Here’s my problem with NBC political correspondent Chuck Todd’s blast against “Drudge driven journalism:” the alternative that Todd attempts to defend isn’t actually journalism. If Chuck Todd’s network and the rest of the MSM really had been practicing journalism all along, there would never have been a vacuum for people like Matt Drudge, Andrew Breitbart, etc. to fill.
Many people would like to define the term “journalism” as the unbiased dissemination of information, but it’s never been that. For a very long time publications made no secret of their political points of view. Historically, America had Whig newspapers, Republican newspapers and Democratic newspapers. All of them spun the news in a particular direction and readers knew it. The situation has not changed, except that the legacy media desperately and unconvincingly clings to the notion that it is detached from any ideology and therefore the sole arbiter of truth. No matter where they fall on the the political spectrum, Americans know better. That’s the reason the Drudge Report, Breitbart’s “Big” sites and, to put a point on it, liberal outlets like Huff Po and the Daily Kos thrive.
My own field of expertise provides an object lesson in why legacy journalism is fading into irrelevance as “Drudge-driven journalism” fills the void in a world hungry for knowledge. The MSM’s coverage of science in general and environmental issues in particular has been abysmal for years. Journalists are, by training and inclination, generalists. How many times have members of the old media tried to explain away slanted coverage of the non-existent global warming crisis by declaring that they of course are not scientists and can not be therefore expected to personally understand the issue? Instead, they insist that they must rely on experts and if you have a problem with the way they’re covering the issue, go talk to the experts.
Sounds entirely reasonable, but in practice there are experts and then there are experts. Those experts whose message dovetails nicely with the underlying media narrative of liberal heroes and conservative villains are given prominent placement in stories and an authoritative voice. Those experts whose messages are perceived to lend aid and comfort to corporate concerns usually tossed in near the back end of a story and they are generally made to sound defensive, rather than in command of their subject matter. For the MSM, environmental groups “say,” while industry guys like me “claim.”
It’s maddening, because there is absolutely no reason why any reporter, no matter how badly he or she failed every chemistry and physics class in college, could not find a scientist or other technical expert who could break the skeptical side of a technical issue like the global warming debate down into digestible, understandable bits. There are plenty of us around. Just off the top my head, there’s Roy Spencer, Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, Steve Milloy and Steve McIntyre. The left wing narrative dismisses experts like these as either: a) propagandists in the employ of Exxon-Mobil, or b) irrelevant because they don’t know what they’re talking about. Neither argument stands up, but skeptics are, according to the liberal playbook, “denialists” unworthy of attention, which is a convenient way to avoid having to think about the other side of an issue that, in reality, does indeed have two sides.
For those of us who have been involved in the environmental business, this sort of MSM behavior is sadly predictable when it comes to dear old Ma Earth. Whenever I represent an industrial client attempting to develop a new, high-profile (i.e., controversial) project, I do so knowing that the MSM reporters covering the issue are going to misquote me, take my statements out of context and ignore greats hunks of any argument I might care to make on behalf of the evil corporation daring to bring jobs and prosperity to the community in question. The best ink will be devoted to the experts on the other side who have a much more interesting tale to tell, basically because their account is so terrifying. Given the choice between somebody from the Sierra Club telling a group of nervous citizens that a new power plant is going to kill their babies and me – a paid shill for industry – telling them that’s just plain stupid, who do you think the MSM journalist/generalist is going to feature most prominently in a story?
That sounds like a complaint, but it’s really not. My job exists largely, if not entirely, because the MSM has been so good at frightening large swaths of the populace by grossly distorting environmental and health risks. (I’ll have to remember to send Andy Revkin a Christmas card this year). But, having cried wolf for so long and so shrilly, more and more people are ignoring the legacy media and turning to the new media to get the whole story. They should. When it comes to science and the environment, and many, many other subject areas, there’s a very good reason why people are turning away from the MSM in droves: the MSM hasn’t done its job for decades.
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Science?
The science is settled.
Peer reviewed, don'tcha know………..
Good comments Rich. Science presents two problems- first it has to be sexy to get the medias attention, second – it is only useful to the media when it fits an agenda. Most MSM journalists lack the desire to learn enough about the subject so they can report it correctly. Global warning has shown how scientific reporting has been corrupted by agenda driven journalism.
Interesting article – I notice the New York Times Tuesday science times has been terrible over the last two or three years – and more ideology driven than ever. All in all I'm at the point now where I would prefer it if conservative media simply ignored the mainstreammedia – the focus should be on developing and promoting conservative media, not criticizing lib/mainstream media. Who cares what Keith Obermann says? Why give him free publicity? In the meantime, where the conservative cable channel? Where's the conservative television programming and films? There's a market for this type of media, but someone has to put it all together – it took an Australian to make money off of selling news to conservatives. How about entertainment? How about a news channel dedicated to news that's proudly and openly conservative – none of this nonsense about fair and balanced. The person who controls the media controls the way people think – and we have to create an all encompassing media. And the internet isn't the place to do it – it's a start but we as conservatives MUST demand our own media – all forms of media. In the meantime, as conservatives, we need to avoid/ignore/boycott mainstream media. Am I wrong about this?
This just in frim Chuck…
ChuckU
then Chuck Off…
He's a man of few words…
Seems they never ADMITT they're Libs.
I think it's better to just BE a certain way then shout all the time what you think you are.
People will respond positively when they know they are getting the whole story and treated as adults.
If one MSM network approached the news in this fashion,"thefolks" would flock there and they would stay in business. Sadly for them, ideology seems more important then honesty, or even money…
That's the problem, most MSM commentators have no formal training in science, so they get played by hucksters who do.
There needs to be some anti-trust legislation to break up the media conglomerates. The market place would dictate what product was successful. As long as a small group of large companies control everything they have no need to heed public opinion.
They seem to have no formal traning in ANYTHING..( and no common sense)
Only in blindly following so called "experts". who play them like fiddles…
Very well said. Any type of media outlet that reports the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth will thrive in the future now that more and more people are openning their eyes. Our job is to steer people to these types of media.
Is it hate on Chuck Todd week?
ya! he slams Drudge for doing his job, which he in reality he DOESN'T want done, i.e. to expose hypocracy and criminality of the left, WHILE still missing the entire point.
Drudge LINKS to stories and the information drives itself.
He'd prefer uninformed sheep shuffling down the shute to slaughter but dang, a few have broken free and running wild, going "free range".
Here's the bash: the "Chuckie" goatee sucks ass…bad look. really. his boyfriend should make him shave it.
Why yes, yes it is. got a problem with that?
Chuck's just another tool-in-the-tank for the Chicago mob. It's sad to see talent(whatever he had)wasted like that. Moron.
Days are gone when "reporters" did just that. Now they send a highly UNqualified mechanic to cover a cake baking lesson. That mechanic turns around and writes that the baker was doing it all wrong and if anyone wants to know how to bake a cake thay should read the newspaper tomorrow when thay will get the wrestler from channel three to show them how,in fifteen easy lessons costing $1000.
Why not? Each one of 'em should get a turn in the barrel.
MSM reporters have no traing BUT dont need it for they say what they are told to by the like of SOROS.
Journalistic integrity is obviously non-existent in the MSM. What gets me is they fail to even meet the most basic responsibilities of opinion reporting i.e. at least bringing up opposing views if for no other reason than to knock them down with reasoned arguments. Surely, true, unbiased reporting should at least meet that criteria. Who wants to watch MSM suck-ups like Katie Couric, Chuck Todd, toss softballs to politicians instead of asking tough questions challenging the spin and rhetoric for some of the most far-reaching legislation ever proposed?? And they want our trust? Guys like Chuck Todd who can't ( or won't) connect the dots are are either stupid, disingenuous, or both.
Mika should be next
then a week should do fine
Like the Tiger ad sez….
Just do it…!
I think we have Obama to thank for exposing the depth of the liberal bias in the media. We knew it before, but it was never so point-blank obvious. Now there is no doubt, no denying, it is plain for all to see. And we also see how very dangerous it really is to be so uninformed. We now have a president that the press did not vet, we still know so little about him. So we have now heard the message and have left MSM for more trustworthy news.
Writing for the general public concerning science topics is different than writing for the general science audience or a science expert audience. The problem with most media for a general audience, as you explain, is that they resort to ideology instead of arguments. Better reports provide the overview of arguments and positions fairly and refer the reader to source material for more in depth arguments. On line, readers can simply follow a link in a story on a Big site to more detailed explanations. Some of these links may trace to a wiki and eventually to the primary literature (experts writing to other experts). In science, the arguments and data, not the people, are the important focus. Most reporters are ignorant and try to sell a story about people. That's why real scientists hate most media.
No…………….that's what human secularism sez.
It was tongue in cheek, bro..
Was feeling whimsical…:-)
It seems like you need to be a Jewish bolshevik to be on MSNBC.Chuck keep up the good work.And please change your name to some thing that people can understand your back ground and ideology.
To everyone (once again), a lesson in basic science. It originates as an idea; which in time becomes a hypothesis. To test said hypothesis; a series of tests are designed to either prove or disprove the validity (truth) of the hypothesis. These test results are recorded and the tests are repeated a number of times to prove the validity of the hypothesis. A true scientist does not have any skin in the process up to this point. They are simply exploring the science and should not care a whit if their hypothesis is true or untrue.
Where the global warming alarmist have fallen off the wagon is where they disregard data that does not support their narrative. They ridicule others that don't share their enthusiastic belief of their unproven or unprovable hypothesis. All of this has occurred to garner more government funds that literally are billions to study an unprovable hypothesis. Computer models are not science, they are propaganda; no better, no worse then Rhiefenstahl and Goebels.
"Peer" review…it's almost as if the Seven Dwarves had a journal to which only they could contribute.
Four years ago I attended my nephews graduation at Emory University, the valedictorian credits were read before his speech. He was a journalism major, he had interned with several NGO's, Amnesty International and others. I told my dad, this is not going to be good. He looked at me puzzled and shook his head. The speech was a disaster. It was all about "me", what he had accomplished, (nothing) and what his future was. (dim), and how he was going to change the world, (Rhutt Ro!) The dean was visably embarressed and the audience interest in the speaker disappeared after three minutes. A degree in journalism is required as an MSM reporter, unfortunately that only produces a liberal robot incapable of cognitive analysis which is what reporting is nowadays. I agree with the others in thinking, no one can fault the media if they are upfront about their ideology. But the MSM whine and bleat about how they show no bias, and if only we would quit fact-checking or bringing up issues such as climate-gate or ACORN, and blindly follow them like lemmings into the sea, then all would be right with the world. Has anyone noticed how the History and the National Geographic Channel are pumping out the documentaries about a planet with no people or oil? It's intellectual masturbation and I personally have no desire to be stained by their conjecture.
Rich excellent article. It's not just a liberal bias they are pushing but also I believe many of the MSM reporters are just to darn lazy . You don't want to cut into Happy Hour.
The media's problem isn't confined to technical topics nor to recent decades…it is inherent to the nature of journalism. The search for a news angle inevitably leads to misrepresenting the situation, generally to the point of getting the story wrong even though the facts may be right.
Emphasis, personalising, beefing up conflict, looking for heroes and villains, sentimentalising….all tried and true journalistic devices.
Of course, as other commenters have said, a half-educated Comms graduate who specialised in Reality TV Production is not the person to critically examine statistical or econometric claims underlying a news story. All that nasty math, you know, like. Better to stick to gesture and identity politics, with a metaphoric raised fist for social justice. Not so brain-hurty.
But ask any individual who is close to a news story reported in the MSM whether it was reported accurately. You will never get a simple "Yes". The search for news values inevitably slants the story to the point of making it "feel" wrong even though there are no obviously incorrect factual claims. Add political commitment and half an education, and you get the modern journalist, the one who is driving readership to the net.
Thanks for a great article.
The devolution of our media into a high tech censorship and book burning cult is astonishing. They're slide has been documented and they're destruction is being observed, but why are they committing suicide??
They were like this before taking stenography from Obama, it's just gotten way worse. Maybe it just seems like they got worse because we have the internet now. I feel like a dissident Chinese trying to get the facts from the outside world because of the state run media.
.
So many wheels are coming off so many progressive bandwagons lately, it's beginning to look like a liberal junkyard out there…..
Chuck Todd's ridiculous argument against Drudge forgets that most of the media in the country does the exact same thing Drudge does, only far worse. They simply regurgitate what the New York Times and the AP spew, but with big headlines. If you took the NYT and Ap contribution out of most newspapers in America, there would be nothing left except a few syncated opinon people, and the food pages. That is not journalism worth buying. Stick a fork in Obama's state run media (alphabet soup). They're done.
Does this post mean something?
'Ignorance' is the main product of the MSM. They display it proudly and without apology.
As an expert in a field regularly attacked, miss-represented, lied about and miss-quoted by the press, I gave up TV many years ago. Let the yapping dogs entertain those without the ambition to live a better life. I have better things to do.
Whenever talk turns to the effect of reporters' underlying attitudes and unexamined assumptions, a lot of people seem to take it as an attack on the reporters' politics and dismiss the whole line of thought. It's useful to look at an example of journalists' prejudices affecting a non-political story: The 'New York Times' 2006 embarrassment resulting from putting a bogus story on 'stand-up seating' on airliners on their front page. The article was fantastic on its face, poorly sourced, and inadequately checked with the organization supposedly proposing this 'seating' (Airbus). Yet the story was pulled out of its original placement in the Business section and promoted step by step to page one, complete with a whipped-up graphic. How did that happen?
All the 'NYT' staffers involved are right-thinking people. And all right-thinking people know that airlines are evil. So there was nothing in the tale to rouse their (vestigial) skeptical impulses. Next stop: Page One. I'm convinced that the same sorry process is played out every day throughout the MSM, though with less obviously humorous results.
I used to take magazines like Science and Nature back in the mid-90s. I stopped because the arguments began to be more one-sided—global warming. I felt there were no skeptic/scientist arguments challenging the findings–and those are places where the arguement should be read by the public. I wish the standard newspaper would just stick to actual discoveries–oh, like Cold Fusion! (remember that debacle?–again out of a Brit lab!)
All this Global Warming stuff is getting out of hand. A UCLA, the "scientific consensus" is affecting students' diet choices.
http://thebruinstandard.com/?p=197
"The science will be settled just as soon as I finish smashing this back up hard drive." – Phil Jones.
Lets not forget something else here. The terms environmental and ecological journalists if fairly new. I've only started to hear the term over the last couple of years.
If there's no imminent ecological catastrophe then do MSM outlets really need to fund these positions? After all there's getting to be a lot of empty desks in the news rooms these days.
If you ask me that's already happened.
And we won the internet in the settlement.
I agree with your post, this is not a rebuttal, just going one step further.
A scientific study basically comes down to four parts
1) Theory : What you think, why you think it, and how you propose to prove you are correct.
2) Process & Data : The exact process employed, and the data collected in the process.
3) Analysis : What you believe the process and data tell you about your theory.
4) Conclusion : Based upon the experiment, where you right, wrong, or somewhere in between.
Parts 1, 3 & 4 are not science. They are subjective. Part 2 – Process and data collection – there's your science. A process that can be repeated by fellow scientists producing, arguably, like results. It doesn't even matter if scientists come up with completely different analysis' and conclusions, as long as the can repeat the same process and get the same results.
Process and data are exactly what the climategate emails prove the so-called scientists have refused, and still refuse to provide. They give us 1 and 3 as proof that 4 is correct, while hiding what process they used and what results were collected.
This is ain't science. It's all an illusion.
Agreed. One of the first things that attracted me to Rush's show was his line 'the only difference between Dan Rather and me is I tell you I'm biased.'
They simply regurgitate what the New York Times and the AP spew
Bingo. That's the point exactly. They want to be in charge.
Remember the scam called string theory? Was supposed to be the key to the Great Unifying Theory that supposedly ties all sciences together into a nice neat package? Their theory turned out to be if you can't see they were right, that was proof of how stupid you are. That's the exact same scam these hucksters are running.
As for magazines, I have a new rule. When I come across global warming in any story, I stop and move on to the next story. When it turns out I'm reading less than 50% of the magazine or paper (or watching the news for that matter), I stop subscribing or watching.
And man, has life gotten so much more relaxing after I stopped listening to all the lectures.
Excellent article, thanks for the link!
Here's an excellent opinion piece about Al Gore and global warming. It's slightly off topic, but its still really good. A deconstruction of Al Gore's NY Times editorial.
http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2010/03/gores-wi...
If anyone know Mr. Trzupek, I'm sure he'd love it.
How much scientific training does it take to know that scientists have to show their work? How much does it take to know that they shouldn't destroy, misplace or alter data, and that their theories have to be testable and reproducible? How much does it take to get suspicious when FOIA requests are repeatedly ignored or when the goal posts are moved such as going from "warming" to "change?" How smart do you have to be to look at a picture of a temperature station next the to outlet of industrial equipment and think that gee, maybe I should ask some questions? On the flip side, how stupid would you have to be to look at a big fat failure like Al Gore and not be flabbergasted that he is selling imaginary "carbon credits" for real cash in return for the chance that someone, somewhere might one day plant a banana tree?
The fact is that the media could have asked any engineer or physicist at any point in the process what they thought of climatologists and the way they conduct "science" and the words "fraud" and "scam" would have been at the top of the list of responses. People in the hard sciences just laugh at this stuff. Even were the science done properly to the same result no real scientist would make the claims these guys are making.
It is pathetic.
One of the better examples is Craig Venter. He is a genius and sequenced the human genome using private funds and (horrors!) filing patents from some of the gene sequences. He also sequenced the mouse, and a number of pathological bacteria. His next big project is to sequence the genome of rice. There are hugely important projects and are being done privately. The Human Genome Project was using government funds and the scientists were planning on a comfortable decade of major grants until Venter came along and upset all their applecarts. They hate him and his press has shown it. Read his Wikipedia entry which is fair.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter
He is now a billionaire and, as far as I am concerned he could be the first trillionaire. The guy is amazing but Watson and a bunch of other professional government scientists will never get over the fact that he got their first and with his own money.
They don't know anything about economics either !!
31,000 AMERICAN SCIENTISTS – http://www.PetitionProject.org
It's a good thing MSM don't report on BORDER SECURITY http://www.BorderInvasionPics.com or AMNESTY would have zero chance of passage.
re: Alar, Alarm, Alarum, the-sky-is-falling, repent!
A pity that editors of all these -zines don't require every story that highlights some risk have a couple of thermometers that have symbols on them indicating the probability of any given risk on a few important populations, including all-of-us, middle-class-U.S.-citizens, children and lastly those-claimed-to-be-most-at-risk, where the thermometer has gradations from the absolute certainty that we all will die, to deaths due to, say, an airplane falling on your head (about six a year, iirc). The editor doesn't have to put it on the same page – they could put all the analysis charts back with the legal notices and not harm the adrenaline hit they are dependent on for sales. They'd even get more advertising revenue since maybe a third would be interested in "the rest of the story" and flip to the back pages (similar to answers to puzzles). Granted, people will tire after a while when they discover few, if any risks, rise to the level of dying from a crashing airplane.
re: better reporting. Editors should teach some basic economics documenting alongside the risk thermometer the implied "discount rate" the author has used to justify their recommendations. E.g. AGW must have a zero or even negative discount rate to justify the austerity and poverty demanded for the redemptive efforts. Yet most of these authors have little tolerance for preemptive warfare to remove a threat, where the discount rate is historically negative (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, …Chavez). Where a non-zero (positive) discount rate suggests that we need not be too concerned with any investment we make today having an impact on those 3-4-5 generations removed.
re: discount rate: think about goods we value and use today that we bought 100 years ago. Or things we’d purchase today that we expect will have significant value in 100 years. Consider that it took (just) 20-30 years for Lake Erie to be mostly cleaned up – and the Cuyahoga to stop burning. Ditto for the LA basin where the air leaving a modern car engine has long been cleaner than it was on entry. The Panama canal is being rebuilt, it may just make it to its 100 year anniversary. In a 100 years, the new one will likely be refit if not abandoned when technology and even less-expensive energy changes the rules again. It's important to be humble about what we see beyond our headlights. Especially when the next catastrophe happens and we find "if only we'd been more aggressive about growth more of the population would have survived because of …" (plot death by wealth per type of disaster, natural and man-made).
That's usually what happens when socialism is put to the test. Fortunately in America, they don't have the guns to make us go along.
when do we get to go full Mussolini on that greedy ,lying fraud Algore. String him up in Harvard Yard.
I agree that most MSM doesn't have a clue about science and goes with the biggest sob story by default.
I do want to point out one exception to that – on MSNBC of all things. Alan Boyle who does the Cosmic Log science blog for MSNBC.com http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/ does a nice job. I have an interest in new space/commercial rocket development and check his blog regularly for updates on that field. He is one of the few mainstream media guys who covers that and knows what is what when things happen, like the new NASA budget. His blog has not been about the enviroment that much, probably because if it was he would lose readers one way or another. Still, gotta put in a good word for a Science focused guy at MSNBC. Strange but true.
You give the MSM too much credit. They don't have to be at all technically or scientifically inclined, knowledgable or capable. All they need to be is honest enough to always apply three items that are the sine qua non of legitimate science:
1. Data, algorithms, data manipulation techniques, etc are all freely available to anyone who asks (in the age of the internet the absence of this is inexcusable)
2. Peer review of experiments/data gathering techniques in completely neutral professional publications
3. Replication of results by completely unconnected researchers
If any of these items are not true then the presumption is that science has NOT taken place and the results are completely invalid until proven otherwise by fullfilling these requirements.
I am a programmer who spent a five-year stint in climate research in the 1980s. During that period I worked on acid rain and tropospheric ozone research and was knowledgable about stratospheric ozone depletion and global warming, the claims and the data. It was widely known in the field that the "warming" claims had substantial problems, for example, rural-only temperatures in the continental United States showed no warming trend — an inconvenient fact yet to be explained! After twenty-five years as a researcher and programmer for "scientists" in eight departments, I saw that the fraud, incompetence, deception, marketing, etc. were pervasive across the disciplines. It is time that the research university bubble be popped, which, of course, has been massively financed with federal tax dollars.
The largest internet Providers? Time-Warner, Comcast are media conglomerates.
Let me put it this way, I work in the internet security industry, so I have a fairly different definition of the internet. Time-Warner is the largest ISP to the public, but I don't know if they actually have wide area internet routers.
And if not, they are just a middle man providing the interface to the public. When I worked at IBM years ago, they even had an ISP business for a while, just like AOL and ComCast. But eventually they got out of that business and sold it and their global network to AT&T. I believe AT&T also provides Time-Warner's ISP. The IBM site I worked at had fiber run to Time-Warner, but ended up on AGNS (ATT Global Network System).
One of the beauties of the internet is its the exact opposite of central planning and control. No one organization controls everything. Of course that drives the statists absolutely bat sh!t crazy. They can't stand the thought of something that isn't under complete and total control, which is why they love government.
But its not, so they can't do it, and that's exactly why its so great and wide spread. Just because people don't follow certain rules, and do things the way certain people think they should, doesn't mean it doesn't work. In many cases it works much, much better.
And the internet is a prime example. Which is why the feds are drooling at the chance to get their grubby paws on it.
Fiber is a little passe at this point. TW and CC are definitely running monopolistic broadband networks through T1 and T3 lines without competition in geographic areas. They are also major content providers. They are also working quietly toward defeating Net Neutrality so they can control search results. They will also Bias towards leftist content.
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