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Mark Steyn: What Story? [Jourbalism's Climategate Coverup]
The National Review ^ | November 28, 2009 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 11/29/2009 2:15:34 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet

Michael Gerson has lousy timing. In The Washington Post, in one of those now familiar elegies for old media, he writes:

And the whole system is based on a kind of intellectual theft. Internet aggregators (who link to news they don't produce) and bloggers would have little to collect or comment upon without the costly enterprise of newsgathering and investigative reporting. The old-media dinosaurs remain the basis for the entire media food chain.

That's laughably untrue in the Warmergate story. If you rely on the lavishly remunerated "climate correspondents" of the big newspapers and networks, you'll know nothing about the Climate Research Unit scandals - just the business-as-usual drivel about Boston being underwater by 2011. Indeed, even when a prominent media warm-monger addresses the issue, the newspaper prefers to reprint a month-old column predating the scandal. If you follow online analysis from obscure websites on the fringes of the map, you'll know what's going on. If you go to the convenience store and buy today's newspaper, you won't. That's the problem.

If anyone needs newspapers, it ought to be for stories like this. If there were no impending ecopalypse, then "climate science" would be a relatively obscure field, as it was up to a generation ago. Now it produces celebrity scientists living high off the hog of billions in grants. They thus have a vested interest in maintaining the planet's-gonna-fry line. So what do the media do? Instead of exposing the thesis to rigorous journalistic examination, they stage fluffy green stunts, run soft-focus "living green" features with Hollywood "activists", and at a time of massive staff cutbacks in every other department create the positions of specialist "climate correspondent" and "environmental reporter" and fill them with sycophantic promoters of the Big Scare to the point that, as Dr Mann coos approvingly to The New York Times, "you've taken the words out of my mouth".

What Gerson writes ought to be true. Warmergate demonstrates why it isn't.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: climaquiddick; climatechange; climategate; climediagate; cru; globalwarming; hadleycru; jourbalism; marksteyn; presstitutes; steyn; warmergate
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Waiting for the day when newspapers, news weeklies and old-style TV news are no more.
1 posted on 11/29/2009 2:15:36 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Like the cretans in congress, these intelligent idiots in the media are writting thier own ticket to oblivion. Thank God for transparency.


2 posted on 11/29/2009 2:20:27 PM PST by ronnie raygun (Leaders who refuse to lead will be lead by the people)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

jourbalism? You mean “gerbal-ism” the style of Anderson Cooper.


3 posted on 11/29/2009 2:20:38 PM PST by Porterville ( I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
...aggregators (who link to news they don't produce)

So news only belongs to the reporters. Cause they make (produce) it. Gee. What about the newsmaker(s)?

4 posted on 11/29/2009 2:21:52 PM PST by 386wt
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Gerbalism

Isn't that what they do in their off hours?

5 posted on 11/29/2009 2:25:05 PM PST by the invisib1e hand (whitey's over it.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

And they wonder why people will not put their toxic newspapers in the Birds Cage.


6 posted on 11/29/2009 2:28:53 PM PST by Marty62 (former Marty60)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Gee. I hadn’t even thought of that. What will happen to all those handsomely compensated eco-reporters of their warm mongering fails? What newspaper will want to pay scarce dollars to them for a one-inch column saying that it’s gonna rain tomorrow and the wind will be 5-10 MPH from the southwest?


7 posted on 11/29/2009 2:29:40 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Mr Gerson seems unaware of the concept of a value-added enterprise. Of course, the Washington Post is not an enterprise one associates with value, period. (To be fair, though, they’re extremely good with “unaware.”)


8 posted on 11/29/2009 2:30:15 PM PST by Slings and Arrows (Jew, conservative, and proud supporter of Israel.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Dinosaur Media Death Watch, part 3,463,676.


9 posted on 11/29/2009 2:33:21 PM PST by Travis McGee (---www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com---)
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To: Porterville

Did you mean “gerbil-ism”? That was the first thing I thought about these morons. Rotten minds think alike. Could be Gorebull-ism, or Goebbels-ism too, I suppose.


10 posted on 11/29/2009 2:33:28 PM PST by FlyVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Jourbalism?

Is that the name for stuff written by Richard Gere?


11 posted on 11/29/2009 2:34:38 PM PST by humblegunner
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; Thunder90; Entrepreneur; Defendingliberty; Nervous Tick; 4horses+amule; WL-law; ...
 


Beam me to Planet Gore !

12 posted on 11/29/2009 2:35:16 PM PST by steelyourfaith (Time to prosecute Al Gore now that fellow scam artist Bernie Madoff is in stir.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Check this guy out if you haven’t. His name is Alex Jones, I’m watching his youtube vids.
Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx3q2arm_ek
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G4f98fBCfk&feature=related


13 posted on 11/29/2009 2:35:33 PM PST by MsLady (If you died tonight, where would you go? Salvation, don't leave earth without it!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Internet aggregators (who link to news they don't produce) and bloggers would have little to collect or comment upon without the costly enterprise of newsgathering and investigative reporting.

No kidding. Tell Breitbart. It's possible now, in a realistic amount of time to take what we need and discard the BS. That can only be a good thing. They will have to ram their cap & trade nonsense through not only being aware themselves that the premise it's based upon is bullshit, but with the awareness that we certainly know it too. Will they stop lying about it then?

14 posted on 11/29/2009 2:42:23 PM PST by Seven plus One
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Warmergate

As good as this story is, the bigger story being missed by the press is how MSM is abdicating its role and becoming complicit in the kinds of sins it used to relish exposing.

The thesis that the bloggers leach off the work of “journalists” is bogus. The research, the legwork is done by alternative media, talk radio, bloggers and the citizens on the internet. The press stonewalls and waits for press releases to copy but ultimately leaches from these alternative media research and stories.

Moreover, with downsizing of personnel and branch offices (Washington Post just announced several office closings) the reliance of traditional media on alternative media is necessarily going to become more pronounced.


15 posted on 11/29/2009 2:43:27 PM PST by Mobties
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; informavoracious; larose; RJR_fan; Prospero; Conservative Vermont Vet; ...
+

Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:

Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.

Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment

Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

16 posted on 11/29/2009 2:43:45 PM PST by narses ('in an odd way this is cheering news!'.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The liberal media avoids stories that conflicts with their liberal lies.


17 posted on 11/29/2009 2:48:22 PM PST by KC_Conspirator
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To: Mobties
the reliance of traditional media on alternative media is necessarily going to become more pronounced

Nah, they'll continue to get all their material from the DNC and White House press offices.

18 posted on 11/29/2009 2:50:02 PM PST by expatpat
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

CNN’s Website has a special “Environment” section and there is not a whisper of the biggest story of the decade.

These are what they think are news stories:

Environment
- U.N. official issues climate rallying cry
- Carbon trading conflict in Canberra
- Sea level rise could cost $28 trillion
- Saving orangutans in Sumatra
- California OKs energy mark for TVs
- Rudd: Climate change is real
- Leaders blow cold on climate deal


19 posted on 11/29/2009 2:50:09 PM PST by Bon mots
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To: Mobties

“As good as this story is, the bigger story being missed by the press is how MSM is abdicating its role and becoming complicit in the kinds of sins it used to relish exposing.”

That happened a long time ago. I don’t know exactly when, but I became aware of it in the early 1980s, and have seen examples from the Viet Nam era. Ann Coulter wrote that the trashing of Joe McCarthy in the 1950s was an example of this.

Point is, it’s not that they are now abdicating; it is that they have been despicable villains for decades.


20 posted on 11/29/2009 2:56:58 PM PST by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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