{"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":1011,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2008\/12\/14\/climate-change-victims\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":0},"title":"climate change victims","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"On a visit to Ohio this week, I caught about ten minutes of an interview on a network TV station with a representative from the Maldives, talking about the plight they face with rising sea levels and the urgency of doing something about climate change at the Poznan, Poland, meeting.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1176,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/01\/12\/%e2%80%9cclimategate%e2%80%9d-follow-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":1},"title":"\u201cClimategate\u201d follow-up","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Asked by an old and dear friend what I make of the recent \u201cClimategate scandal,\u201d I thought I'd do a quick check on sources summarizing the effect of the hacked East Anglia e-mails on climate change science. To my surprise, the Wikipedia article on the topic is probably as good\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":2},"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. This blog\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":10005,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/11\/28\/denial-incompetence-depravity\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":3},"title":"Denial, incompetence, & depravity","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 28, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"For many, President Trump's babbling and incoherent\u00a0responses to last week's National Climate Assessment (\"I'm too smart to believe it, just look at our air and water and what those other countries are doing...\"), following on from his even less coherent responses to California's wildfire tragedies (\"They should rake more, like\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":10497,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/04\/07\/cfp-when-corona-met-climate-change\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":4},"title":"CFP: “When Corona Met Climate Change…”","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 7, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Please share the following call for presenters: \"When Corona Met Climate Change... What Changed?\" A series of live, short (under 3 minutes), and creative responses to the intersection of coronavirus and climate change, 50 years after Earth Day and 50 years before Ecotopia Day (EarthDay+100). Think of it as a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/sars-cov-19-a.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1359,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/10\/26\/the-house-of-cards-house-of-cards\/","url_meta":{"origin":1195,"position":5},"title":"the “house of cards” house of cards","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"For all my skepticism toward most \"climate skepticism,\" I find the case of Judith Curry very interesting. 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