The New York  Times and various other organs of the US mainstream media have, in the eyes of many of their critics including yours truly, refused to give adequate reportage and coverage to the ever-expanding, so-called Climategate story. The Times has used several print “journalists” to pooh-pooh the brewing scandal involving scientific corruption at the University of Norwich’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia, UK. But the silence at the NYT regarding this important scandal is deafening, particularly so in light of the now-convened Copenhagen conference.

I won’t bore anyone with the the gory details of the Climategate brouhaha except for this brief chronological summary:

  • Approximately 8-10 weeks ago hackers stole 60+MB of e-mails, programs and data from the CRU. The after several attempts elsewhere in the world, the e-mails were posted on a public-access web server in Russia. within days, the e-mails were being reviewed and analyzed by countless global warming skeptics and others in the worldwide scientific and journalistic community.
  • Multiple, credible sources have evaluate the e-mails and found them to be damning of the scientific methods and practices in regards to evaluating climatological data collected/warehoused by the CRU. This includes data manipulation to force trends and cherry-picking data to suit preconceived notions. It also revealed that the group of in vogue, esteemed climate scientists are practicing a new, seemingly politically-motivated, brand of the scientific method. In their own words they exclude contrary scientific opinions from the debate and ostracize those they deem dangerous to their orthodoxy.
  • Multiple, credible analyses have been performed on the snippets of computer programs pilfered from the CRU. Many contain “fixes, ” “cheats” and “tricks” to cherry-pick data and then plot the results in a biased manner…and always towards global heating owing to the numerical offset coefficients purposely included in the programs.
  • The e-mails were authenticated by members of the CRU staff and purportedly have not been altered or edited.
  • The Climategate story catches fire on the internet and becomes one of the more popular news stories worldwide in spite of the dearth of coverage in the US mainstream media.

An excellent summary of the entire Climategate affair is available from the SPPI by Lord Christopher Moncton, a notable and articulate skeptic of the global warming movement. You can find it in PDF form HERE. You should notice that not a single mainstream news organization, with the exception of FOX News, has covered Lord Moncton’s scathing recap of Climategate and its implications to the present negotiations in Copenhagen. The New York Times, it seems, is AWOL on this issue. See, they have journalistic principles that won’t allow them to publish the purloined e-mails — it just wouldn’t be fair. This coming from the same “news” organization that had no compunction in printing leaked or stolen memoranda and documents during the years of the Bush administration that would tarnish reputations or otherwise place egg on that administration’s face.

But the global warming alarmists and “scientists” enjoy protected status among the so-called journalists in our mainstream media because they share the same ideological bent as does the editorial and rank-and-file staffs of these so-called news organizations. If you’re a neo-socialist or progressive thinker, you’re embraced with open arms and feted with glowing ‘Page 1, above the fold’ reportage. (Which also might happen if you’re a contrarian thinker or ideological foe who has an embarrassing issue!) How many dire stories have we had to endure about suffering Polar bears and melting glaciers, even when the underlying stories and causations are patently untrue? But I digress…

So, with Climategate, the Times et. al have been provided a red meat news story to cover. It might not fit their established ideological bent, or represent a precious totem of their world-view. But so what, news is news…right? So what do they do? They outright ignore it as though in the internet age that it will just “go away!” The media may well feel smug in the self-absorbed knowledge that if they ignore the story, then it isn’t really a story at all. Or so they think.

It hasn’t gone away…and in fact many news organizations outside of the US, particularly in the UK (just Google Climategate and UK Telegraph, for example!!) have embraced the story as the world-wide scandal that it is. even the über politically correct BBC has picked up on this story and is giving it fair, if meager, coverage. The extra-US media recognize that the potential hoax being perpetrated on the world by the “credible” climate scientists pushing their “established” science that is “settled” and “beyond dispute” renders the conclusions of the UN’s IPCC and the and the US’s EPA regarding global warming and CO2 toxicity utter rubbish (or at least calls them into serious question as they relied heavily on the data provided by the CRU)  now in light of the CRU e-mail revelations.

However, the world media, it seems, recognizes real news when it sees it. And furthermore reports the news as it occurs. News is news, regardless if it chafes against your principles or contradicts your beliefs. By not reporting this important story, which by the way portends to impact the life of every man, woman and child on the planet, the US mainstream media gives it’s consuming public short-shrift and in essence treat us as though we, given all the information available, can’t come to our own conclusions. Perhaps some can’t think for themselves and they prefer that the NYT or some broadcast media outfit does their thinking for them…but fortunately the vast majority of us can — and do think for ourselves and rightly use the news as part of our thinking and decision process.

By ignoring Climategate and eschewing news for political ideology, the US mainstream media has relegated itself into further irrelevance as the place to go to get the real story — the or the unvarnished truth. It’s no wonder that many of the US’s major newspapers are in financial trouble and that the news organizations of the three major broadcast networks suffer viewership and credibility problems. By ignoring the REAL news and substituting their alternative view of what is or isn’t news, these alleged news sources tarnish their credibility with an increasingly news savvy public.

Until these conventional sources of news stop editorializing both in the news stories that they do chose to and by which stories they select to report, they will insure that conventional journalism suffers the same fate as the contemptible pseudo-scientists at the CRU. Because in essence both sets of so-called professionals, scientists and journalists, have done or are doing the same thing — crafting their own versions of reality out of thin air.

And once the people know the truth, we’re just not buying it…