PrintAugust 3, 2007
Global Warming Propaganda Factory
I have often wondered how the media are in such lock step on Global Warming. Well, I wonder no more. Recently, I came across a website for the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). http://www.sej.org/ This website is veritable tool box for any budding reporter assigned to the global warming beat. If you're an editor at the Palookaville Post, all you have to do is send your cub reporters to this site and they'll have everything they need to write an article that fits the template and action line perfectly.
The SEJ was founded in 1989. The association is considered an indispensable resource among many reporters. The SEJ proclaims their mission to be the creation of a formal network of reporters that write about environmental issues. To that end, they maintain a website, run a listserv and send out regular email alerts to coordinate the coverage and make sure no one deviates from story template and action line. To reinforce this, they regularly conduct conferences and workshops teaching propaganda writing techniques and holding indoctrination seminars. To promote hands on discipline, they offer a "mentoring program."
In January of this year, the SEJ published what they call Climate change: A guide to the information and disinformation. The guide is neatly organized into twelve chapters. Except for the seventh chapter titled with the freighted descriptive: "Deniers, Dissenters and Skeptics", the guide is a one sided presentation that resoundingly affirms global warming and puts down anyone with a different point of view. The site is a virtual digest of the global warming industry. If you're looking for a road map to the special interest groups behind the hysteria, this is the place to go. The journalist members of this association have obviously abandoned all pretense of objectivity.
The site is largely a compendium of links to global warming promoters. Many of the links use adjectives like prestigious, best respected, and reputation unrivaled to burnish their credibility. The so-called deniers on the other hand are described with adjectives like, highly polemical, outright false, and deceptive partisan attack dogs. The description of the Competitive Enterprise Institute is especially derisive, citing the often leveled false accusation that they are the tool of Exxon Mobil. And this is journalism at its finest?
The SEJ is supported mainly by foundation grants from many of the places that fund Bill Moyers and PBS. The remaining revenue is generated from membership dues and conference fees.
This year's annual conference is being held in the rarefied atmosphere of Stanford University. The conference agenda and featured speakers are a virtual who's who and what's what of the self -identified progressive movement: the likes of leftist radio personality Amy Goodman and the Weather Channel's chief global warming propagandist Heidi Cullen holding down the celebrity spots. The five-day conference is really a full immersion in the latest liberal tropes. To create the illusion of prestige and open debate they booked a token Republican, shelling out whatever it took to get former Secretary of State George Schultz to participate in a panel titled, "Clean, Secure & Efficient Energy: Can We Have It All?"
The panel description reflects the deeply ingrained bias of the SEJ and its members. "The race is on for commercialization of domestic fuels that shrink our carbon footprint..." From what I've seen this not a race for "commercialization" so much as a fight for government subsidies.
The conference offers several recreational field trips that would set any white liberal's hearts aflutter, including a kayak outing and a tour of California's wine country. But its not all play; to assuage their liberal guilt, they're planning an excursion to the East Bay area of Oakland and Richmond they call the "Hole in the Donut: Environmental Justice in the Heart of Ecotopia" The descriptive narrative of the trip speaks volumes.
"Amid the extraordinary wealth and environmental consciousness ringing San Francisco Bay, two communities at the center of it all wallow in poverty and pollution."The East Bay cities of Richmond and Oakland are the industrial entrepôts for the economy of Northern California and beyond. Both surround the massive Port of Oakland, the nation's fourth largest, which fouls water and air with toxics and exotic creatures and is suspected of causing sharply higher rates of asthma and premature death from other diseases. We'll explore the minority-majority neighborhoods that endure the ceaseless movement of trains, trucks and ships. Then we'll tour the port complex to see how goods are moved across the seas and how port officials plan to clean up their act."
(For a look at the terrible environmental injustice around the Port of Richmond, see Thomas Lifson's photos here.)
The mere existence of the Society of Environmental Journalists shows first hand how the media world works, providing the infrastructure to journalists engaged in the practice of global warming advocacy journalism.
The mere existence of the Society of Environmental Journalists shows first hand how the media world works, providing the infrastructure to journalists engaged in the practice of global warming advocacy journalism.
