The opinion of scientists qualified to speak on the question of CC matters, letting literal oil lobbyists speak is like asking the fox if we should keep the door to the henhouse open.
A news report about the Earth that invites both physicists and flat earth loonies is not in any way better than one that doesn't even mention the flat Earth "theory".
You are actively misleading the public when inviting climate change deniers to a discussion about climate change.
You clearly don't understand what you are talking about, based on this.
When you're fueling the emotional aspect with your words that unabashedly, you are making people who are on the fence or unsure certain something is really wrong with the mainstream claims. I can tell you this just from the reaction you gave me in the pit of my stomach.
Yes, though, I'm inclined to believe a sourced article from a major publicly founded outlet including quotes from the "accused" admiting to what they have done, over most corporate PR.
But maybe I should not, what do we care anyway ?
> He says the media was hungry for these perspectives.
> "Journalists were actually actively looking for the contrarians. It was really feeding an appetite that was already there."
A rare example of the BBC breaking the media omertà on itself here. You thought journalism was supposed to help you understand the world? Nope, reading our slop will actually make you *less* able to make informed decisions.
There was a good paper written about this all the way back in 2007 [1]. Makes for some eyebrow-raising reading in the year-of-our-lord 2022.
[1] https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/boykoff07-ge...
It’s a shame that the idea of learning media studies and related subjects at school or university were so maligned in the 00s, but probably not a coincidence either.
This is most-certainly true, and an interesting corrollary is that journalists themselves very likely underestimate the impact their work can have. Being on the inside, they of course know (because 'everybody knows') that this Daily Mail article about Jeremy Corbyn being a soviet spy (yes, it is real [1]) is utter dreck, basically just popcorn nonsense for bored retirees to flick past on the way to the sports pages. Journalists might have a hard time believing/understanding that people actually trust and respect them, and may even take what they say at face value, with actual consequences.
Of course, their proprieters understand this full-well, which is why e.g. Murdoch is willing to plough endless cash into loss-making endeavours like The Times.
Not that I intend to absolve journalists whatsoever. Their actions have literally destroyed everything (we just haven't realised it yet).
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5401097/Jeremy-Corb...
Climate change denial is a good example, because it's not the truth, and it's not important. It doesn't have it's own scientific literature, nobody ever tries to prove it, it's contrarianism at best, propaganda at worst. And yet the media tends to give it an equal amount of screen time, which makes the public believe in it's legitimacy.
This might be shocking to the HN audience, but contrarianism by itself is not enough to discover the truth.
Look at it this way. In the past few days HN has had a bunch of submissions on the news that a major paper in Alzheimer's research appears to be entirely fraudulent. It was noticed by outside "deniers", not any scientists within the field itself, and the science based on it went 16 years and received hundreds of millions of dollars in NIH funding. All based on some dodgy Photoshops, or so it appears.
When people argue with climatology and (often) absurd media claims that aren't even well connected to published science to begin with, they're usually arguing about actual, concrete problems with what scientists are doing. To believe that it's all mere contrarianism and propaganda is the sort of naive "Believe The Science!"-ism that has trashed trust in public health in the past two years, and worse, created a culture in which researchers think that they can get away with anything.
Unfortunately, with things like climate change, the result tends to be 'false balance'. The BBC recognised this several years ago - but too late.
This is such a classic at this point. "Look, even if we are partly responsible, and way ahead in per capita terms, look at how others are doing overall".
I feel that this kind of hypocrisy has permeated down from geopolitical excuses, to the common people, who are now blamed, very publicly so, when it comes to essentially any kind of pollution, from air travel to plastic use.
Sadly, the article makes no mention of his wife Patricia, who has run the Corporation for Public Broadcasting since 2005.
