The story has all the makings of a big news story and a world class whodunit. An illegal break in leads to charges of a global conspiracy. Some of the world’s leading experts tackling one of the most pressing issues of our day and age are forced to launch a defense of themselves. Two experts fall under the specter of investigations, Congress holds hearings into the affair, the Internet is set afire by one phrase - Climategate.
For two weeks the story rages and grows in intensity and yet somehow, the big three television networks are missing in action. Whether the story is just smoke or if there is fire behind it, the hacking of one of the world’s major climate research centers and the fallout from it is big news. By ignoring the story, ABC, CBS and NBC are highlighting the failures of themselves and much of the mainstream media. Perhaps more importantly they are contributing to their own demise and irrelevance.
Since the Climategate story broke two weeks ago today on November 20th, the story has been covered by all cable news networks including FOX News and CNN. Through it all, the big three are nowhere to be found. Not one mention of the event has been made on the networks’ morning or evening news broadcasts.
Online news outlets lead the way
While they are asleep at the wheel, every news website has new stories posted daily detailing the emails, the fallout and the investigations. The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and most other traditional print media have stories on their websites. CNN.com, MSNBC.com and even the big three network’s own web operations have covered the story.
Examiner.com has been at the forefront with the Climate Change Examiner launching coverage on the first day and continuously since. From the Essex County Conservative Examiner to the Baltimore Weather Examiner and across the country, Examiner.com has provided complete news, analysis and opinion about Climategate. More than 10,000 pages on Examiner.com alone refer to the event.
To pretend this story simply doesn’t exist is damning to journalism. The so-called ‘news’ media are protecting scientists because it exposes their underbelly. That’s not journalism. That’s a cover-up.
~ Media Research Center President Brent Bozell
Despite all of this, the big three ignore the developing story while covering topics that certainly would appear to be much less newsworthy. According to the Business & Media Institute, through Wednesday ABC, CBS and NBC mentioned professional golfer Tiger Woods’ car crash 37 times. They have also covered such breaking news topics as an orphaned moose, a baby panda and the color of tablecloths at President Obama’s recent state dinner.
Charges of bias and supression
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NBC has come under fire previously for their tendency to push a ‘green agenda’ at the behest of their majority owner up until Wednesday, General Electric. GE stands to make billions of dollars off of cap and trade legislation through its various business interests and the network recently began a concerted effort to push green causes across its spectrum of programming. This has many wondering if the network is under pressure to ignore the story.
Coverage of the event on local television station affiliates of the big three has been hit or miss. In Denver, local television station KUSA covered the story last week and spoke to one of the scientists involved in the scandal, Kevin Trenberth.
Other local stations, despite being close to the story, ignore it. The Climate Change Examiner has spoken to two television meteorologists who approached their newsrooms about the story and both were rebuffed. It is interesting to note that one could be termed a ‘skeptic’ of the manmade climate change theory and the other is a ‘believer’ but both felt the story was significant and should be covered. Both came away with the impression that the story was being suppressed by station management or others farther up the chain of command.
Amid a dwindling audience and a loss of relevance, the fact ABC, CBS and NBC ignore the story is baffling to many. Despite that, the story continues to grow in scope and new revelations are made every day. Many are seeing their non-coverage of the event as a microcosm of the continued failure of network television news.
Comments
All the Dinosaur media outlets like to talk about how they are so important because they do in depth research and have a world wide reach with hundreds of paid reporters on hand.
Now it is obvious that we don't need them, the internet is better at connecting us with news. Also as the last few weeks have proven, the multitude of internet reporters are better at providing new researched stories than the dinosaur media.
If you want todays new read the internet, if you want last weeks news watch the networks, if you want news from 2 weeks ago read the Boston Globe
It makes me wonder how many huge scandals were skipped by the media over the last 2 decades ....
Combine this with the news that Hal Turner, a radio 'conservative' was really an FBI agent and it really makes you wonder. Look up operation mockingbied
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
If you follow the money trail it tells all. Ken Lay, from Enron hustles up with Al Gore and pretty soon you have a new multi trillion dollar schemed to make cash via trades...until that bubble bursts. Alas it crashed too soon. I hope bankruptcy is the next phase in Big Al's life.
Looked at the polar ice caps lately? Actually spoken to ANY legitimate scientists about the changes that are occurring everywhere around the globe due to the increasing temperatures? I thought not. Instead you find it easier to pick up some self-serving oil-company-sponsored-and paid-for talking points that shoot out of Rush Limbaugh's or Glenn Beck's hiney.
Have you completely lost your god-damned minds? Do you finally not give a cr*p about the world you're going to leave posterity, because you've swallowed so much corporate propaganda disguised as "Americanism" that you don't know the real meaning of conservatism anymore?
Wake your selves up. There is a tipping point and we are there. What we do in the next several years will definitely help determine the quality of the future of our species. God help you if you can't snap out of the left-right paradigm and start thinking about your responsibility to those who will come after us.
dzent1, The northern part of Quebec Canada was under 10,000 ft of ice. It did not completely recede until 6500 years ago.
Do you think that was man made global warming??????????
I guess it's lucky you weren't around then to declare that AGW.
dzent1, Just to let you know I'm apolitical, I'm not left, right or center. I just follow the global warming science and use critical thinking to determine if the science is sound. Anyone with one eye and 1/2 brain can see the science is no longer objective. They made their hypotheses (for what ever reason) and are hell bent on finding the facts to prove it. Science doesn't work that way.
The fact that the earth has warmed in recent years while CO2 has increased proves nothing. They are one time events that coincide with each other, that's all it proves, nothing more. If you could prove that every warming and cooling event in history tracked perfectly with CO2 you might be on to something.
dzent1, One more point. There is no scientist or group of scientists that fully understand all the dynamics of the climate. There is no computer code or formulas that can simulate the roll that clouds and water/water vapor/ice play in the heat budget of the earth. Anyone that makes the claim that this science is settled is lying.
Also, using the "big oil funding" rhetoric is getting rather boring. All it shows is your strong political leanings. Which by the way is what causes you to lose your ability to use critical thinking skills.
This is not just single explicable event. By now there is a trend, and it's growing every day.
At 30 millions hits (but not "and counting", as it appears Google has capped it there) this story rages on like a journalistic pandemic. Utter silence? Not even a mention (even in defense?).
The Big Three networks have condensed on this issue to the point of being a black hole for "any serious threats to the warmist view of climate science". By completely ignoring it, even now, they have unwittingly made themselves a part of history in this, and are now, like it or not, an enormous part of this scandal!
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."
— Eric Hoffer (The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements)
Take responsibility and take action. Stop all donations to the political party(s) responsible for this fraud. Stop donations to all environmental groups which funded this Global Warming propaganda campaign with our money, especially The Environmental Defense Fund. START donations to Oklahoma’s Senator Inhofe, the only politician to stand firmly against this obvious government/media coordinated information operation (propaganda) targeted at its own people. People that government leaders and employees are sworn to protect. Write your state and federal representatives demanding wall to wall investigations of government sponsored funding and coordination of this and related propaganda campaigns and demand indictments of those responsible. Write your state and federal Attorneys General demanding Al
Van Jones, Climategate, ACORN, Charlie Rangel...
Next up... Obama's hidden records..
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