electric (with a minority share held by Microsoft), and I keep wondering how long that will last. As Robert Parry<\/a> has put it, “There is, after all, a big difference between Murdoch\u2019s News Corporation\u2019s longstanding commitment to a right-wing perspective on Fox News and General Electric experimenting with a lineup of a few liberals after other ratings strategies had failed.” Part of the problem is that Olbermann, Maddow, Matthews, et al. too often come off as predictable and repetitive — the left version of Fox News — which though I enjoy watching it, is not necessarily going to convince the unconvinced.<\/p>\n

But Maddow can be brilliant, and it’s great to have a bit of European-style political diversity in the mass media landscape. Now if there was more of a unified infrastructure — not marching in lockstep, but at least in communication with each other — of progressive think-tanks and political pressure groups of the kind that the Right has built up over the last 40 years (thanks to billions from the Scaifes, Olins, Koches, Bradleys, et al<\/a>), maybe that media diversity can hold out for a while, and even expand. Relying on philanthropy is ultimately not a very good answer to a desperate need for more democracy. But surely the George Soroses of the world could be convinced that science, environment\/health, justice\/fairness, and good governance — the cornerstones of today’s progressive left — are all principles worth supporting. (I know that “progressive left” hasn’t always meant all those things, but it’s a good time to come to an agreement that it does, or should, today.)<\/p>\n

Published simultaneously at Indications<\/a>. Hat tip to John Quiggin at Crooked Timber<\/a> for news on the Guardian investigation.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having published the results of its 12-part investigation into the leaked\/hacked climate scientist e-mails at the University of East Anglia, the Guardian is now inviting “web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy.” It’s a kind of public version of peer review for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[520594,689701,691215],"tags":[16845,4448],"class_list":["post-1195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-politics","category-media_ecology","category-politics_postpolitics","tag-climategate","tag-ecopolitics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-jh","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8472,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/11\/19\/the-climate-connection\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":0},"title":"The climate connection","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 19, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"How connected are the recent Paris attacks\u00a0with the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 21 (Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)? At first glance, the targeting\u00a0of Paris for ISIS's act of war on civilian populations would seem to be motivated by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10233,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/09\/16\/climate-action-week-what-to-watch-for\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":1},"title":"Climate Action Week: What to watch for","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 16, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"As people around the world prepare for Global Climate Strike Week (Sept. 20-27) and for the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City on Sept. 23, here are some thoughts and sources to help us think about what's at stake, what's possible, and what we can do. 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As reported in articles in Scientific American, The Guardian, and elsewhere, a recent peer-reviewed study published in Climatic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"SloMoSmokeScreen07-5930","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/02\/SloMoSmokeScreen07-5930-275x139.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8540,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/12\/15\/following-the-inaction-in-paris-updated\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":4},"title":"Following the (in)action in Paris, updated","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"This article\u00a0has been revised since it was first posted. It consists of a list of useful\u00a0sources providing ongoing coverage of, and initial post-conference reactions to, the COP21 conference and mobilizations in response to it. Please suggest any other helpful\u00a0sources and links in the \"Comments.\" (Previously suggested links\u00a0have\u00a0been added and the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8443,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/11\/09\/whats-happening\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":5},"title":"What’s happening?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The beginning of COP 21, the UN Conference on Climate Change,\u00a0is three weeks away. So what else is happening, you ask? 1) The Campaign Against Climate Change's\u00a0Time to Act!\u00a0campaign, 350.org, Reclaim Power, and various other formations are preparing actions around the world on the eve of the summit (November 28-29)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"ClimateGames-meme-e1444227629407","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2015\/11\/ClimateGames-meme-e1444227629407-275x143.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}