Michael Rentiers

Old Media chokes on own narrative

I used to believe that the mainstream media (termed “old media” from here on) was losing business and shuttering doors largely because they were giving their content away for free on the Internets.  And that may account for some, albeit less than I would have thought previously, of their problems.  However, even TV news viewership is down.  It’s all down across the board and I think we can now proclaim the definitive reason why.

The old media is dead because of the effects of Global Warming!

Really it’s because they are completely full of worthless pabulum and nobody cares about what they have to say about the news, which is perfectly illustrated in this global warming story

Here’s the back-story:

Climategate began with the disclosure of emails and other documents showing how leading global-warming scientists had evaded peer review and refused to disclose data. Over the past week, there have been resignations and investigations of top scientists in England and the U.S.

The British government is recalculating its historic weather findings in light of the now-suspect data from the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia. Even the United Nations, which had claimed “unequivocal” evidence for man-made global warming, pledges that it will review the evidence.

More details will come out as the leaked documents get fully parsed, but already one certainty is the end of certainty. The one-sidedness of the views of the most influential scientists had led many to believe in the gospel of global warming.

Unlike Watergate, Climategate didn’t come to light because investigative journalists ferreted out the truth. Instead, this story so far has played itself out largely on blogs, often run by the same scientists who had a hard time getting printed in the scientific journals. Climategate has provided a voice to the scientists who had been frozen out of the debate.

This may be how information-based scandals play out in the future: A leak from a whistleblower directly onto the Web. Expert bloggers then assess what the disclosures mean—a Web version of peer review.

Let’s be honest here, shall we.  Any fan of common sense approaches to understanding the world can plainly see that the old media’s complete white washing of the Climategate scandal is a perfect example of why the general public no longer turns to them to get information.  Because if you happened to want to find out that a whistleblower released sensitive emails from leading global warming scientists demonstrating the falsification and obfuscation of the science behind global warming claims; you’d be SOL as they say.

You see, this story is so big that a leading government official on climate change in England has had to step aside and the entire scientific community is being forced to change the way it handles climate related data.  However, the dead-tree times, the three letter networks and the rest of the old media don’t feel like the story is newsworthy enough.   They went ahead and decided what was important for the public to know and this just isn’t it.

Thus, global warming has claimed its first victim.  Just like the busted scientists, the old media were complicit is stonewalling debate, covering up dissent and misleading the public.  See this isn’t about the climate change.  That debate needs to be had.  I believe the science is still out especially when it comes to anthropogenic causality and climate change but just like those “scientists” the old media has a narrative and an agenda and they are all getting caught choking on it.

Now rather than doing their job and covering the news, which (one would hope) would earn them readers and viewers; they ignore the controversy in a lame attempt to support the failed narrative.  Apparently, they just don’t get it.  You cannot control information flow any longer.  It travels from Washington, DC to Sydney, Australia instantaneously.  I’d prefer to be able to go to a straight news source for quality information produced by a professional, but we all now know those are days gone by.

So they layoffs continue, and revenues tank.  The once great and vaunted fourth estate is left to wither and die on the vine, refusing to change course in the face of inevitability

It’s frustrating in that I care about that notion that the media is a watchdog for public, but I guess I am naïve.  They fired the watchdog years ago.