New York Times NYT

=the paper of record? thus biggest prize of escalator effectan jh 818balance"?In related news, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/climate/epa-asbestos-rule.html" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">Lisa Friedman reported for The New York Times</a> that "top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency pushed through a measure to review applications for using asbestos in consumer products, and did so over the objections of E.P.A.’s in-house scientists and lawyers."In this next graph, we see how The Times in-house style requires characterizing  obviously bullshit claims -- claims hotly refuted by the agency's own scientists, according to the story -- as just one side of a "spirited debate":"The E.P.A. says it is toughening oversight. However, the way its new rule is written has spawned a spirited debate over whether it will actually make it easier for asbestos to come back into more widespread use."<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-administration-just-ramped-its-attack-media-seizing-nyt-reporters-phone-and">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-administration-just-ramped-its-attack-media-seizing-nyt-reporters-phone-and</a> New York Times op-ed page is suddenly full of conservatives. It's not just <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnewrepublic.com%2Farticle%2F147187%2Famerican-rights-deep-ties-reactionary-europe&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=513weekly&n=32&v=1353" style="color: rgb(25, 106, 212);">Ross Douthat</a> and <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fblog%2F2018%2F02%2F20%2FDavid-Brooks-needs-to-shut-up%2F219430&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=513weekly&n=33&v=1353" style="color: rgb(25, 106, 212);">David Brooks</a> making poor arguments anymore. The paper of record now also features Bret Stephens.Stephens, who has long championed a potential war with Iran, put out a <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fblog%2F2018%2F05%2F09%2FBret-Stephens-and-the-NeverTrump-farce%2F220167&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=513weekly&n=34&v=1353" style="color: rgb(25, 106, 212);">particularly bad column</a> this week after Trump withdrew from the Iran deal. Stephens argued that Trump will grasp technical concepts and complex diplomatic frameworks to engineer a better result with Iran, possibly including regime change. This would be problematic enough, if not for the fact that Stephens has also said that Trump is mentally ill. If this all sounds familiar, it's because Stephens also praised Trump bombing Syria, and was so stridently against the Paris climate accord that Trump EPA chief Scott Pruitt <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fblog%2F2017%2F06%2F02%2Fbret-stephens-climate-saga-reaches-its-logical-conclusion%2F216761&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=513weekly&n=35&v=1353" style="color: rgb(25, 106, 212);">read from</a> Stephens column the day after Trump pulled out of the accord.But that's not all! The Times also published a column from writer Bari Weiss about the "intellectual dark web." The entire thing is a farce. Let's start with the name. The "intellectual dark web" is what far right figures call themselves to make themselves sound cool. They want to make their ideas <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fvideo%2F2018%2F05%2F07%2Fwnycs-media-explains-influence-jordan-peterson-online-misogynists%2F220135&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=513weekly&n=36&v=1353" style="color: rgb(25, 106, 212);">sound new and dangerous</a>, when really it's the same old bigoted crap as always. They're just doing what 9-year-olds do when they play games at school, basically. Bari Weiss and the New York Times op-ed page, nonetheless, gave this group of people a big profile. People on social media immediately called out a number of serious problems with the piece -- and one of them was Times columnist <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fpaulkrugman%2Fstatus%2F993850211675136000&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=513weekly&n=37&v=1353" style="color: rgb(25, 106, 212);">Paul Krugman</a>. Weiss was not asked about any of these problems when <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fvideo%2F2018%2F05%2F08%2Fmorning-joe-ny-times-bari-weiss-and-joe-scarborough-tout-far-right-websites-intellectual-salons%2F220144&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=513weekly&n=38&v=1353" style="color: rgb(25, 106, 212);">she talked about the column</a> on Morning Joe.There's a serious point here about the Times. They <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fblog%2F2017%2F05%2F01%2Fny-times-sold-subscriptions-opposing-alternative-facts-then-it-published-bret-stephens%2F216224&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=513weekly&n=39&v=1353" style="color: rgb(25, 106, 212);">sold subscriptions</a> in the Trump era by promising to oppose "alternative facts." The paper of record should do what it promised and cut out this nonsensehindsight 20/20? but corn russ roulette not complimentary?---<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/new-york-times-still-cant-admit-it-botched-major-trump-story-election">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/new-york-times-still-cant-admit-it-botched-major-trump-story-election</a>
Eight days before the 2016 presidential election, the New York Times ran a story throwing cold waters on burgeoning conspiracy theorists. Its headline read: "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I Sees No Clear Link to Russia."As we now know, that story was deeply misleading and inaccurate. But the Timeshas still not addressed how it got things so wrong. <div id="TeadsNative" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The story notes that the FBI had started an investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign during the summer of 2016, but it says there was no "conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government." But we now know the probe began with a pretty definitive link: Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos made contact with a man claiming to be a Russian agent who said he had hacked emails related to Hillary Clinton.The story also claims that while the Russians were trying to interfere in the 2016 election, the FBI did not believe the Russians were trying to help Trump. However, as former FBI Director James Comey said in an interview with the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/james-comey-believes-donald-trump-has-an-emptiness-inside-of-him" style="text-decoration-line: none;">New Yorker</a>, the bureau had already had concluded that the Kremlin wanted Trump to win.Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the Times, told the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/04/20/responding-to-james-comey-new-york-timess-baquet-says-key-russia-trump-story-was-not-inaccurate/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7ff651fa980b" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Washington Post</a>, "I think the headline was off but if you read the story I think it was NOT inaccurate based on what we knew at the time."But the story was inaccurate, as we now know, and the Times should be willing to own up to that fact.The paper continually does extraordinary reporting, and it has produced many essential stories as the Trump-Russia saga has unfolded. Utilizing anonymous sources is a difficult business, and yet the Times frequently employs them to great effect. But errors in this kind of reporting are inevitable, and when they happen, it's the paper's responsibility to explain why they happened and what went wrong.<a href="https://www.alternet.org/new-york-times-rips-trump-and-his-gop-enablers-scathing-editorial" style="">https://www.alternet.org/new-york-times-rips-trump-and-his-gop-enablers-scathing-editorial</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/new-york-times-rips-trump-and-his-gop-enablers-scathing-editorial"></a>nevertrump conserv get gig in normal press?Washington Post’s Megan McArdle, who <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/theres-little-we-can-do-to-prevent-another-massacre" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">suggested people run toward mass shooters after Sandy Hook</a> and the New York Times’ Bret Stephens who doesn’t believe in climate change and called <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/5/1/15482698/new-york-times-bret-stephens" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Black Lives Matter “really thuggish.</a>"=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/new-yorker-times-newsroom-openly-revolting-against-its-editorial-page-editor" style="">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/new-yorker-times-newsroom-openly-revolting-against-its-editorial-page-editor</a>Since Donald Trump was elected president, the New York Times editorial page has waged a frontal assault on its readers' intelligence. Just this month, it has published pieces defending <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/opinion/smearing-of-woody-allen.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Woody Allen</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/opinion/aziz-ansari-babe-sexual-harassment.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Aziz Ansari</a> against allegations of sexual abuse, and another <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/opinion/parkland-gun-control-shootings.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fdavid-brooks&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=collection" style="text-decoration-line: none;">scolding liberals</a> for not being sufficiently respectful of gun owners in the wake of the latest mass shooting. In between, the paper <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-ny-times-fires-tech-writer-quinn-norton-and-its-complicated/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">hired and fired</a> its leading commentator on technology after learning she counts a prominent neo-Nazi among her close friends.Subscribers are taking notice, and they're not alone. <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/new-york-times-op-ed-crisis-james-bennet" style="text-decoration-line: none;">According to a Vanity Fair report</a>, Times reporters have grown increasingly frustrated with the paper's op-ed section and fear it may be undermining their work. As one anonymous senior staffer put it, “Until yesterday, people felt like [Opinion] was a shakeup. Now people are worried. The newsroom feels embarrassed.”At the center of the controversy is editorial-page editor James Bennet, who earlier this month sent a 1,500-word memo to staff outlining how he interprets former Times publisher Adolph Ochs' original mission for the section. The memo was a response to an earlier HuffPost story containing internal chat transcripts of Times employees expressing their disgust with the op-ed section, specifically the contributions of recent addition Bari Weiss. "We’re not just letting a thousand flowers bloom," Bennet writes. "We are picking our contributors with care, looking for people who share Times standards for fairness and intellectual honesty and originality, who believe in empiricism and the essential equality of all human beings. We are, as ever, editing and fact-checking our work."Discerning readers might disagree. Over the past year, the Times has not only published a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/climate-of-complete-certainty.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Bret Stephens column</a> questioning widely established climate science but found itself the subject of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/business/media/sarah-palin-lawsuit-new-york-times.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">defamation suit from Sarah Palin</a> after suggesting that inflammatory remarks made by the former Alaska governor helped incite the shooting that nearly killed Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. (The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed after a judge determined the Times had not acted with malice.) Several weeks ago, the paper ran a column titled "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/opinion/politics/background-checks-gun-violence.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Background Checks Are Not the Answer</a>" from John Lott, a gun rights advocate whose research has been repeatedly debunked. Days after its publication, a 19-year-old gunman opened fire on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17. None of this has been lost on Times staffers, who recorded a recent meeting with Bennet and leaked it, again, to the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-york-times-opinion-james-bennet_us_5a8db27de4b0273053a70f47" style="text-decoration-line: none;">HuffPost</a>. What emerges from this latest report is an editorial page rife with internal contradictions, "a case study in how essentially liberal institutions are undermined by the tools of their own liberalism." Bennet professes that the section is humanist and universal, yet recognizes select forms of ethnic cleansing as worthy of consideration; he "proudly forswears the idea of right answers," but insists capitalism is the "greatest anti-poverty program and engine of progress the world has ever seen"; he claims climate science is "settled," but is nonetheless willing to indulge Bret Stephens' skepticism. Meanwhile, Bennet deems Richard Spencer unworthy of publication not because he's a white nationalist but because he represents a fringe movement. The Times is not the only major newspaper whose opinion columnists and reporters are openly warring with each other. Last October, members of the Wall Street Journal newsroom <a href="https://www.alternet.org/media/wall-street-journal-echoing-trumps-derangement-and-its-own-reporters-are-appalled" style="text-decoration-line: none;">anonymously voiced contempt</a> for their paper's feverish defenses of Trump's presidency amidst a rash of indictments in the Mueller investigation. “We could disprove half the stuff [the opinion writers] are saying if they just read our own reporting," one WSJ reporter said at the time. "It’s like living in some alternate universe."What makes James Bennet's editorial page so egregious is that unlike the Journal, the Times is considered the country's paper of record. Not only has the op-ed section failed to live up to its own lofty standards, it can't even lay claim to the intellectual contrarianism it champions in defense of its most incendiary content.  “If your goal were to wage war on media diversity in all of its forms, and to offer the narrowest range of views possible, it would be hard to top the roster of columnists the paper has assembled," <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/08/31/nyts-newest-op-ed-hire-bari-weiss-embodies-its-worst-failings-and-its-lack-of-viewpoint-diversity/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the Intercept's Glenn Greenwald wrote in August</a>. "Beyond the obvious demographic homogeneity, literally every one of them fits squarely within the narrow, establishment, center-right to center-left range of opinion that prevails in elite opinion-making circles...None is associated with or supportive of the growing populist left or the populist right; they all wallow in the vague, safe, Washington-approved middle ground, members in good standing of the newly overt neoliberal-neoconservative alliance.”While Bennet has acknowledged the page remains a work in progress, neither he nor newly appointed publisher Arthur Sulzberger III seems especially interested in changing course. “There’s no question that social media amplifies the freak-outs,” Bennet tells Vanity Fair. “Right now, it’s really hard to separate the signal from the noise.”Meanwhile, Sulzberger offers this chestnut: “We publish dozens and dozens of op-eds a week. Look at them as a whole and you’ll see the breadth of voices there. Sure, Erik Prince wrote in our pages. You know who else has written in our pages? Bernie Sanders, and not just once."If the Times views a war profiteer and a democratic socialist as equal and opposite viewpoints worthy of publication, if it's truly willing to embrace this brand of surreptitious illiberalism, perhaps Bennet's editorial page is beyond saving. ref<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-ny-times-fires-tech-writer-quinn-norton-and-its-complicated/" style="">https://www.wired.com/story/the-ny-times-fires-tech-writer-quinn-norton-and-its-complicated/</a>
<p style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: " exchange="Exchange" ssm="SSm" r="r" exchangeweb-roman="ExchangeWeb-Roman" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" word-break="word-break" normal="normal" word-wrap="word-wrap" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Tuesday afternoon, <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: " exchange="Exchange" ssm="SSm" i="i" exchangeweb-italic="ExchangeWeb-Italic" r="r" exchangeweb-roman="ExchangeWeb-Roman" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline">The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytco.com/quinn-norton-named-to-editorial-board/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px 0px 3px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(180, 231, 248); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background 0.15s cubic-bezier(0.33, 0.66, 0.66, 1); word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: rgb(180, 231, 248) 0px -4px 0px inset;">announced</a> it was hiring an opinion writer named Quinn Norton to write about “the power, culture, and consequences of technology.” Late Tuesday night, the <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: " exchange="Exchange" ssm="SSm" i="i" exchangeweb-italic="ExchangeWeb-Italic" r="r" exchangeweb-roman="ExchangeWeb-Roman" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline">Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/business/media/quinn-norton-new-york-times.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px 0px 3px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(180, 231, 248); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background 0.15s cubic-bezier(0.33, 0.66, 0.66, 1); word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: rgb(180, 231, 248) 0px -4px 0px inset;">fired</a> her.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: " exchange="Exchange" ssm="SSm" r="r" exchangeweb-roman="ExchangeWeb-Roman" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" word-break="word-break" normal="normal" word-wrap="word-wrap" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Norton, a writer-activist who covered, among other things, the Occupy and Anonymous movements for WIRED in the 2000s, has been an outspoken voice for hackers, the open-source and free-speech communities, and people working on digital security and privacy. She has been a chronicler and target of harassment online and in the physical world, and she was the romantic partner and friend of Aaron Swartz, the renowned coder and activist who committed suicide in the face of a federal investigation of his activities. Norton knows the field, in other words.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: " exchange="Exchange" ssm="SSm" r="r" exchangeweb-roman="ExchangeWeb-Roman" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" word-break="word-break" normal="normal" word-wrap="word-wrap" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">But even as congratulations-Twitter spun up for Norton, detective-Twitter did a double-take. People resurfaced old tweets in which Norton employed derogatory terms for African Americans and gay people—words I find difficult to even type, frankly, about which more in a moment—and writing where she evinced friendships with well-known neo-Nazis. This took all of a couple hours, and I’ve been on enough HR-related conference calls to imagine what kinds of meetings people at the <span style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: " exchange="Exchange" ssm="SSm" i="i" exchangeweb-italic="ExchangeWeb-Italic" r="r" exchangeweb-roman="ExchangeWeb-Roman" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline">Times were having: How did we miss this, does it matter, is she racist or is she just using racist words, we hired her because she’s connected and complicated…<p style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: " exchange="Exchange" ssm="SSm" r="r" exchangeweb-roman="ExchangeWeb-Roman" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" word-break="word-break" normal="normal" word-wrap="word-wrap" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Arguably one of the world’s experts on the ebb and flow of online communities, Norton didn’t exactly try to defend herself. The use of—oy, find me a better way to say this than “the N-word,” but OK—was part of an ill-conceived <a href="https://twitter.com/JPBarlow/status/3760544030" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px 0px 3px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(180, 231, 248); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background 0.15s cubic-bezier(0.33, 0.66, 0.66, 1); word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: rgb(180, 231, 248) 0px -4px 0px inset;">retweet of John Perry Barlow</a>, who was trying to make a point about racists. Those similarly foreclosed-upon words <a href="https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/357327809871491074" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px 0px 3px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(180, 231, 248); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background 0.15s cubic-bezier(0.33, 0.66, 0.66, 1); word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: rgb(180, 231, 248) 0px -4px 0px inset;">referring to gay people</a> were sometimes, Norton said, because she herself has been active in the queer community and were covered by in-group privilege, and sometimes because she was code-switching to the language of 4chan and other online groups that use vile epithets like cooks use salt.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: " exchange="Exchange" ssm="SSm" r="r" exchangeweb-roman="ExchangeWeb-Roman" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" word-break="word-break" normal="normal" word-wrap="word-wrap" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Complicated. And, as Norton is a journalist covering free-speech and privacy issues online, maybe this kind of language isn’t just allowed but appropriate. She’s speaking the language of the people she writes about.<div class="mid-banner-wrap" style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: " exchange="Exchange" ssm="SSm" r="r" exchangeweb-roman="ExchangeWeb-Roman" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div class="js-in-copy-mobile" style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" exchange="Exchange" ssm="SSm" r="r" exchangeweb-roman="ExchangeWeb-Roman" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" word-break="word-break" normal="normal" word-wrap="word-wrap" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">But what about the <a href="https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/517781588545794048" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px 0px 3px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(180, 231, 248); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background 0.15s cubic-bezier(0.33, 0.66, 0.66, 1); word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: rgb(180, 231, 248) 0px -4px 0px inset;">friends-with-Nazis</a> thing?<p style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" exchange="Exchange" ssm="SSm" r="r" exchangeweb-roman="ExchangeWeb-Roman" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" word-break="word-break" normal="normal" word-wrap="word-wrap" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">...<a href="https://www.alternet.org/new-york-times-latest-effort-appease-trump-voters-its-most-embarrassing-yet">https://www.alternet.org/new-york-times-latest-effort-appease-trump-voters-its-most-embarrassing-yet</a><div style="">=</div><div style=""><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-new-york-times-so-sympathetic-nazi-sympathizers">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-new-york-times-so-sympathetic-nazi-sympathizers</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""></div>=<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24102017/trump-pruitt-epa-press-office-attacked-reporter-lipton-ap-harvey">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24102017/trump-pruitt-epa-press-office-attacked-reporter-lipton-ap-harvey</a><div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded" style="box-sizing: inherit;">As The New York Times readied a story on the Environmental Protection Agency for last weekend's front page, an agency spokeswoman ignored the reporter's questions and accused him of writing "elitist clickbait."The jab, in an email that the newspaper quoted in its story, was just the latest in a series of attempts by the agency's press office to thwart reporters or attack their work—a strategy it appears to have adopted from <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/donald-trump" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Donald Trump</a>'s White House.The approach is a "sharp departure" from past practice, said Dan Fiorino, who worked for the agency for more than 30 years and is now director of the Center for Environmental Policy at American University."It's trying to manipulate journalists and favor those who say the right things," Fiorino said. "Now, what we're seeing from EPA is pretty much what we're seeing from the administration. The press people are there to sell a very particular point of view. They'll limit access."Regardless of whether the president was a Republican or a Democrat, or whether his regulatory agenda was friendly to environmentalists or to business interests, the agency's press office generally tried to appear neutral.When the EPA was still relatively young, its administrator—William Ruckelshaus, who was on a mission to rescue the agency from its own missteps—issued what's become known as the "fishbowl memo."The 1983 <a href="https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/ruckelshaus-takes-steps-improve-flow-agency-information-fishbowl-policy.html#memo" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Reagan-era memo</a> said the agency, long in the crosshairs of conservatives and regulated industries, would operate with as much transparency as it could to steer clear of controversy: "EPA will not accord privileged status to any special interest group, nor will it accept any recommendation without careful examination." At the frontline of that effort was the agency's press office. But today, former employees say, that press office handles an agency that's less like a fishbowl than a dark-windowed SUV.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">Attempts to Stem Information Flow</h3>The agency's brass-knuckle style comes at a time when it is under intense scrutiny for changing environmental and climate regulations in ways that favor coal and other fossil fuels. Among other things, it is swamped with demands for access to internal communications and other records.From its first days in office, the Trump administration has tried to stem the flow of information from the agency to the public. The blockades began right away in January, with reports that EPA employees were being told to <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bmd8ym/trump-has-barred-epa-staff-from-talking-to-the-press-vgtrn" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">stop talking to the press</a>. Reporters have been <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/346458-gop-senator-criticizes-pruitts-closed-door-meeting-in-north-dakota" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">barred from events</a>, and the agency has attacked journalists through press releases, while at the same time using press releases to <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/morewhat-they-are-saying-about-administrator-pruitt-0" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">promote its administrator</a>."If you care at all about how the public views your work, you would try to communicate with the reporters, who are largely in charge of disseminating the information," said Monica Lee, a former spokesperson during the Obama administration. "Instead, this press office relies on [EPA Administrator Scott] Pruitt's comments, made to a very specific audience or to very friendly reporters."This press office's efforts accompany a broader attempt at tamping down the work of <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">climate</a> scientists at the agency and stripping mentions of their work and of climate change <a href="https://envirodatagov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/AAR-5-EPA-State-Local-Climate-Energy-171018.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">from EPA websites</a>. Earlier this year, the agency <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08052017/epa-science-advisory-board-dismissed-scott-pruitt-donald-trump" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">dismissed members</a> of its Board of Science Counselors, and last week <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/scott-pruitt" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Pruitt</a> said <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/10/17/scott-pruitt-suggests-he-will-restrict-scientists-who-get-epa-grants-from-advising-the-agency/?utm_term=.3eb69e6c0d37" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">he would issue a directive</a> to bar scientists who received EPA grants from serving on EPA advisory boards because he believed the grants represent conflicts of interest.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.333;">Personal Attacks on Reporters</h3>The latest in a string of controversies came this weekend when The Times ran a<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/us/trump-epa-chemicals-regulations.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;"> front-page story</a> chronicling efforts by a top-level EPA appointee to downplay the risks of toxic chemicals. Before taking the job in May, the appointee, Nancy Beck, had been an executive for five years at the American Chemistry Council, which provides policy, communications and research for <a href="https://www.americanchemistry.com/Membership/MemberCompanies/#Regular%20Members" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">major chemical companies</a>, including Arkema, DuPont and Monsanto.Times reporter Eric Lipton asked the EPA and Beck for responses to a list of questions. EPA spokeswoman <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/epas-top-staff-filled-with-coal-and-oil-industry-connections-2017-6" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">Liz Bowman</a>—who also worked at the American Chemistry Council, as director of issue and advocacy communications, before joining Pruitt's EPA—replied in an email: "No matter how much information we give you, you would never write a fair piece. The only thing inappropriate and biased is your continued fixation on writing elitist clickbait trying to attack qualified professionals committed to serving their country."The response has shocked former press officers."Blatantly attacking reporters and giving responses that are incredibly critical personally—it may help your base and it may fire them up, but it in no way serves the broader American people," said Liz Purchia, who ran the press office under Obama.A month earlier, the agency tore into an Associated Press reporter, Michael Biesecker, for a story he and a colleague wrote about Superfund sites being under water in Texas after Hurricane Harvey. Biesecker, the agency said in an official <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-response-aps-misleading-story" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">press release</a>, "has a history of not letting the facts get in the way of his story." The story, written by reporters who visited the sites after the hurricane, was correct, and the <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/after-slamming-ap-reporter-toxic-waste-story-epa-finds-damage-site-674789" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">EPA later acknowledged damage there.</a>The press office under Obama hewed to standards outlined in its <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-02/documents/scientific_integrity_policy_2012.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">scientific integrity policy</a>, which refers to the "fishbowl memo," which has essentially guided conduct since its release 34 years ago."That is the ethos," Fiorini said.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">What's Required by Law?</h3>By law, the EPA <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=bQA7AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=%22office+of+public+affairs%22+epa+public+procedure&source=bl&ots=tGQrNUNMta&sig=wghapCNbK1xXEwHWDeh3dPbTzW0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiA9ZaPlofXAhVs5IMKHS6CCH8Q6AEIWDAJ#v=onepage&q=%22office%20of%20public%20affairs%22%20epa%20public%20procedure&f=false" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">is required to have</a> an Office of Public Affairs, which is "responsible for providing newsworthy information to the various communications media." Beyond that, an administration can release information how it wants, although it has to respond to requests for information by Congress or under the Freedom of Information Act."I'm not aware of any legal issues," Fiorino said, referring to the current press office. "But certainly, ethically and in terms of what you'd expect in a democracy, there are some real problems. This is a real sharp departure from what we've seen in the past."The Obama administration's EPA press office got a rap on the knuckles from the Government Accountability Office in 2015 <a href="http://www.gao.gov/products/B-326944" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">for a social media campaign</a> to drum up support for a Clean Water Act rule. It was accused of violating propaganda and anti-lobbying rules."Historically, the press office at EPA, the public information people, get the information out there, and to some degree you want to put the administration, the people making decisions, in a good light," Fiorino said. "This administration is trying to create reality in a way that fits its view. That's really scary."The EPA did not respond to questions for this story.</div></div></div></div><table border="0" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1504712316897_24567" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-break: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); width: 524px;"><tbody id="yui_3_16_0_1_1504712316897_24566" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; width: 524px;"><tr id="yui_3_16_0_1_1504712316897_24565" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;"><td id="yui_3_16_0_1_1504712316897_24564" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; border-spacing: 2px; line-height: 21px;">The Grey Lady can do betterWhat is going on at The New York Times? The paper of record <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://action.mediamatters.org/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fblog%2F2017%2F08%2F29%2Fny-times-brings-trump-pivot-nonsense-harvey%2F217796&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=93wea&n=11" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">inexplicably bought into</a> Trump pivot nonsense in regards to Hurricane Harvey. They were one of several outlets who <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://action.mediamatters.org/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fblog%2F2017%2F08%2F30%2Fwhat-media-are-getting-wrong-about-trump-mattis-and-transgender-troop-ban%2F217808&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=93wea&n=12" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">got it wrong</a> when it came to Trump's transgender military ban. They've <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://action.mediamatters.org/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fblog%2F2017%2F06%2F06%2FFour-ways-the-NY-Times-botched-climate-change-and-Paris-coverage-%2F216802&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=93wea&n=13" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">consistently undermined</a> their own coverage of climate change. They also <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://action.mediamatters.org/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fblog%2F2017%2F08%2F30%2Fstop-giving-erik-prince-op-ed-space-talk-hiring-mercenaries%2F217806&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=93wea&n=14" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">published</a> an op-ed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince calling for a taxpayer funded army of mercenaries in Afghanistan.</td></tr></tbody></table><div style=""></div><div style="">perhaps minor fails? patterns? fodder?</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""><a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/new-york-times-grovels-right-wing-and-other-despicable-media-moments-week">http://www.alternet.org/media/new-york-times-grovels-right-wing-and-other-despicable-media-moments-week</a></div><div style="">
</div><div style="">agw hurricane harvey, nyt stephens [50 min total last year?]</div><div style="">
</div><div style=""> ABC and NBC ignore climate change’s role in extreme weather events.As Media Matters <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/08/31/So-far-major-broadcast-networks-are-failing-to-note-the-link-between-Harvey-and-climate-ch/217816" style="text-decoration-line: none;">notes</a>, of the three major news networks, only CBS has bothered to point out the glaring, existential threat of climate change in the context of Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Houston earlier this week. CBS aired three segments that addressed the connection: one on CBS This Morning and two featuring environmental engineering professor Jim Blackburn; an <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/embed/clips/2017/09/01/55759/cbs-cbseveningnews-20170830-harveyclimate" style="text-decoration-line: none;">August 30 episode</a> of CBS Evening News and an <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/embed/clips/2017/09/01/55758/cbs-cbsthismorning-20170831-harveyclimate" style="text-decoration-line: none;">August 31</a> episode of CBS This Morning. As of Thursday, neither ABC nor NBC bothered to mention climate change, instead settling on routine disaster porn and personal interest stories2. Washington Post casually calls Venezuela an 'enemy of the U.S.'For some reason editors at the Washington Post decided to call Venezuela “an enemy of the U.S.,” which is odd considering Venezuela has never done anything to harm the United State.<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Venezuela, enemy of the U.S., offered $5 million in aid to Harvey victims <a href="https://t.co/gUTmyiBKVO" style="text-decoration-line: none;">https://t.co/gUTmyiBKVO</a></blockquote><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) <a href="https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/903070340754104320" style="text-decoration-line: none;">August 31, 2017</a></blockquote>The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/08/30/venezuela-enemy-of-the-u-s-offered-5-million-in-aid-to-harvey-victims/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.668a2f6c7919" style="text-decoration-line: none;">article</a> in question was actually noting aid Venezuela offered to Harvey victims this week, but according to the Post, this was just a devious plot (unlike American aid, which is purely benevolent). It described the offer with the dystopian phrase “trolling U.S. leaders with kindness.” Evidence for why Venezuela is an “enemy" was never made clear in the article, but the headline was later changed to something less nakedly ideological.3. World’s coppiest reporter snitches to police during national disaster.Oh boy, did ABC News’ Tom Llamas have a bad day on Twitter Wednesday. After <a href="http://www.thewrap.com/tom-llamas-abc-news-snitching-hurricane-harvey-looting-loote/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">posting a tweet</a> saying, “We informed police of the looting and Coast Guard is flying overhead. Multiple officers now on the scene,” he was righteously piled on by thousands of Twitter users for snitching to the police in a time of emergency. “F*k off, snitch,” Baffler editor Brandy Jensen <a href="https://twitter.com/BrandyLJensen/status/902578666831564805" style="text-decoration-line: none;">tweeted</a>.“In a disaster scenario the first response should be helping those in need, not criminalizing them,” another user insisted. All in all it was ugly; Llamas eventually deleted the tweet and tried some half-baked excuse about how there was “a body nearby,” but no one really bought it. From there it just got worse. After many failed attempts, he finally learned the first rule of handling social media pile-ons: log off.4. What the hell is going on with the New York Times opinion section?In a week of uniquely terrible takes, the New York Times was the unexpected winner for worst takes in the shortest period of time. In one 72-hour period, it published op-eds by neocon hatchet man James Kirtrick <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/opinion/transgender-trump-chelsea-manning.html?mcubz=3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">bashing Chelsea Manning</a>; an infomercial by suspected war criminal and former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/opinion/erik-prince-contractors-afghanistan.html?mcubz=3" style="text-decoration-line: none;">shilling his wares in Afghanistan</a>; <a href="https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/902922946972397571" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">racist victim blaming</a> of Arabs by Thomas Friedman; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/opinion/trump-identity-politics.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fdavid-brooks&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">gross GOP revisionism by David Brooks</a> insisting “racism was not a common feature in the conservative moment”; <a href="https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/31/opinion/hurricanes-climate-capitalists-wealth-.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">veiled climate change denial</a> by columnist Bret Stephens; and a tedious AM radio <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/opinion/cultural-appropriation.html?mcubz=3" style="text-decoration-line: none;">screed against cultural appropriation</a> by <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/08/31/nyts-newest-op-ed-hire-bari-weiss-embodies-its-worst-failings-and-its-lack-of-viewpoint-diversity/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Bari Weiss</a>. The Times insisted it had hired neoconservative Bret Stephens from the Wall Street Journal  because it values “ideological diversity,” which evidently means it really just wanted to seek out more odious far-right-wing viewpoints.</div><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/08/29/how-exxon-used-new-york-times-make-you-question-climate-science">https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/08/29/how-exxon-used-new-york-times-make-you-question-climate-science</a>A breakthrough study from Harvard unearths the extent Exxon has gone to in order to destroy the public's trust in climate change science.Last week, Harvard University researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes (of <a href="http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Merchants of Doubt</a> fame) published the first peer-reviewed study comparing <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ExxonMobil’s internal and external communications on climate change</a>.The abstract of the Supran and Oreskes study shows that ExxonMobil’s own scientists and executives had a much sharper understanding of climate science than the company told the public (emphasis added):<blockquote style="margin: 1.5em 30px;">“Accounting for expressions of reasonable doubt, 83 percent of peer-reviewed papers and 80 percent of internal documents acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, yet only 12 percent of advertorials do so, with 81 percent instead expressing doubt. We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science — by way of its scientists’ academic publications — but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this discrepancy, we conclude that ExxonMobil misled the public.”</blockquote>As the Harvard authors <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f/pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">credit</a>, the advertorials came from a <a href="http://polluterwatch.org/blog/exxons-decades-advertising-against-climate-change" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">study published on PolluterWatch</a> by our former colleague at Greenpeace, Cindy Baxter.Cindy republished many of <a href="http://www.polluterwatch.org/exxon-and-mobil-ads" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ExxonMobil’s New York Times advertorials</a> back in 2015. This was right as investigative reporters at InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed the extent of <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/exxon-and-the-oil-industry-knew-about-climate-change/exxons-climate-denial-history-a-timeline/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">knowledge among Exxon’s own scientists</a> that burning fossil fuels caused unnatural global warming.With these revelations in mind, Cindy recalled a peer-reviewed study in the journal Public Relations Review on “advertorials” or “op-ads” that Mobil Oil paid to have published in the New York Times. The authors of that study, Clyde Brown and Herbert Waltzer, reviewed 819 <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0363811105000561" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">New York Times advertorials that Mobil placed “every Thursday”</a> from 1985 to 2000.Using a subscription database called ProQuest, Greenpeace found that Exxon and Mobil’s op-ads went back at least as far as 1974, and continued until at least 2004. This was years after Exxon and Mobil merged to form the world’s largest non-government oil corporation in 1999. Combined with evidence published by reporters showing the degree to which Exxon and Mobil’s own scientists understood the global warming phenomenon and its root in human fossil fuel combustion, the advertorials take on new meaning.These oil companies were not as naive or uncertain as they long pretended to be, up until the point that denying the science was no longer possible. It turns out, they knew the entire time, and they appear to have intentionally deceived the public.Here are some of the ExxonMobil advertorials that Greenpeace published in 2015:
<div id="DC-note-371290" style=""><div class="DC-note " data-version="1.1" style="position: relative; padding: 0.5em; margin: 2em 0px; border: 1px solid rgb(235, 235, 235); box-shadow: rgb(80, 80, 80) 0px 0px 40px inset; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 14pt; background-color: white; background-size: 100%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center center; box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url(" https="https" assets.documentcloud.org="assets.documentcloud.org" documents="documents" pages="pages" xom-nyt-1999-12-9-2mrw-energy-p1-normal.gif="xom-nyt-1999-12-9-2mrw-energy-p1-normal.gif"><div class="DC-note-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 1; margin: 0.5em auto 1em; padding: 0px 0.5em; max-width: 44.44em;"><a class="DC-note-embed-resource" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/705598-xom-nyt-1999-12-9-2mrw-energy.html#document/p1/a371290" target="blank" title="View the note 'Tomorrow's energy needs (first ExxonMobil advertorial after corporate merger)' in its original document context on DocumentCloud in a new window or tab" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.25em 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.25em 0px 0px; -webkit-box-decoration-break: clone;">TOMORROW'S ENERGY NEEDS (FIRST EXXONMOBIL ADVERTORIAL AFTER CORPORATE MERGER) (p. 1)</a></div><div class="DC-note-image-max-bounds" style="box-sizing: content-box; position: relative; z-index: 1; overflow: hidden; margin: 0.5em auto; border: 2px solid rgb(255, 227, 37); border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25) 0px 0px 7px; transition: border-color 150ms ease, box-shadow 150ms ease; max-height: 982px; max-width: 696px;"><div class="DC-note-image-aspect-ratio" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; overflow: hidden; height: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 982px;"><a class="DC-note-image-link DC-note-image-space-filler" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/705598-xom-nyt-1999-12-9-2mrw-energy.html#document/p1/a371290" target="blank" title="View the note 'Tomorrow's energy needs (first ExxonMobil advertorial after corporate merger)' in its original document context on DocumentCloud in a new window or tab" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 0px; position: absolute; width: 696px; height: 982px; top: 0px; left: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; display: block;"><img class="DC-note-image" width="696" height="982" src="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/705598/pages/xom-nyt-1999-12-9-2mrw-energy-p1-normal.gif" alt="Selected portion of a source document hosted by DocumentCloud" style="border: 0px !important; max-width: none !important; height: auto; width: 700px; box-sizing: border-box; position: absolute; margin: 0px !important; outline: 0px !important; max-height: none !important; display: block !important; top: -66px; left: -6px;" /></a></div></div><div class="DC-note-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 1; padding: 0.25em 0.5em; margin: 0.5em auto 0px; max-width: 40em;">This was the first New York Times advertorial placed by ExxonMobil the week after Exxon and Mobil merged to form one corporation.</div><div class="DC-note-credit" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 1; margin: 0.25em 0.25em 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/705598-xom-nyt-1999-12-9-2mrw-energy.html#document/p1/a371290" target="blank" title="View the note 'Tomorrow's energy needs (first ExxonMobil advertorial after corporate merger)' in its original document context on DocumentCloud in a new window or tab" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 0px;">View the entire document with DocumentCloud</a></div><div class="DC-note-background-fader" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: absolute; width: 824px; height: 1123.28px; top: 0px; left: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; z-index: 0; opacity: 0.93;">
“<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/705605-xom-nyt-2000-3-23-unsettledscience.html" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Unsettled Science</a>” – From 2000, this advertorial clearly downplays ExxonMobil’s internal understanding of climate change science:<div class="DC-embed DC-embed-note DC-note-container" id="DC-note-241889" style=""><div class="DC-note " data-version="1.1" style="position: relative; padding: 0.5em; margin: 2em 0px; border: 1px solid rgb(235, 235, 235); box-shadow: rgb(80, 80, 80) 0px 0px 40px inset; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 14pt; background-color: white; background-size: 100%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center center; box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url(" https="https" assets.documentcloud.org="assets.documentcloud.org" documents="documents" pages="pages" xom-nyt-2000-3-23-unsettledscience-p1-normal.gif="xom-nyt-2000-3-23-unsettledscience-p1-normal.gif"><div class="DC-note-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 1; margin: 0.5em auto 1em; padding: 0px 0.5em; max-width: 44.44em;"><a class="DC-note-embed-resource" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/705605-xom-nyt-2000-3-23-unsettledscience.html#document/p1/a241889" target="blank" title="View the note 'Unsettled Science - ExxonMobil ad - 2000' in its original document context on DocumentCloud in a new window or tab" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.25em 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.25em 0px 0px; -webkit-box-decoration-break: clone;">UNSETTLED SCIENCE - EXXONMOBIL AD - 2000 (p. 1)</a></div><div class="DC-note-image-max-bounds" style="box-sizing: content-box; position: relative; z-index: 1; overflow: hidden; margin: 0.5em auto; border: 2px solid rgb(255, 227, 37); border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25) 0px 0px 7px; transition: border-color 150ms ease, box-shadow 150ms ease; max-height: 937px; max-width: 692px;"><div class="DC-note-image-aspect-ratio" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; overflow: hidden; height: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 936.984px;"><a class="DC-note-image-link DC-note-image-space-filler" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/705605-xom-nyt-2000-3-23-unsettledscience.html#document/p1/a241889" target="blank" title="View the note 'Unsettled Science - ExxonMobil ad - 2000' in its original document context on DocumentCloud in a new window or tab" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 0px; position: absolute; width: 692px; height: 936.984px; top: 0px; left: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; display: block;"><img class="DC-note-image" width="692" height="937" src="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/705605/pages/xom-nyt-2000-3-23-unsettledscience-p1-normal.gif" alt="Selected portion of a source document hosted by DocumentCloud" style="border: 0px !important; max-width: none !important; height: auto; width: 700px; box-sizing: border-box; position: absolute; margin: 0px !important; outline: 0px !important; max-height: none !important; display: block !important; top: -58.9844px; left: -5px;" /></a></div></div><div class="DC-note-credit" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 1; margin: 0.25em 0.25em 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/705605-xom-nyt-2000-3-23-unsettledscience.html#document/p1/a241889" target="blank" title="View the note 'Unsettled Science - ExxonMobil ad - 2000' in its original document context on DocumentCloud in a new window or tab" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 0px;">View the entire document with DocumentCloud</a></div><div class="DC-note-background-fader" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: absolute; width: 824px; height: 1014.95px; top: 0px; left: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; z-index: 0; opacity: 0.93;">

“<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2080755-xom-2004-jan-21-climate-research-directions.html#document/p1/a241899" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Directions for Climate Research</a>” – From 2004, Exxon used the classic “we need more research” delay tactic. This was eight years after thousands of scientists in the scientifically-conservative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released findings from its Second Assessment Report in 1995, which warned policymakers that humans pushed the climate beyond so far beyond its natural boundaries that we may not be able to reverse the trend. As the IPCC reports became more dire, Exxon engaged front groups, lobbyists, and politicians to <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Greenpeace_Dealing-in-Doubt-1.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">attack the science itself</a>.<div class="DC-embed DC-embed-note DC-note-container" id="DC-note-241899" style=""><div class="DC-note " data-version="1.1" style="position: relative; padding: 0.5em; margin: 2em 0px; border: 1px solid rgb(235, 235, 235); box-shadow: rgb(80, 80, 80) 0px 0px 40px inset; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 14pt; background-color: white; background-size: 100%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center center; box-sizing: border-box; background-image: url(" https="https" assets.documentcloud.org="assets.documentcloud.org" documents="documents" pages="pages" xom-2004-jan-21-climate-research-directions-p1-normal.gif="xom-2004-jan-21-climate-research-directions-p1-normal.gif"><div class="DC-note-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 1; margin: 0.5em auto 1em; padding: 0px 0.5em; max-width: 44.44em;"><a class="DC-note-embed-resource" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2080755-xom-2004-jan-21-climate-research-directions.html#document/p1/a241899" target="blank" title="View the note 'Directions for climate research - ExxonMobil ad - 2004' in its original document context on DocumentCloud in a new window or tab" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0.25em 0px 0px, rgb(255, 255, 255) -0.25em 0px 0px; -webkit-box-decoration-break: clone;">DIRECTIONS FOR CLIMATE RESEARCH - EXXONMOBIL AD - 2004 (p. 1)</a></div><div class="DC-note-image-max-bounds" style="box-sizing: content-box; position: relative; z-index: 1; overflow: hidden; margin: 0.5em auto; border: 2px solid rgb(255, 227, 37); border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25) 0px 0px 7px; transition: border-color 150ms ease, box-shadow 150ms ease; max-height: 760px; max-width: 510px;"><div class="DC-note-image-aspect-ratio" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; overflow: hidden; height: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding-bottom: 760px;"><a class="DC-note-image-link DC-note-image-space-filler" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2080755-xom-2004-jan-21-climate-research-directions.html#document/p1/a241899" target="blank" title="View the note 'Directions for climate research - ExxonMobil ad - 2004' in its original document context on DocumentCloud in a new window or tab" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 0px; position: absolute; width: 510px; height: 760px; top: 0px; left: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; display: block;"><img class="DC-note-image" width="510" height="760" src="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2080755/pages/xom-2004-jan-21-climate-research-directions-p1-normal.gif" alt="Selected portion of a source document hosted by DocumentCloud" style="border: 0px !important; max-width: none !important; height: auto; width: 700px; box-sizing: border-box; position: absolute; margin: 0px !important; outline: 0px !important; max-height: none !important; display: block !important; top: -74px; left: -99px;" /></a></div></div><div class="DC-note-credit" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; z-index: 1; margin: 0.25em 0.25em 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2080755-xom-2004-jan-21-climate-research-directions.html#document/p1/a241899" target="blank" title="View the note 'Directions for climate research - ExxonMobil ad - 2004' in its original document context on DocumentCloud in a new window or tab" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-bottom: 0px;">View the entire document with DocumentCloud</a></div><div class="DC-note-background-fader" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: absolute; width: 824px; height: 837.969px; top: 0px; left: 0px; right: 0px; bottom: 0px; z-index: 0; opacity: 0.93;">

More examples are available in our <a href="http://www.polluterwatch.org/exxon-and-mobil-ads" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">archive of ExxonMobil advertorials </a>on PolluterWatch.
scalise shooting<a href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/new-york-times-shamefully-smears-bernie-sanders-its-latest-lurch-right">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/new-york-times-shamefully-smears-bernie-sanders-its-latest-lurch-right</a>What is going on at The New York Times?As Trump took office, the NY Times sold subscriptions on opposing "alternate facts." Since then, the NY Times <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://action.mediamatters.org/r?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmm4a.org%2F2nKbuMK&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=514weeklya&n=17" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1494695926856_54109" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">has hired</a> an Iraq War supporter who also is a climate change denier. Bret Stephens' first column at the paper was <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://action.mediamatters.org/r?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmm4a.org%2F2qv0EYK&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=514weeklya&n=18" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1494695926856_54099" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">full of climate change misinformation</a>. After the paper earlier this year <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://action.mediamatters.org/r?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmm4a.org%2F2ou7Dms&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=514weeklya&n=19" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">fueled lies about abortion</a>, this week the Times op-ed page <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://action.mediamatters.org/r?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmm4a.org%2F2qsJb6v&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=514weeklya&n=20" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">again gave space</a> to an anti-abortion group to push blatant propaganda. And it's not just the opinion page. The NY Times' public editor has also <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://action.mediamatters.org/r?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmm4a.org%2F2nwaIT9&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=514weeklya&n=21" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1494695926856_54107" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">fallen for an "alt-right" hoax</a>, and a NY Times reporter <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://action.mediamatters.org/r?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmm4a.org%2F2q8m1Ci&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=514weeklya&n=22" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1494695926856_54106" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">also downplayed</a>historic anti-Trump activism. In a  time like this, Americans needs the paper of record to do a substantially better job. This isn't cutting it.punked by a bot?
http://www.sfexaminer.com/searching-proof-amy/There’s a powerhouse advocate of President Donald Trump on Twitter. She doesn’t hold back.She has 144,000 Twitter followers and tweets about 26 times a day.Her name is “Amy,” according to her Twitter bio, and she is solidly pro-Trump. She tweets a lot of negative comments about Muslims. And Democrats. She also tweets in support of the NRA and other politically conservative causes. And last year, The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/opinion/campaign-stops/the-women-who-like-donald-trump.html?r=0" target="blank" style="background: transparent; text-decoration: none;">quoted</a> “Amy” in a piece about Trump’s female supporters.https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/opinion/campaign-stops/the-women-who-like-donald-trump.html?r=0...<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/new-york-times-hires-climate-denier-2379607444.html">http://www.ecowatch.com/new-york-times-hires-climate-denier-2379607444.html</a><div class="headline-container" style="margin: 0px; padding: 10px 12px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 22px;">New York Times Defends Hiring Climate Science Denier</h1></div><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px;"><div class="article-body body js-expandable sm-mb-2 md-mb-4 js-update-url selectionShareable" data-url="http://www.ecowatch.com/new-york-times-hires-climate-denier-2379607444.html" data-headline="New York Times Defends Hiring Climate Science Denier" data-elid="2379607444" style="margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px 12px;"><div class="article-description" style="margin-bottom: 20px;">By Graham ReadfearnThe New York Times has been defending the paper's hiring of a <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-denier" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">climate science denier</a>, fighting off its critics with what it claims is a standard fashioned from hardened "intellectual honesty."The controversial hire in question is that of <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/bret-stephens" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Bret Stephens</a>, formerly of the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/the-wall-street-journal-climate-change-denial-and-the-galileo-gambit-1882199616.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Wall Street Journal</a>, who has joined the New York Times as a columnist and deputy editorial page editor.While at the Wall Street Journal, Stephens consistently undermined and disparaged <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">climate change</a>, one time describing it as an "<a href="https://www.ff.org/liberalisms-imaginary-enemies/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">imaginary enemy</a>" and another comparing it to religion with a "<a href="https://fcpp.org/2011/11/29/the-great-global-warming-fizzle-the-climate-religion-fades-in-spasms-of-anger-and-twitches-of-boredom/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen</a>."<div id="AdThrive_Content_1_desktop" class="adthrive-ad adthrive-dynamic adthrive-content" data-google-query-id="CMWX19zgwtMCFVGyTwodF4UHCA" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-align: center; overflow-x: visible !important;"><div id="google_ads_iframe_18190176/AdThrive_Content_1/58d2e52b44e6236dc5819ee2_0container" style="border: 0pt none;"></div></div>Stephens' new boss, editorial page editor James Bennett, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/public-editor/seeking-more-voices-even-if-some-dont-want-to-hear-them.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">told the paper's public editor Liz Spayd</a>: "The crux of the question is whether his work belongs inside our boundaries for intelligent debate and I have no doubt that it does. I have no doubt he crosses our bar for intellectual honesty and fairness."Suffice to say, there are plenty who disagree. One <a href="https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira/status/852975570748964865" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">climate scientist has already canceled his subscription</a> in protest, with others watching closely.No doubt that Stephens can write—he won a <a href="http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/bret-stephens" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Pulitzer in 2012 for lots of opinions on stuff other than climate</a>.But like other conservative columnists admired for their poetic prose and strident opinions while attacking climate change, the methods used by Stephens might be compared to those of a fake chef producing a lumpy and unsatisfying word soup.Crap SoupThere's no real care with the preparation and no quality control over the freshness or blending of the ingredients, but these indiscretions are suitably masked with enough flavor-enhancers to give some short-term satisfaction to unsuspecting diners/readers.But the New York Times should probably be serving up something far more substantial than crap soup and three-day-old bread to its massive audience.Let's take, for example, a <a href="https://www.ff.org/liberalisms-imaginary-enemies/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">November 2015 column</a> which Stephens wrote in the build up to the United Nations <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">climate negotiations in Paris</a>.Stephens wrote that a trend in rising global temperatures was "imperceptible" and that the "hysteria" around climate change ignored how this trend could be "a product of natural variation."There is a mountain of evidence that global warming is not caused by "natural fluctuations" and this evidence has been in existence for decades. To suggest that it isn't, would be to fall below any bar of intellectual honesty erected in the newsroom of the New York Times or in any science academy around the globe.In the same column, Stephens chose to highlight "the hyping of flimsy studies—melting Himalayan glaciers; vanishing polar ice" that he said were being used to push a political viewpoint.Stephens was referring to an error on Himalayan glaciers buried away in a UN report, while choosing to ignore the <a href="http://wgms.ch/latest-glacier-mass-balance-data/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">decades-long trend of melting that has been recorded at glaciers all over the planet</a>.Climate Agnostic?<div id="AdThrive_Content_2_desktop" class="adthrive-ad adthrive-dynamic adthrive-content" data-google-query-id="CMaX19zgwtMCFVGyTwodF4UHCA" style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-align: center; overflow-x: visible !important;"><div id="google_ads_iframe_18190176/AdThrive_Content_2/58d2e52b44e6236dc5819ee2_0container" style="border: 0pt none;">Stephens himself has told <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/bret-stephens-new-york-times_us_58f12c80e4b0b9e9848bed3e" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Huffington Post</a> that he's an "agnostic" on climate change and said while it "seems" the weight of scientific evidence points to human causes for global warming, that evidence might be wrong because "the history of science is replete with consensus positions that have evolved."</div></div>Now, the New York Times' own defense of its hiring of Stephens is almost as redundant as the arguments that Stephens borrows from climate science deniers.In an interview with the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/bret-stephens-new-york-times_us_58f12c80e4b0b9e9848bed3e" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Huffington Post</a>, the New York Time's Bennett said there was "more than one kind of denial.""And to pretend like the views of a thinker like Bret and the millions of people who agree with him on a range of issues, should simply be ignored, that they're outside the bounds of reasonable debate, is a really dangerous form of delusion," he said.Let's think about what the New York Times opinion page might look like if we based it on the beliefs of millions of Americans.According to <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/16915/Three-Four-Americans-Believe-Paranormal.aspx?g_source=paranormal&g_medium=search&g_campaign=tiles" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Gallup polling data</a>, some 20 percent of Americans believe in witches, which is roughly half the number of people who think extrasensory perception is actually a thing.A <a href="http://www.theharrispoll.com/health-and-life/American-Teens-No-Longer-More-Likely-than-Adults-to-Believe-In-God.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">poll conducted by Harris in 2016</a> found that two out of five Americans think ghosts are real. Belief in evolution? That's at 49 percent. Creationism? Some 37 percent are down with that.Lizard people controlling societies? One in 25 Americans fear their presence, but where's their representation in the New York Times editorials?Arguing that someone should be hired to the editorial desk of one of the world's most influential newspapers because "millions of people" hold a particular belief is a clear path to supporting the sort of delusional thinking that has more <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/16915/Three-Four-Americans-Believe-Paranormal.aspx?g_source=paranormal&g_medium=search&g_campaign=tiles" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Americans believing in the paranormal</a> than <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/04/public-views-on-climate-change-and-climate-scientists/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">accepting that climate change is mostly human-caused</a>.That 1970s Cooling MythOpinions are worth printing when they're based on the preponderance of credible evidence, not the self-interests of fossil fuel–funded "fellows" at so-called think tanks or the whimsy of attention-seeking contrarians.In an August 2011 interview on Fox News Business, Stephens told viewers "in the 1970s we were supposed to believe in global cooling."Were we? Well, if you want to base your intellectually robust opinion on a moldy-old myth based on a couple of 1970s news items, then fine.Alternatively, read a <a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">2008 review of science papers published between 1965 and 1979</a> finding that only seven papers were predicting cooling against 44 saying temperatures would rise.Also in that interview, Stephens lauded an essay by the late author Michael Crichton that attacked the consensus on global warming.In that <a href="http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">essay, based on a lecture</a>, Crichton said: "Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had."So let's just stop a second and think about what Crichton was advocating here.The consensus of medical science says smoking will massively increase your risk of getting cancer and heart disease, even if you can't say exactly which cigarette killed your wheezy relative. You're being had, folks.Crichton was putting up a straw man argument—that science is done by consensus—in order to then attack it.Climate ConsensusWhen people talk about a consensus on the causes of climate change, they're describing the collective findings of thousands of peer-reviewed articles published in leading scientific journals over decades using multiple methods from a diverse set of observations.The consensus that climate change is caused by humans comes from the long-studied physical properties of greenhouse gases to the measurements of warming oceans, the atmosphere and the places on the planet where there is or was, ice.Don't get me wrong here, folks. You're free to choose a glib sound bite from a science fiction writer based on a misrepresentation of the concept of scientific consensus.But take care not to be had by charlatans promising to chat to your very dead Aunty Betty or save your soul from the claws of the lizard people.I think it might be time someone broke into the editorial office of the New York Times and raised that bar of intellectual honesty.Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/04/25/new-york-times-defends-hiring-climate-science-denier-bret-stephens-claiming-intellectual-honesty" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">DeSmogBlog</a>.</div></div>wapo and nyt broke sessions ruskies_{neo-nics}<p style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px none; margin: 0px 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" droid="Droid" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" px="px">It’s a powerful message, one that the public and the media should reflect upon—including the leadership at the Times itself. Whether a journalist presents a story in good faith but wrongly can be a matter of healthy debate. But increasingly, a more troubling ethical line is being crossed: some writers choose to arrange facts, or even invent them, in ways that erase nuances to advance a storyline arrived at before independent reporting even commences. That leaves editors as the public’s last bastion of integrity. But to fulfill their responsibility, editors need to be aware of their own biases, or they risk crossing over from being guardians of the truth to creators of biased or even fake news.<p style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px none; margin: 0px 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" droid="Droid" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" px="px">Which brings us to the New York Times’ coverage of food and farming issues, most recently its reporting of what has come to be known in recent years as “beemageddon”— concerns that one of nature’s most important pollinators, the bee, faces a precarious future.<p style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px none; margin: 0px 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" droid="Droid" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" px="px">Are bees facing extinction as many environmental advocacy groups and some scientists claim? Are neonicotinoid pesticides the key reason behind their health problems, as many activists, and the Times, suggest?<p style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px none; margin: 0px 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" droid="Droid" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" px="px">Times’ Michael Pollan on presenting only one side of complex issues<p style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px none; margin: 0px 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" droid="Droid" serif="serif" line-height="line-height" px="px">Covering food and modern farming has not been the Times strong point. Journalist and foodie MIchael Pollan’s articles on the virtues of organic food and the dangers of ‘industrialized agriculture’ have been a Times’ staple since the early 2000s. In 2013, he <a href="https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/10/22/michael-pollan-brags-about-twisting-facts-to-support-anti-gmo-activism-and-duping-credulous-new-york-times/" target="blank" style="background: none 0px 0px repeat scroll transparent; border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">bragged in a video interview</a> with a fellow activist that he long has exploited the willingness of his editors to forego traditional vetting because they share his anti-industry perspective. View the video here:sort of punked by desire to leverage sorta social network / crowdsource?<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/glenn-beck-thinks-the-womens-march-was-george-sorosradical-islam-astroturf</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Glenn Beck opened his radio show today by attacking the media for failing to report that last weekend’s massive <a href="https://www.womensmarch.com/" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">Women’s March on Washington</a> was nothing more than an “astroturf” rally orchestrated by George Soros and radical Islamic groups.[trms hi % trump ppl believe]<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Beck heaped praise on <a href="http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2017/01/20/billionaire-george-soros-has-ties-to-more-than-50-partners-of-the-womens-march-on-washington/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">a piece</a> on the New York Times website by Asra Nomani, a self-described liberal Muslim who has previously said that she <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2016/11/10/im-a-muslim-a-woman-and-an-immigrant-i-voted-for-trump/?utm_term=.70d747a74e96" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">voted for Donald Trump</a> because <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/11/muslim_reform_movement_founder_i_dont_fear_donald_trump_i_fear_islamic_extremists.html" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">she believes</a> that “the liberals and the left have really betrayed America” when it comes to fighting Islamic extremism, who claimed that “<span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;">Soros has funded, or has close relationships” with dozens of organization that participated in or supported the march. [<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;">Update: The piece was not actually posted on the Times’ website, but rather, as the NYT’s public editor <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/public-editor/times-affiliated-story-praise-glenn-beck-liz-spayd-public-editor.html?r=1" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">explained</a>, it was posted “on a site affiliated with The Times — but completely distinct from the paper — called Women in the World … The Times is a business investor in Women in the World and provides the website’s digital platform, but the two have separate editorial operations.”]<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">“I’m afraid tomorrow I have to go back to my chalkboard,” Beck said. “We’ve been working on it this weekend. We’re going to give you some of the connections, we’re going to talk to the woman who wrote that article for The New York Times about the connections to George Soros and to radical Islam and have a talk with her. Tomorrow I’m bringing the chalkboard in because the connections are there and if you want to call me a conspiracy theorist again, you can; I’m not going to accuse anybody of anything, I’m just going to point out the facts because somebody has to and perhaps someone in the media will listen.”</div><a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/new-york-times-russian-hacking">http://www.alternet.org/media/new-york-times-russian-hacking</a>fail?
Talk about strange bedfellows joining forces to produce an unlikely media alliance.That’s what happened when The New York Times reported on October 31, 2016, that FBI officials had not been able to uncover any evidence that Russian operatives, through allegedly hacking Democratic emails, were trying to help elect Donald Trump.“Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia,” <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNFqE1Ap5hbz4PVuncBU8NVH3l5vjw" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">read</a> the October 31 Times headline which relied on unnamed “law enforcement officials.”Acting as an almost unofficial time-out, and one that came with the Times’ seal of approval, the article helped put the media brakes on the unfolding Russian hacking story; the same Russian <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/cia-nominee-believes-russians-wanted-trump?utm_term%3D.op74O24qA%23.oo9lnNlK0&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNFv2fgoiiZlBZsOxCBwxWMC0VLCcQ" href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/cia-nominee-believes-russians-wanted-trump?utm_term=.op74O24qA#.oo9lnNlK0" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">hacking story</a> that has now morphed into a full-scale <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.salon.com/2017/01/11/donald-trumps-new-russian-scandal-we-dont-know-how-much-is-true-but-we-know-james-comey-behaved-shamefully/&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNECqEr1rkpTeQF17AZ2tQFPoiuOyQ" href="http://www.salon.com/2017/01/11/donald-trumps-new-russian-scandal-we-dont-know-how-much-is-true-but-we-know-james-comey-behaved-shamefully/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Trump scandal</a>.The message on October 31 from the Times’ sources was unmistakable: There’s no conclusive connection between Trump and the Russians, and the Russians’ efforts were “aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.” (Question: How do you not pick sides in a two-person election if you only undermine one of the candidates, the way Russian hackers only undermined the Democrat?)The Times piece set off <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/01/fbi-found-no-conclusive-evidence-of-secret-trump-russia-bank-server/&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNG_0UutJMz3qZ4TfdBSgG7IbV9vDg" href="http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/01/fbi-found-no-conclusive-evidence-of-secret-trump-russia-bank-server/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">audible cheers</a> within the <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.theblaze.com/news/2016/11/01/ny-times-has-reportedly-seen-the-results-of-the-fbis-investigation-into-a-trump-russia-connection/&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNEoXrz9QdhavJS3-J5STewuxAjOA" href="http://www.theblaze.com/news/2016/11/01/ny-times-has-reportedly-seen-the-results-of-the-fbis-investigation-into-a-trump-russia-connection/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">conservative media</a>, which usually holds the Times in contempt for its supposed “liberal media bias.”In fact, pointing to the newspaper’s alleged Democratic leanings, conservative claimed that if even the liberal New York Times determined there was no Trump-Russia story, then it definitely must be true.“And as far as liberals are concerned, the Democrats are concerned, when the New York Times clears you, you are cleared,” Rush Limbaugh <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/11/01/this_is_not_what_happens_to_a_winning_campaign_one_week_before_an_election/&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNG8G6xXliUA0OIRniGDpkaAI4VVwA" href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/11/01/this_is_not_what_happens_to_a_winning_campaign_one_week_before_an_election/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">told his listeners</a> on November 1. “The New York Times carries as much weight as the FBI, and if the New York Times says there’s nothing to see between Trump and Russia and Putin, then there’s nothing to see.”All <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/10/31/fbi-finds-no-links-donald-trump-russia/&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNGXU49uwOdd_guig3kbdwK-qL37Jw" href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/10/31/fbi-finds-no-links-donald-trump-russia/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">across</a> the conservative media landscape, the Times report was held up as putting the Trump-Russia story to bed.However, to suggest the Times’ influential October 31 report “<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/819208261094277121&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNHys2zHaHMQoNOrDEoJKCiFWFuFSQ" href="https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/819208261094277121" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">hasn’t aged well</a>,” as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently put it, may be an understatement, as the unfolding hacking scandal continues to gain momentum and more evidence tumbles out regarding claims that Russians were trying to help Trump. (Hayes also <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/819208680440823808&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNFrvOFAls7duNP_8yYA5P-A51p3w" href="https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/819208680440823808" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">correctly recalled</a> that "At the same time the FBI was leaking like a sieve about Clinton, people around it went out of their way to dampen the Putin talk.")The <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/harry-reid-spokesman-torches-nyt-over-trump-russia-story/article/2609346&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNHSSnyfZlxtXyE0TMBdphwAUesIYA" href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/harry-reid-spokesman-torches-nyt-over-trump-russia-story/article/2609346" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">problems</a> with the Times article are many. First off, Sen. Harry Reid’s spokesman <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/harry-reid-spokesman-torches-nyt-over-trump-russia-story/article/2609346&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNHSSnyfZlxtXyE0TMBdphwAUesIYA" href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/harry-reid-spokesman-torches-nyt-over-trump-russia-story/article/2609346" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">claimed</a> that Reid had been interviewed for the Times’ article, pushed back against its timid premise about there being no connection, and that Reid’s comments were omitted from the story.More recently, we’ve seen all kinds of information revealed that contradicts the Times’ often-quoted October 31 report. For instance, FBI Director James Comey <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-james-comey-russian-hacking-russia-election-2016-republicans-541276&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNFWpFxLrDx9KveWvjSXyHCa6OBqjg" href="http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-james-comey-russian-hacking-russia-election-2016-republicans-541276" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">testified</a> in December that Russia had “hacked into Republican state political campaigns and old email domains of the Republican National Committee,” but did not release information from those hacks. As Reuters pointed out, that allegation “may buttress the U.S. intelligence view that Moscow tried to help Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign.”More recently, the BBC <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38589427&source=gmail&ust=1484756798862000&usg=AFQjCNGdgWy4eojcUnoEpczD2nKG3_vj4w" href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38589427" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">reported</a> that “a joint taskforce, which includes the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating allegations that the Russians may have sent money to Mr Trump's organisation or his election campaign.” Also last week, the Guardian reported that FBI investigators were so concerned with a possible Trump-Russia connection that they <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/01/guardian-fbi-asked-warrant-monitor-trump-aides&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNECCt-tYhC-xwYYpI-fgZo3PIelVA" href="http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/01/guardian-fbi-asked-warrant-monitor-trump-aides" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">asked for a foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) warrant</a> to monitor Trump aides during the campaign. (The warrant request was reportedly denied.)Meanwhile, Britain’s The Independent <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-russia-dossier-file-investigation-hacking-christopher-steele-mi6-a7526901.html&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNFs1oUFl0k9qnsdF7po2JEumybunA" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-russia-dossier-file-investigation-hacking-christopher-steele-mi6-a7526901.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">reported</a> that the former intelligence officer who wrote the recently revealed Trump dossier was frustrated that the FBI had “for months” ignored the information he passed along to the bureau about a possible Trump-Russian connection.Note that just four weeks after the election, the Times itself <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/us/politics/cia-judgment-intelligence-russia-hacking-evidence.html&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNHt4yxfYxVWNjSw1pKh2bXUHHcXGQ" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/us/politics/cia-judgment-intelligence-russia-hacking-evidence.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">reported</a>, “Both intelligence and law enforcement officials agree that there is a mountain of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the Russian hacking was primarily aimed at helping Mr. Trump and damaging his opponent.” (Emphasis added.)And from <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.npr.org/2016/12/16/505890551/fbi-cia-agree-that-russia-was-trying-to-help-trump-win-the-election&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNGZ9bArhSZ7WoeyuzygPMTg2siemg" href="http://www.npr.org/2016/12/16/505890551/fbi-cia-agree-that-russia-was-trying-to-help-trump-win-the-election" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">NPR</a>: “FBI, CIA Agree That Russia Was Trying To Help Trump Win The Election.”Here’s the larger context for the Times report and why it was seen as such a game-changer at the time.On October 31, the FBI was dealing with two breaking news stories that were spinning out of its control and reflecting poorly on Comey.The bureau was under <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/31/meet-the-republicans-defending-hillary-clinton-from-fbi-chief-james-comey/?utm_term%3D.03217746ff65&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNHal15RT7655aCud-dSRaLWknfGiA" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/31/meet-the-republicans-defending-hillary-clinton-from-fbi-chief-james-comey/?utm_term=.03217746ff65" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">withering criticism</a> from legal experts, <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/james-comey-broke-with-loretta-lynch-and-justice-department-tradition?mbid%3Dsocial_twitter&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNGz1KzZwTqvzFYYfqMArYpPbmzUWQ" href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/james-comey-broke-with-loretta-lynch-and-justice-department-tradition?mbid=social_twitter" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">journalists</a>, Democrats, and even some <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://twitter.com/NewDay/status/793072305719087104?ref_src%3Dtwsrc%255Etfw&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNEtjiu60FaMSKQaYcUW6sFk4DT89w" href="https://twitter.com/NewDay/status/793072305719087104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Republicans</a> after Comey inserted insert himself into the final days of the campaign by informing Congress that the FBI was reigniting its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email while secretary of state. That last weekend in October the bureau was also battling damaging news <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/31/fbis-comey-opposed-naming-russians-citing-election-timing-source.html&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNEwHyg-yxwVa5-s9pWEc7IfXc8M8w" href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/31/fbis-comey-opposed-naming-russians-citing-election-timing-source.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">stories</a> that suggested its leadership had been slow to respond to the Russian hacking controversy as it pertained to Donald Trump.Comey’s letter to Congress about the emails was dispatched October 28. In the days that followed, a steady stream of revelations undercut his actions. On October 30, CNN <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/30/politics/clinton-emails-fbi-abedin/index.html&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNHY6zTxc49vpaOA9Yk7SLSe-8TiCA" href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/30/politics/clinton-emails-fbi-abedin/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">reported</a> that the FBI had known about the new emails for “weeks” before Comey decided to go public with the information just days before the election.The following day, news outlets <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.cbsnews.com/news/harry-reid-letter-fbi-james-comey-clinton-emails-trump-russia-ties-hatch-act/&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNGPHNeWwFN_8_yoaoYwy59SvyIQ5Q" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/harry-reid-letter-fbi-james-comey-clinton-emails-trump-russia-ties-hatch-act/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">reported</a> that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) had sent Comey <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report-russia/&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNFwPn-KItViZPRWMZqJgnPI5LzmOQ" href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report-russia/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">a blistering letter</a> , insisting the FBI director was sitting on “‘explosive’ information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government.”That same day, Mother Jones, foreshadowing the news last week <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/01/bbcs-paul-wood-there-are-four-sources-possible-trump-russia-blackmail&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNHAMKLdOqp2VVKKBqcvo4bJmD3LrA" href="http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/01/bbcs-paul-wood-there-are-four-sources-possible-trump-russia-blackmail" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">about a dossier</a> collected on Trump, <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNGuKt2xB75UgZ8tp0Fzclob89xlIg" href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">reported</a> that, “a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country” had provided to the FBI with “memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.”And that same day, CNBC <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/31/fbis-comey-opposed-naming-russians-citing-election-timing-source.html&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNEwHyg-yxwVa5-s9pWEc7IfXc8M8w" href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/31/fbis-comey-opposed-naming-russians-citing-election-timing-source.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">reported</a>, “FBI Director James Comey argued privately that it was too close to Election Day for the United States government to name Russia as meddling in the U.S. election.”The contrast was startling: Comey had publicly reinvigorated the Clinton email investigation based on emails the FBI hadn’t even read (the emails turned out to be irrelevant), yet at the same time Comey allegedly sat on new information regarding claims that Trump had ongoing ties with Russia because Comey thought the optics would look bad.Given all this, the FBI needed a way to stop the public relations bleeding. And late in the day on October 31, the Times provided the respite.Specifically, the article helped push back on reports Comey didn’t want to go public with any Russian information close to Election Day.“The reason Comey didn’t announce the existence of this investigation wasn’t because it was it was ‘explosive’ and could impact the election,” <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://hotair.com/archives/2016/11/01/nyt-big-russia-trump-connection-story-turns-nothingburger/?fb_comment_id%3D1167975693257471_1167992476589126&source=gmail&ust=1484756798863000&usg=AFQjCNEGi2Gf89Sxvy4G7ldv2kmxe_YaNw" href="http://hotair.com/archives/2016/11/01/nyt-big-russia-trump-connection-story-turns-nothingburger/?fb_comment_id=1167975693257471_1167992476589126" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">announced</a> the conservative site, Hot Air, pointing to the Times article. “It was because the FBI had already figured out it was a dud.”In other words, FBI PR problem solved. The problems with the Times report, however, were just beginning. <div wibbitz="embed-main-player" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="bio-new body_media-culture" style="width: 630px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author-bio">Eric Boehlert is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over for Bush. <a href="mailto:eboehlert@aol.com" style="text-decoration: none;">eboehlert@aol.com</a>.</div></div>Much of the criticism in general is focused on The New York Times which seems to have a strange institutional vendetta against both Clintons. It’s hard to understand why this would be true over so many years but perhaps Jonathan Allen explained it best in this brutally honest piece called <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.vox.com/2015/7/6/8900143/hillary-clinton-reporting-rules&source=gmail&ust=1473246903455000&usg=AFQjCNGhz4AuPf2SD1esLEQzfe4cvuFQ_w" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/7/6/8900143/hillary-clinton-reporting-rules" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">“Confessions of a Clinton reporter: The media’s 5 unspoken rules for covering Hillary.”</a> This, I think, can fairly be said to apply across the board not just to the Times:<blockquote style="line-height: 25px;">The Clinton rules are driven by reporters’ and editors’ desire to score the ultimate prize in contemporary journalism: the scoop that brings down Hillary Clinton and her family’s political empire. At least in that way, Republicans and the media have a common interest.</blockquote>kudos<a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/09/01/study-newspaper-opinion-pages-feature-science-denial-and-other-climate-change-misinformation/212700">http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/09/01/study-newspaper-opinion-pages-feature-science-denial-and-other-climate-change-misinformation/212700</a><div class="item-summary" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px 30px 15px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(204, 204, 204); clear: both; line-height: 18.5714px;">The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Washington Post all published climate science denial and other scientifically inaccurate statements about climate change on their opinion pages over the last year and a half, while The New York Times avoided doing so, according to a new Media Mattersanalysis of those four newspapers. The Journal published by far the most opinion pieces misrepresenting climate science, while all three instances of climate science denial in the Post came from columns written by George Will. The Journal and USA Today also published numerous climate-related op-eds without disclosing the authors’ fossil fuel ties, while USA Today, the Post, and particularly the Journal frequently published some of the least credible voices on climate and energy issues.</div><div class="item-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18.5714px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px; clear: both; border-bottom: 1px dotted rgb(0, 153, 255);"><a id="denial" name="denial" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; background-color: transparent;">Three Major Newspapers Published Climate Science Denial On Opinion Pages, Led By The Wall Street Journal</a></h2>Analysis: Three Major Newspapers’ Opinion Pages Published Climate Science Denial And Other Antiscience Claims. Media Matters examined op-eds, editorials, and columns in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post from January 1, 2015, to August 31, 2016, to determine how often climate science denial and other false statements about climate science appeared on each newspaper’s opinion pages. We found that the Journal, the Post, and USA Today all published climate science misinformation on their opinion pages, while the Times avoided doing so. Unlike the Journal editorial board, which has denied climate science, the editorial boards of the Times, the Post, and USA Today all recognize the scientific consensus around man-made climate change. But our analysis found that the Timeswas the only one of these newspapers that did not publish an op-ed or column containing climate science denial during this time period. [Media Matters, <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PnvucqIBBWlAOgAyBP_G7QLLdtqOIoj0nlW12adewVk/edit#gid=0" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: transparent;">Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet</a>; The New York Times, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/29/opinion/the-pope-joins-the-climate-wars.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: transparent;">4/29/15</a>; The Washington Post, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/just-about-every-big-measure-of-climate-change-was-bad-last-year/2015/07/21/113ecea6-2cc8-11e5-a5ea-cf74396e59ec_story.html?utm_term=.f11af2c1f6b1" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: transparent;">7/21/15</a>; USA Today, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/11/30/climate-paris-talks-obama-global-warming-editorials-debates/76578684/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; outline: none; font-weight: 700; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: transparent;">11/30/15</a>]</div><a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/ny-times-pushes-nukes-claiming-renewables-fail-climate-change-1942048130.html">http://www.ecowatch.com/ny-times-pushes-nukes-claiming-renewables-fail-climate-change-1942048130.html</a>The New York Times published an astonishing <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/business/energy-environment/how-renewable-energy-is-blowing-climate-change-efforts-off-course.html?r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">article</a> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/business/energy-environment/how-renewable-energy-is-blowing-climate-change-efforts-off-course.html?r=1last week that blames green power for difficulties countries are facing to mitigate <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" style="text-decoration: none;">climate change</a>.The article by Eduardo Porter, How Renewable Energy is Blowing Climate Change Efforts Off Course, serves as a flagship for an on-going attack on the growth of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/search/?q=renewable+energy" style="text-decoration: none;">renewables</a>. It is so convoluted and inaccurate that it requires a detailed response.cpp op ednythttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/opinion/a-climate-plan-businesses-can-like.html?
A Climate Plan Businesses Can LikeBy JODY FREEMAN and KATE KONSCHNIKAUG. 3, 2015fail clinton cash book:
<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">Chapter 9<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;"> <span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">No Good Deed Goes Unpunished<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;"> <span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">p. 178

<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">Clinton fdn: laura B, colin powell and murdoch have attended events; chris ruddy newsmax gave 7 figs (million?) 181
<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">HC made deal when SoS that she cd recuse from matters that involve CFdn
<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">fdn discloses all names, even tho does not have to

<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">algeria gave 1/2 mill for haiti earthquake, but HC tough on them after
<span style="font-weight: 700; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">peter schweizer<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;"> clinton cash bk: HC did favor for (foreign?) funders<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">long history of error eg accused dem sen of inside trading 188 publ by harpercollins , murdochNYT did fluff/hype on book (worth 1 mil$?), had an exclusive deal (tho Fax also did?) mention gov't accountability Initiative but did not say gop oppo. proved nothing, fell back on just asking question 198 chronology off; on russia uranium BC fdn disclosed/ but cda affil could not cda law? 199 but fox still does 1 hr special; NYT stood by peter s; Romney claimed HC bribed on the basis. 201
<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">NYT is best place to spread disinfo bc of its (no longer deserved if it ever was, paper of record and all cf chomsky?]
in 90's NYT Gerth got whitewater going 
<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">later cnn analysis found 19 errors of fact ) 192
<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">2 yrs later Tyson story belated correction 
<span style="font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;">late 90'd Wen Ho Lee alamos story blockbuster but petered out/discounted but not before another GOP attack 193
Safire (nixon) ~ David Halberstam=<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 11<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">E-mails: The Times Strikes Again<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">p. 219
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">jeb published email but 1/10th he owned the server. 236
<span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" color="color" rgb="rgb" font-style="font-style" normal="normal" font-variant="font-variant" text-decoration="text-decoration" none="none" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" white-space="white-space" pre-wrap="pre-wrap" background-color="background-color" transparent="transparent">NYT story on email left out that prev SoS used private email 224
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2014 record law took effect 18 mos after HC left
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">scott walker cty exec office used secret email? chris christie
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 12<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Haters and the Enablers<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">p. 238<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gender<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bill o had body language expert declare her 'evil" 239
<span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" color="color" rgb="rgb" font-style="font-style" normal="normal" font-variant="font-variant" text-decoration="text-decoration" none="none" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" white-space="white-space" pre-wrap="pre-wrap" background-color="background-color" transparent="transparent"> Dowd 3/4 cols negative

<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chapter 13<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Coming Battle<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">p. 250
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2014 reid said kochs bought senate<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">kochs 50M$ on data
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Afterword: The House Select Committee on Media Matters<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">p. 267
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">blumenthal - brock said to be conspr but both had published info in books on their relationship
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today show HC said "vast rw conspiracy' 
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">HC faulted for getting advice from blum (rogue intel op" but if gb had gotten wider/better info no gulf war
Gerth tried to verify:  on Bb sunday news show compared to Iran-Contra 272hoggan<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="min-height: 280px; line-height: 18.59px;"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Freeman Dyson seems like a nice man and, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_dyson#cite_note-9" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">in 1949,</a> he was certainly one of the most impressive physicists in the world.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Dawidoff" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Nicholas Dawidoff</a> is a great sportswriter. And the New York Times (with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">obvious exceptions</a>) is held to be a reputable and credible publication.But none of that helps to explain why the NYT Magazine would ask a sportswriter to research an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pagewanted=1&r=2" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">8,000-word article</a> on an issue he knows nothing about - featuring an 85-year-old “expert” who is similarly at sea on the issue.Take what position you will on the degree of urgency, climate change is unquestionably one of the most important public policy issues currently facing any government in the world. It is somewhere between casually irresponsible and criminally reckless for a respected medium like the New York Times to undermine the quality of public discussion by putting so much focus on people who are so clearly out of their depth.Dyson’s position as a climate change is pretty <a href="http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge219.html#dysonf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">well established</a>, and the position that he himself describes as “heretical” has<a href="http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2007/08/dyson-exegesis.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">been categorically debunked</a><a href="http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2007/08/dyson-exegesis.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;"> point by point. As the University of Texas Research Scientist Michael Tobis puts it in this dismissal</a>, Dyson makes fundamental errors which show, “that the author has never even sat down with the undergraduate level approximation of how atmospheric radiative transfer actually works. It’s really quite shocking.”Dyson might be forgiven such late-in-life contrarianism. He is a hugely accomplished physicist who deserves to be treated with respect. But that doesn’t mean he deserves to be taken seriously - at this point in his unrelated career - on an issue on which he has never conducted research or published in legitimate scientific journals.Yet the NYT, which we have a right to assume has a sense of responsibility, serves up Dyson - as interpreted by the aforementioned sportswriter. Even if the NYT had offered a steady stream of interesting (and better-informed) articles on climate change in the last six or seven issues, this would be a questionable choice.In the circumstances, it’s purely irresponsible - and it plays, shamefully and stupidly, into the hands of those people who would like to keep us confused on the issue of climate change.If this clumsiness had come from a news outlet that is better know for pursuing an anti-science agenda - from Fox News, or Canada’s National Post - you might just shake your head and think: “typical.” From the New York Times, well, you would have hoped that we could expect more - so much more.</div></div></div><div class="icopyright-article-tools-horizontal icopyright-article-tools-left" style="line-height: 18.59px;"><div class="icx-toolbar" style="max-width: 264px;"><div class="icx-toolbar-inner" style="height: 26px; margin: 5px 0px; display: inline-block; padding-right: 1px; background-image: url(" d2uzdrx7k4koxz.cloudfront.net="d2uzdrx7k4koxz.cloudfront.net" rights="rights" images="images" toolbar="toolbar" wrapper_bg_right_end_classic.gif="wrapper_bg_right_end_CLASSIC.gif" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat"><div class="icx-logo" style="float: left; width: 30px; height: 26px; cursor: pointer; z-index: 2; position: absolute; background-image: url(" d2uzdrx7k4koxz.cloudfront.net="d2uzdrx7k4koxz.cloudfront.net" rights="rights" images="images" toolbar="toolbar" ilogo_link_classic.png="ilogo_link_CLASSIC.png" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat"><a href="http://license.icopyright.net/rights/tag.act?tag=3.14813?icx_id=3791" target="blank" title="Main menu of all reuse options" style="width: 30px; height: 26px; display: block; text-decoration: none !important; border: none !important; background-image: none !important; background-attachment: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important;" /></div><div class="icx-tool-wrapper" style="height: 26px; margin-left: 15px; padding-left: 20px; background-image: url(" d2uzdrx7k4koxz.cloudfront.net="d2uzdrx7k4koxz.cloudfront.net" rights="rights" images="images" toolbar="toolbar" wrapper_bg_narrow_classic.gif="wrapper_bg_narrow_CLASSIC.gif" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x"><div class="icx-tool" id="icx-republish" style="float: left; height: 16px; margin: 8px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: url(" d2uzdrx7k4koxz.cloudfront.net="d2uzdrx7k4koxz.cloudfront.net" rights="rights" images="images" toolbar="toolbar" republish_classic.gif="Republish_CLASSIC.gif" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat"><a href="http://license.icopyright.net/rights/republishServiceGroup.act?tag=3.14813?icx_id=3791" target="blank" title="Get syndicated feed and other republish options" style="display: block; line-height: 13px; font-weight: bold; padding: 0px; margin: 1px 0px 0px; text-decoration: none !important; border: none !important; letter-spacing: 0px !important; background-image: none !important; background-attachment: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important;">Republish</a></div></div></div></div></div>October 11, 2015Freeman Dyson is interviewed in The Register's article, “<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20151116164551/http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/11/freeman_dyson_interview/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Top boffin Freeman Dyson on climate change, interstellar travel, fusion, and more</a>,” the same day the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-policy-foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Global Warming Policy Foundation</a> published “<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20151021020744/http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Carbon Dioxide: The Good News</a>,” with the foreward written by Freeman Dyson. <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/freeman-dyson#s8" style="text-decoration: none;">[8]</a>,<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/freeman-dyson#s9" style="text-decoration: none;">[9]</a>In the foreward, Dyson argues that “carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does far more good than harm,” and “that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.” <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/freeman-dyson#s9" style="text-decoration: none;">[9]</a> Dyson concludes the foreward by stating, “I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence.” <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/freeman-dyson#s9" style="text-decoration: none;">[9]</a>March 25, 2009Freeman Dyson is the feature of an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pagewanted=1&r=3" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">8000 word article</a> in The New York Times titled “The Civil Heretic.” The Times quotes Dyson as saying global warming may indicate that “the climate is actually improving rather than getting worse” because increased carbon would promote forest growth and crop yields. However, the internationally-regarded IPCC <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-spm.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">concludes</a> that “climate change is expected to lead to salinisation and desertification of agricultural land.”Although Dyson is a brilliant mind, and is revered as a physicist, he does not have a background in climate science. DeSmogBlog speculated how it <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/freeman-dyson-flailing-outside-his-field-expertise-nyt-should-be-embarrassed" style="text-decoration: none;">seems strange</a> that the Times would choose Nicholas Dawidoff, a sports writer (albeit an accomplished sports writer), to research and write an article on climate change.June 12, 2008Freeman Dyson publishes “<a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/jun/12/the-question-of-global-warming/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">The Question of Global Warming</a>“ through The New York Review of Books. Dyson writes, “the only plausible explanation of the annual wiggle,” of CO2's PPM measurements, “and its variation with latitude is that it is due to the seasonal growth and decay of annual vegetation, especially deciduous forests, in temperate latitudes north and south.” <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/freeman-dyson#s7" style="text-decoration: none;">[7]</a>schlosser pt out no labor writer but stylehttp://www.alternet.org/environment/how-koch-brothers-bankers-snuck-anti-wind-op-ed-past-new-york-timesIn the run-up to the perennial debate in Congress over whether to extend a tax credit for the wind industry, The New York Times ran a provocatively headlined — and misleading — op-ed<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/opinion/giving-billions-to-the-rich.html" target="hplink" style="line-height: 32px; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">column</a> denouncing it as corporate welfare. "Giving Billions to the Rich" was a broadside against Congress' end-of-the-year tax extenders package, which renews temporary corporate tax breaks, and it singled out the wind production tax credit as one of the most egregious.The November 23 column was written by Marc Short and Andy Koenig, both from an organization called Freedom Partners. They pointed out that the package the U.S. Senate was considering at the time would revive a tax credit for new wind energy facilities during their first 10 years of operation, which would cost the U.S. Treasury an estimated $10.5 billion over the next decade. Congress had let the tax break expire at the end of 2014."The supporters of this 23-year-old credit initially argued that it was necessary to kick-start a nascent industry," they wrote. "Yet Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and others say wind power is cost-competitive with other energy sources. So why are taxpayers still forced to subsidize it?"Besides the fact that a tax credit does not force taxpayers to "subsidize," i.e. give money to, the wind industry, Short and Koenig shrewdly confined their argument to temporary tax breaks. By doing so, they were able to avoid mentioning the fact that the wind industry's more-established competitors -- particularly fossil fuels, the primary cause of climate change -- enjoypermanent tax breaks and subsidies that are significantly larger.The oil and gas industry, for example, has been receiving an average of $4.86 billion in annual tax breaks and subsidies in today's dollars since 1918, according to an <a href="http://i.bnet.com/blogs/dbl_energy_subsidies_paper.pdf" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">analysis</a> by DBL Investors, a venture capital firm. On top of that, Congress <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/03/us/20110303-natural-gas-timeline.html?r=0" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">exempted</a> natural gas developers from key provisions of at least seven major environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. That amounts to a substantial subsidy, too, by passing along any cleanup bill to taxpayers.Renewable energy technologies, by contrast, averaged only $370 million a year in tax breaks between 1994 and 2009, according to DBL. The 2009 stimulus package did provide $21 billion for wind, solar and other renewables, but that support barely began to balance the scales that have tilted toward oil and gas for nearly 100 years and coal for more than two centuries.The Koch Brothers' BankSo who are Marc Short and Andy Koenig? The Times identified them only as "the president and senior policy adviser, respectively, at Freedom Partners, which advocates for free-market policies."What the Times neglected to explain is that Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce (its full name) is a major pass-through funding arm of billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch — owners of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries — and Short and Koenig's Times op-ed is just a small part of a Koch brothers-financed campaign targeting wind and other renewable energy technologies.Founded in November 2011, Freedom Partners <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/koch-backed-political-network-built-to-shield-donors-raised-400-million-in-2012-elections/2014/01/05/9e7cfd9a-719b-11e3-9389-09ef9944065e_story.html" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">functions</a> as the Kochs' de facto bank, disbursing contributions from wealthy conservatives to a network of nonprofit "free-market" groups whose goals include rolling back public health, environmental and workplace protections. Unlike a foundation or a political action committee (PAC), Freedom Partners is classified as a trade association, enabling it to raise money without disclosing the names of its donor members, although the amounts and recipients of its grants are public. In June 2014, the organization expanded its arsenal by launching a Super PAC, Freedom Partners Action Fund, which can raise unlimited sums of money and run ads advocating for or against candidates, but it has to <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/10/16/filing-discloses-donors-to-koch-backed-group/" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">divulge</a> its donors.Freedom Partners Action Fund, whose top donors include the Koch brothers and hedge fund mogul Robert Mercer, <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/260441-koch-network-spent-129-million-during-2014-cycle" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">raised</a> $29 million and spent $24 million during the 2014 election cycle in support of Republican candidates. But that's chump change compared to Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce's war chest. Between 2012 and 2014, it <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/260441-koch-network-spent-129-million-during-2014-cycle" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">raised</a> $418 million from its more than 200 anonymous members and distributed more than $387 million of it to dozens of<a href="http://conservativetransparency.org/org/freedom-partners-chamber-of-commerce/" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">organizations</a>. Much of that money paid for television attack ads, but a chunk of it went to climate science denier groups, including the American Energy Alliance, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, Club for Growth, Heritage Action for America (the Heritage Foundation's political arm), and the 60 Plus Association. Those groups — along with Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation grantees Competitive Enterprise Institute and Frontiers of Freedom — were signatories on a July 27 <a href="http://marchant.house.gov/uploadedfiles/conservative_coalition_letter_supporting_hr1901.pdf" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">letter</a> to House members urging them to support a bill that would kill the wind production tax credit (PTC).The letter claimed the proposed legislation "protects Americans from the large costs of an out-of-control subsidy." Since the PTC was created, the letter went on to disingenuously assert, "taxpayers have sent billions of dollars to large multinational corporations in the wind industry."The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1901" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">bill</a> referenced in the letter, "The PTC Elimination Act," was sponsored by Mike Pompeo of Wichita, Kansas — home of Koch Industries — and Kenny Marchant of Texas. Pompeo is Congress' top recipient of Koch campaign money, and ever since he took office in 2011 he has been introducing bills to scuttle the tax credit because, as he <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/horse-trading-in-congress-lifting-oil-ban-for-extending-wind-and-solar-tax-credits/article/2577897" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">says</a>, the wind industry should "compete on its own." As of November 17, the bill had 53 <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1901/cosponsors?q=%7B%22search%22%3A[%22%5C%22hr1901%5C%22%22]%7D&resultIndex=1" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">co-sponsors</a>. Forty-six of them, including Marchant, received <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000186" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">contributions</a> from Koch Industries over the last five years.

Of course, no one would expect the Times to explain all of that, but the paper should have at least mentioned Freedom Partners' Koch connection. Beyond that, the paper also should have fact-checked its debatable description of the organization. Freedom Partners and other Koch-funded groups all claim to promote "free-market" policies, but they don't complain about the massive subsidies fossil fuel companies receive. For the Koch network, the wind production tax credit is a "wasteful handout," but eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for the oil and gas industry, as Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform once put it, would constitute "a massive tax hike on a vital sector of American industry."

That hardly qualifies as a consistent free-market position.The Times' Opaque Transparency PolicyCoincidentally, a debate over how theTimes identifies op-ed contributors was sparked four years ago by a column attacking the wind industry. In June 2011, the newspaper ran a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08bryce.html?r=1&" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">column</a> by Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Robert Bryce that made a case for natural gas by misstating facts about renewables, and the Times failed to mention in Bryce's bio that Manhattan Institute funders ExxonMobil and the Kochs are in the natural gas business. A few months later, the Checks and Balances Project, a government and industry watchdog group, sent a <a href="http://www.trueties.org/letter-to-the-new-york-times" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">letter</a> to the Times criticizing the paper for failing to report op-ed writers' funding sources, citing Bryce's column as a prime example. Signed by more than 50 journalists and educators, the letter called on the paper to "set the nation's standard by disclosing financial conflicts of interest that their op-ed contributors may have at the time the piece is published."The paper's public editor at the time, Arthur S. Brisbane, responded in a<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/the-times-gives-them-space-but-who-pays-them.html?r=2" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">column</a> titled "The Times Gives Them Space, but Who Pays Them?" "[T]he issue of authorial transparency is an important one," Brisbane wrote, "albeit one that isn't always simple." He then turned to Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal to explain the complexities.Op-ed writers have to sign an agreement that states: "You agree to disclose to the Times any financial interest you may have in the subject matter of the article," Rosenthal said. Besides that, "story editors ask each writer if there is any real or perceived material or financial interest we should know about." Finally, Rosenthal said, author bios are written for "clarity, transparency and brevity."Brisbane recommended that the Times do more. "So, while I recognize that theTimes has limited space in print to provide more disclosure, I believe it should do more to help readers learn about outside op-ed contributors," he wrote. "In print, besides noting prominent past achievements, author [bios] should include the writer's current paid role ... On NYTimes.com, the Times should include links to [an author's] organizational ties so readers can investigate, if they wish. Finally, it would be useful if the Times required contributors to provide a document listing all current paid positions, and publish a link to the document."Did the Times take Brisbane's advice? Apparently not.Wind Wins This Round, But More Transparency NeededFortunately, the Koch campaign to break wind was foiled this time around by some last-minute horse trading on Capitol Hill. End-of-year negotiations over the omnibus government spending bill extended the wind production tax credit through 2019 in exchange for lifting the 40-year-old federal ban on oil exports. That's good news for the wind industry.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, the production tax credit has helped <a href="http://www.awea.org/MediaCenter/pressrelease.aspx?ItemNumber=8255" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">quadruple</a> wind-powered electricity since 2008, from 16,700 megawatts to more than 70,000 MW at the end of last year, enough to power more than 19 million homes. The tax break also has helped drive down the cost of wind power by 66 percent over the last six years, and Iowa, South Dakota and Kansas -- Mike Pompeo's state -- now get more than 20 percent of their electricity from wind. Nine other states get more than 10 percent of their electricity from wind, and a recent Department of Energy report <a href="http://energy.gov/eere/wind/wind-vision" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">concluded</a> that the United States should be able to generate 20 percent of its electricity from wind by 2030.The omnibus deal was also good news for Koch Industries, because lifting the ban on oil exports likely will boost its business. After all, it <a href="http://www.kochind.com/companies/" target="hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">owns</a> 4,000 miles of pipelines as well as refineries in Minnesota and Texas that, according to the company, together can process more than 600,000 barrels of crude oil a day.The bad news is that, even after the debate prompted by an anti-wind op-ed back in 2011, The New York Times continues to provide a platform for special interest mouthpieces and fails to disclose their benefactors. To be sure, theTimes is hardly alone. But it's especially puzzling when it comes to the Times, whose editorial board routinely <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/26/opinion/political-dark-money-just-got-darker.html" target="_hplink" style="text-decoration: none;">rails against</a> "the scourge of dark money" in the U.S. political system and calls for greater transparency.The Times should hold itself to the same standard. If its editorial page editors insist on publishing special interest propaganda, they should let their readers know who is paying for it. In this case, an op-ed with the headline "Giving Billions to the Rich" is indeed remiss if it doesn't mention the fact that the covert sponsors of the column, the Koch brothers, are among those benefiting the most from government largesse.<div class="bio-new body_environment" style="width: 630px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author-bio">Elliott Negin, a senior writer at the <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/" style="text-decoration: none;">Union of Concerned Scientists</a>, was a foreign news editor at National Public Radio, the managing editor of American Journalism Review, and the editor of Nuclear Times and Public Citizen magazines. His articles have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Columbia Journalism Review, The Hill, Huffington Post, Mother Earth News, The Nation, The Progressive, Roll Call, Washington City Paper, the Washington Post and other publications.</div></div>Duhigg v whelan on water (atz?)<div style="">Amy HarmonAmy Harmon is a reporter for the New York Times. She was part of a Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001, and in 2008 she won a Pulitzer for explanatory reporting.On September 23, 2013 at 7:44pm, Jon Entine emailed Renee Kester, “FYI, I think I’ve talked Amy Harmon into doing a Hawaii Hawaii [sic.] story... and I gave her your and Kirby’s email information, so she may call at some point if she indeed pursues this.” Kirby Kester is president of the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association, an agrichemical industry front group.On January 4, 2014, the New York Times published a front-page article by Amy Harmon, titled “A Lonely Quest for Facts on Genetically Modified Crops.” The story is datelined from Kona, Hawaii.In 2014, Harmon won second place for the Society of Environmental Journalists “Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding In-depth Reporting, Large Market” for “The Facts About GMOs,” a series that included the article “A Lonely Quest for Facts on Genetically Modified Crops.”On September 30th, Harmon is scheduled to speak to the Cornell Alliance for Science, a group funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to promote GMOs. The group is running a petition against U.S. Right to Know’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.Keith KloorKeith Kloor is a freelance journalist who has written for Nature, Science Insider, Discover, Slate, and other outlets. Kloor has written many pro-GMO articles that have been featured by Jon Entine’s Genetic Literacy Project.Kloor is mentioned in two places in the FOIA documents.In one email, Jon Entine refers to Keith Kloor as a “very good friend of mine”.In another email, on October 18, 2014, Dr. Channapatna Prakash, a GMO advocate and dean at Tuskegee University, emails Adrianne Massey of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), along with several others, to forward an alert from Lorraine Thelian, vice chairman of the PR firm Ketchum that “the hacker communityAnonymous is planning a series of attacks on biotechnology and food industry websites… Trade association and corporate websites of CBI [Council for Biotechnology Information] members are being targeted in this planned attack.” Dr. Prakash writes, “Adrianne I have copied Kevin Folta, Karl von Mogel, David Tribe, and Keith Kloorhere as well.”Dr. Prakash cc’d the email to Jay Byrne (former director of corporate communications for Monsanto), Jon Entine, Bruce Chassy (agrichemical industry advocate) Val Giddings (former VP of BIO), Henry Miller (agrichemical industry advocate), Drew Kershen (agrichemical industry advocate), Klaus Ammann, Piet van der Meer, Martina Newell-McGloughlin (agrichemical industry advocate), Karl Haro von Mogel (member of the board of directors of Biology Fortified, a pro-GMO website), Kevin Folta (agrichemical industry advocate), Keith Kloor, and David Tribe (agrichemical industry advocate).Keith Kloor was the only journalist who received this email.The email implies that Kloor works closely with the agrichemical industry’s prominent advocates.Kloor has written three articles that were critical of U.S. Right to Know’s FOIA requests, in Science Insider, Discover and Nature.On March 23rd, 2015, Kloor gave a talk for the Cornell Alliance for Science, which is hosting a petition against U.S. Right to Know’s FOIA requests.Tamar HaspelTamar Haspel is a columnist at the Washington Post. She has written many columns for the Post defending or praising GMOs that have later been featured by Jon Entine’s Genetic Literacy Project.In 2015, Haspel won the James Beard Foundation Award for her Post columns.In June 2014, Haspel spoke to a pro-industry conference about “How can scientists best engage the GMO debate with a skeptical public?” The conference was coordinated by Jon Entine and Cami Ryan, who is currently social sciences lead for Monsanto. The conference was led by two agrichemical industry front groups, the Genetic Literacy Project and Academics Review, along with the University of Florida, which receives major funding from agrichemical companies, as noted in a September 6 article in the New York Times.Haspel also moderated a panel organized by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, which “provides long-term economic and societal benefits to North Carolina through support of biotechnology research, business, education and strategic policy statewide.”In a September 23 chat hosted by the Washington Post, answering a question about whether she receives money from industry sources, Ms. Haspel wrote that, “I speak and moderate panels and debates often, and it’s work I’m paid for.” Later that day, I asked Ms. Haspel on Twitter how much money she had received from the agrichemical industry and its front groups. She replied, “Since any group believing biotech has something to offer is a ‘front group', plenty!”Is it appropriate for a Washington Post columnist to write glowing columns about GMOs while appearing at such pro-industry conferences? Is it a conflict of interest for Haspel to accept money from agrichemical company interests that she covers as part of her beat as a Post food columnist? How much money has Haspel received from agrichemical industry interests?Some journalists have criticized journalists for “buckraking” on speakers’ circuits. For example, former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee said, “I wish it would go away. I don’t like it. I think it’s corrupting. If the Insurance Institute of America, if there is such a thing, pays you $10,000 to make a speech, don’t tell me you haven’t been corrupted. You can say you haven’t and you can say you will attack insurance issues in the same way, but you won’t. You can’t.”Haspel wrote in the Washington Post that she will only speak at events where “if for-profit companies are involved in the event (which they often are), they can’t be the only voice. So, I will speak at a conference co-sponsored by, say, Monsanto and the USDA and NC State University, but not an event sponsored by Monsanto alone.” However, at the June 2014, conference at which Haspel spoke, no consumer advocates were slated to speak, only pro-industry advocates.On October 16, Haspel is scheduled to speak to the Cornell Alliance for Science, a pro-GMO group that is hosting a petition against U.S. Right to Know’s FOIA requests.Haspel has been critical of the U.S. Right to Know FOIA requests. On August 17, on Twitter, she wrote: “The money/time/brainpower wasted on @garyruskin’s mean-spirited, self-interested attack on @kevinfolta! Can we move on to something useful?” Others did not agree with her news judgment. On September 6th, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Lipton wrote an article largely based on our FOIA requests – especially of University of Florida Professor Kevin Folta – which ran on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. The article revealed how Folta, who repeatedly denied ties to Monsanto, in fact had received an undisclosed $25,000 grant, as well as writing assignments from the company, and worked closely with it and its PR firm Ketchum, which ghostwrote text for him and organized media and lobbying meetings for him.U.S. Right to Know is a consumer advocacy group. We try to expose what the food industry doesn’t want us to know. We believe it is useful for the public to see how the food and agrichemical companies do their public relations work. That is one way we can help consumers to assess the claims and information they receive from the companies involved in our food production, their PR firms and operatives, and the journalists who work with them.</div><div style=""></div>This Sunday, the New York Times Book Review will publish a review of the first volume of Niall Ferguson’s authorized biography of Henry Kissinger,Kissinger: The Idealist. The reviewer is Andrew Roberts.Roberts brings an unusual level of familiarity to the subject: It was Roberts whom Kissinger first asked, before turning to Ferguson, to write his authorized biography. In other words, the New York Times is having Kissinger’s preferred authorized biographer review Kissinger’s authorized biography.==

greenwald says cheerleader for gulf2

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<a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/noam-chomsky-reads-new-york-times-explains-why-paper-record-pure-propaganda">http://www.alternet.org/media/noam-chomsky-reads-new-york-times-explains-why-paper-record-pure-propaganda</a>

front-page article is devoted to a flawed story about a campus rape in the journal Rolling Stone, exposed in the leading academic journal of media critique. So severe is this departure from journalistic integrity that it is also the subject of the lead story in the business section, with a full inside page devoted to the continuation of the two reports. The shocked reports refer to several past crimes of the press: a few cases of fabrication, quickly exposed, and cases of plagiarism (“too numerous to list”). The specific crime of Rolling Stone is “lack of skepticism,” which is “in many ways the most insidious” of the three categories.

It is refreshing to see the commitment of the Times to the integrity of journalism....//mfg consent

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bucks trend?

Take out the articles that mention climate change alongside the supposed “war on coal,” and you’re left with only 18% of the 233 that mention the other issues that are actually impacting the industry right now.

The Courier-Journal and The New York Times were the two papers that mentioned the real issues impacting the coal industry most frequently, as you can see from this chart:

<a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/12/09/study-how-media-advanced-conservatives-misleadi/201806">http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/12/09/study-how-media-advanced-conservatives-misleadi/201806</a>

Some 127 articles did manage to work in a reference to President Obama being responsible for the “war on coal,” however.

<a href="http://www.alternet.org/newspapers-complicit-selling-phony-war-coal">http://www.alternet.org/newspapers-complicit-selling-phony-war-coal</a>

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prompted ~ by acsh, tho lauternberg sellout? bless his ht

<div class="timestamp" style="margin-top: 15px; white-space: nowrap;">April 18, 2013</div>

<h1 style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.083em;"><nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">A Toothless Law on Toxic Chemicals</nyt_headline></h1>

<h6 class="byline" style="margin: 2px 0px; line-height: 1.2em;">By <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/opinion/editorialboard.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by THE EDITORIAL BOARD" style="text-decoration: none;">THE EDITORIAL BOARD</a></h6>

<nyt_byline><nyt_text /></nyt_byline>

It would be hard to design a law more stacked against the regulators than the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which is supposed to ensure the safety of thousands of chemicals used in household products and manufacturing. It is long past time for Congress to reform the law so that it provides genuine protection against harmful chemicals in products like shampoos and detergents.

Tens of thousands of inadequately tested chemicals were allowed to remain in use after the law was enacted. For the most part, the law requires the government to prove that a chemical is unsafe before it can be removed or kept off the market instead of requiring manufacturers to prove that their chemicals are safe before they can be sold and used. And it makes it hard for the Environmental Protection Agency to pry the information it needs to assess risk from the manufacturers or to require them to conduct tests.

Companies have to alert the E.P.A. before introducing new chemicals, but they don’t have to provide any safety data. It is up to the agency to find relevant scientific information elsewhere or use inexact computer modeling to estimate risk.<a title="A Times News Analysis" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/sunday-review/think-those-chemicals-have-been-tested.html" style="text-decoration: none;"> The agency can only ask the company for data or require testing</a> if it first proves there is a potential risk, which is hard to do without the company’s data.

The failure of the law can be read in these dismal statistics: since 1976, from a universe of chemicals that now numbers roughly 85,000, the agency has issued regulations to control only five existing chemicals.

Senators Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat of New Jersey, and Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat of New York, recently introduced a bill — <a title="A pdf" href="http://www.lautenberg.senate.gov/assets/SafeChemicals2013-Summary.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">the Safe Chemicals Act of 2013</a> — that would modernize and reform the law, mostly by requiring manufacturers to prove that a chemical is safe before it can be sold. It has more than two dozen Democratic co-sponsors but is opposed by the chemical industry and many Republicans, who argue that the E.P.A. already has enough power to regulate chemicals and simply needs to exercise it more effectively. The American Academy of Pediatrics, a far better guide to what’s needed to protect children,<a href="http://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/AAPEndorsesLegislationtoProtectChildrenfromUnhealthyChemicalExposures.aspx?nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token&nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token&nfstatus=401&nftoken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000&nfstatusdescription=ERROR%3a+No+local+token" style="text-decoration: none;">endorsed the bill</a> on Wednesday.

<nyt_author_id>

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/opinion/editorialboard.html" style="text-decoration: none; line-height: 22px;">Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »</a>

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<a href="http://acsh.org/2013/04/its-time-to-reform-tsca-again-n-y-times-2/">http://acsh.org/2013/04/its-time-to-reform-tsca-again-n-y-times-2/</a>

</div>

</nyt_author_id></nyt_correction_top></div>

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public ed = omsbudsman?

<h1 style="margin: 0px; line-height: 1.083em;"><nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" ">Clashing Views on the Future of Natural Gas</nyt_headline></h1>

<h6 class="byline" style="margin: 2px 0px; line-height: 1.2em;">By <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/arthur_s_brisbane/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Arthur S. Brisbane" class="meta-per" style="text-decoration: none;">ARTHUR S. BRISBANE</a></h6>

<nyt_byline><nyt_text /></nyt_byline>

</nyt_correction_top>A NEW YORK TIMES article last month, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26gas.html" style="text-decoration: none;">“Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush,”</a> warned across two columns at the top of the front page that high expectations for companies drilling shale gas might be headed for a fall. It was the kind of story you wish The Times had written about Enron before it collapsed. Or about Bernard Madoff.

The June 26 article, written by <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/u/ian_urbina/index.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Ian Urbina,</a> was clearly intended to offer that kind of signal and specifically invoked <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/natural-gas-drilling-down-documents-4-intro.html" style="text-decoration: none;">“Enron,” “Ponzi schemes” and “dot-coms”</a> in the early paragraphs.

Raising the prospect of a fall, though, is a journalistic gamble. Adding to the risk, the story painted its subject with an overly broad brush and didn’t include dissenting views from experts who aren’t entrenched on one side or another of the subject. After publication, critics jumped in with both feet.

A UBS investment analyst, William A. Featherston, and colleagues <a href="http://anga.us/media/209887/ubs%20ny%20times%20response.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">issued a report</a> saying that the article, part of The Times’s continuing <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/DRILLING_DOWN_SERIES.html" style="text-decoration: none;">“Drilling Down”</a> series on shale gas, was “unduly harsh,” failed to recognize the “enormous” growth of shale gas in recent years and offered no “credible source and context.”

An M.I.T. <a href="http://web.mit.edu/mitei/research/studies/documents/natural-gas-2011/NaturalGas_Report.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">natural gas study group</a> released a statement taking issue with The Times’s analysis of shale gas economics, well productivity and other matters. Other commentators assailed the sourcing used to support the article’s premise: only two people named in the text, plus a large trove of e-mail from people whose names were redacted by The Times.

A countervailing surge of support for the article, meanwhile, has come<a href="http://www.catskillcitizens.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"> from environment-minded readers. </a>And four Democrats in Congress <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/us/politics/29naturalgas.html" style="text-decoration: none;">have called on public agencies</a> to examine some of the issues that Mr. Urbina raised in that story and one the next day.

The reaction underscored the stakes involved in shale gas. Hailed as a cleaner replacement for coal, it is extracted using a relatively new, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/27/us/fracking.html" style="text-decoration: none;">water-intensive drilling technique commonly called fracking.</a> As The Times documented <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html" style="text-decoration: none;">in an earlier installment</a> of “Drilling Down,” there is concern that fracking could wreak environmental havoc in shale basins across the country.

I asked Mr. Urbina and his editors to address complaints about the article, starting with the broad objection that it cast doubt on shale gas without mentioning that it had grown rapidly as an energy source — rising from 2 percent of all natural gas production in 2000 to 23 percent 10 years later, which the M.I.T. group called a “paradigm shift.” The journalists said The Times had already cited the big picture of a gas boom in the “Drilling Down” series opener back in February and had thoroughly covered it elsewhere.

I also asked why The Times didn’t include input from the energy giants, like Exxon Mobil, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121403505.html" style="text-decoration: none;">that have invested billions in natural gas recently.</a> If shale gas is a Ponzi scheme, I wondered, why would the nation’s energy leader jump in?

Mr. Urbina and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/adam_bryant/index.html" style="text-decoration: none;">Adam Bryant,</a> a deputy national editor, said the focus was not on the major companies but on the “independents” that focus on shale gas, because these firms have been the most vocal boosters of shale gas, have benefited most from federal rules changes regarding reserves and are most vulnerable to sharp financial swings. The independents, in industry parlance, are a diverse group that are smaller than major companies like Exxon Mobil and don’t operate major-brand gas stations.

This was lost on many readers, including me. <a href="http://www.cfr.org/experts/energy-energy-security-technology-and-foreign-policy/michael-a-levi/b11890" style="text-decoration: none;">Michael Levi,</a> a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the <a href="http://www.cfr.org/" style="text-decoration: none;">Council on Foreign Relations,</a> wrote that the article <a href="http://blogs.cfr.org/levi/2011/06/27/is-shale-gas-a-ponzi-scheme/" style="text-decoration: none;">“repeatedly confuses the fortunes of various risk-hungry independents with the fortunes of the industry as a whole.”</a>

He told me he hadn’t realized that the report was focused on independents and read it more broadly, adding, “If I didn’t know they were talking about certain independents, then Times readers — who don’t know what an independent is — they aren’t going to know what they are talking about either.”

This confusion stems from the language in the article, which near the top referred to “natural gas companies” and “energy companies.” The term “independent” appeared only once, inside a quoted e-mail.

The article’s sourcing has also been questioned. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/natural-gas-drilling-down-documents-4-intro.html" style="text-decoration: none;">The Times presented a large array of e-mails</a> — some recent, some three and four years old — from geologists, analysts, energy executives and others who expressed the belief that companies were exaggerating their prospects. The Times excised the names but not the company affiliations from the e-mails. It was from this trove, which became part of a 487-page online document collection for readers to peruse, that the hot-button references to dot-coms, Ponzi schemes and Enron were pulled for the text of the article.

The two named sources in the story, <a href="http://petroleumtruthreport.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration: none;">Art Berman</a>, a geologist from Houston, and <a href="http://www.deborahsfarm.com/" style="text-decoration: none;">Deborah Rogers</a>, a farm owner from Fort Worth, say they provided some of these e-mail conversations.

Mr. Berman, who was described appropriately as “one of the most vocal skeptics of shale gas economics,” told me he had traveled the country giving presentations questioning some companies’ claims for shale gas prospects. It’s clear that some of the e-mails in The Times article came from people who had heard him speak.

Ms. Rogers, a former stockbroker, was described as serving on an advisory group of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. What was not mentioned was that her primary business was a small agricultural operation and that she had clashed with <a href="http://www.chk.com/Pages/default.aspx" style="text-decoration: none;">Chesapeake Energy</a>, a <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/chesapeake-energy-fights-bad-pr-by-buying-promoted-tweets-on-twitter/" style="text-decoration: none;">leading shale gas producer,</a> over its drilling on land next to hers. Mr. Bryant told me it wasn’t necessary to mention this because the issue had not resulted in litigation and Ms. Rogers was clearly presented as an industry critic.

My view is that such a pointed article needed more convincing substantiation, more space for a reasoned explanation of the other side and more clarity about its focus. The Times journalists countered that their reporting consisted of more than three dozen interviews with industry experts, and analysis of S.E.C. filings from two dozen companies and data from more than 9,000 wells. The Times also published several dozen e-mails from industry officials and federal regulators voicing concerns.

“The article challenges conventional wisdom and a powerful industry, so we expected criticism,” said Richard L. Berke, the national editor. “But it is deeply sourced, meticulously reported and measured, and we would not change a word.”

No question, the article challenged conventional thinking, and perhaps some of the shale gas independents will eventually founder. But the article went out on a limb, lacked an in-depth dissenting view in the text and should have made clear that shale gas had boomed.

<nyt_author_id>

Follow the public editor on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/thepubliceditor" style="text-decoration: none; line-height: 22px;">twitter.com/thepubliceditor</a>. The public editor can also be reached by e-mail: <a href="mailto:public@nytimes.com" style="text-decoration: none; line-height: 22px;">public@nytimes.com</a>. For a response from The Times national desk to the public editor's column, please visit <a href="http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/times-editors-respond-to-my-shale-gas-column/" style="text-decoration: none; line-height: 22px;">the public editor's journal.</a>

</div>

</nyt_author_id></div>

===

Editorial: How Bad is the Corporate and Conservative Media?

December 20, 2013  |

HOW BAD IS THE CORPORATE AND CONSERVATIVE MEDIA?

Actually both corporate and right-wing press are getting much worse. There are dozens of examples of journalistic failure every week. The right-wing media is often insane as we report on AlterNet in our super popular weekly series on Right-wing wackos. And, increasingly, mainstream media is about protecting the 1% and the media owner’s financial interests. They too often miss the real story or mislead the reader.

It is no accident that the world's richest man  -- Mexico's Carlos Slim, worth $73 billion  -- is the second largest stockholder of the  New York Times.  Or that  The Washington Post is now owned totally by one super rich person -- Jeff Bezos, the emperor of Amazon.

Bezos recently landed  a $600 million contract with the CIA. But, the  Post’s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon.

Too often the media's performance is a disgrace to journalism:

The New York Times, in an astonishing bit of big bank propaganda, had the audacity to publish, “It is not a crime to make stupid mistakes, and much of what happened in the years before the financial crisis was more foolish than venal.” This is an astonishingly brazen lie, as AlterNet's writer explains, "…our biggest banks were found to have committed -- or have confessed to committing -- thousands of real and deliberate crimes, some of which rank among the largest financial crimes in history (such as LIBOR falsification, phony mortgage scams, and the $800 billion worth of drug money laundered by HSBC, to give just three examples)."

It also was the  New York Times that first called the bumpy rollout of  healthcare.gov “Obama’s Katrina" in a front-page story.  Soon, this over-the-top message was puppeted all over the media. If ever there was a flawed, destructive analogy, this is it. Hurricane Katrina amounted to an abdication of government responsibility, resulting in the deaths and displacements of many thousands?  How can anyone in their right mind compare this disaster with the slow web-site role out of the ACA?

Another media shocker was the shameful and distorted editorial in  The Washington Post, which downplayed the retirement crisis and stoked generational tensions by suggesting that Social Security is a burden on young people instead of a vital safeguard. The editorial actually mocked a sensible bill introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) that would boost Social Security benefits by increasing taxes on the wealthy.  The Washington Post's nonsense was blasted by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who spoke out strongly against cuts of any kind, including Obama's "chained CPI" cut which would prevent Social Security from keeping up with seniors' increasing costs.

Recently, The Washington Post so-called "liberal columnist" Richard Cohen wrote, "People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York—a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children.”  Enough said on that one.  The Post also employs notable rabidly Islamaphobic blogger Jennifer Rubin.

Chuck Todd, NBC News Political Director, actually asserted during an appearance on Morning Joe, “It’s not our job to inform viewers when Republicans lie.” This is what journalism has come to -- in the context of one of the most intense disinformation campaigns in history attacking the Affordable Care Act. What do Chuck Todd and NBC think journalists should do?

There are many more egregious examples... but far too many for this communiqué. Put simply, we cannot trust corporate media to protect us. They too often protect the needs of the billionaire class, not all the classes.  Help us provide the alternative 24/7. We have your interests at heart. An end of the year,  your tax-deductible contribution will mean a lot.

===

<a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/07/two-big-climate-stories-you-didnt-read-about-in/195271">http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/07/two-big-climate-stories-you-didnt-read-about-in/195271</a>

<h1 style="margin: 0px 0px 7px; padding: 0px;">Two Big Climate Stories You Didn't Read About In The New York Times</h1>

<h5 style="letter-spacing: 0.1em; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; clear: both;"><a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog" style="outline: none; border: none; text-decoration: none;">Blog </a>››August 7, 2013 1:31 PM EDT MAX GREENBERG</h5>

</div>

<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Times Skips Stories Soon After Closing Environmental Desk And Green Blog</h2>

The New York Times failed to cover both a major government report and a scientists' statement indicating that global warming marches on, just months after the paper shuttered both its environment desk and an affiliated blog with the promise that coverage would not significantly change.

On Monday, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), a scientific organization comprising thousands of earth scientists, published a quadrennial renewal of its position <a href="http://www.agu.org/sci_pol/pdf/position_statements/AGU_Climate_Statement_new.pdf" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">statement</a> affirming <a href="http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2013/2013-38.shtml" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">that</a> "humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years." One day later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the annual "<a href="http://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/state-climate-2012-highlights" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">State of the Climate</a>" report, showing that 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record worldwide and saw record-low Arctic sea ice extent. NOAA included these charts, illustrating warming of 0.16°C (0.28°F) <a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-trend-mntp/197013-201213.gif" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">per decade</a> since 1970 and plummeting Arctic <a href="http://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/2012-state-climate-arctic-sea-ice" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">sea ice extent</a> compared to the 1979-2000 average, respectively:

The AGU statement garnered mentions by <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/08/06/209462713/earth-scientists-pin-climate-change-squarely-on-humanity" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">National Public Radio</a> and <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/science/scientists-declare-human-activities-are-changing-earths-climate-6C10853219" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">NBCNews.com</a>, and NOAA's "<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-noaa-heat-20130807,0,2695081.story" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">sobering portrait</a> of vast swaths of the planet transformed by rising temperatures" was covered by the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/noaa-2012-shows-climate-change-with-record-sea-level-rise-arctic-melting-heated-up-oceans/2013/08/06/0de15ee2-fece-11e2-8294-0ee5075b840d_story.html" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">Associated Press</a>,<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/06/us-climate-report-idUSBRE97516320130806" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">Reuters</a>, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-noaa-heat-20130807,0,2695081.story" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">Los Angeles Times</a>, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323420604578652280203954990.html" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">Wall Street Journal</a> and CBS, and featured in wire reports in The Washington Postand on the websites of Fox News, NBC and ABC.

However, you didn't read about either story in The New York Times.

Past surveys have <a href="http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/media_coverage/us/index.html" style=" outline: none; text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">found</a> that the Times has published more stories on climate change than other large U.S. daily papers. But a failure to report on major developments like these calls into doubt the extent to which the paper can be trusted to maintain strong attention to environmental issues in the face of recent organizational changes.

In January 2013, The New York Times <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130111/new-york-times-dismantles-environmental-desk-journalism-fracking-climate-change-science-global-warming-economy" style=" outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">closed</a> its environment desk, calling it a "structural" move and <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130111/new-york-times-dismantles-environmental-desk-journalism-fracking-climate-change-science-global-warming-economy" style=" outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">telling</a> Inside Climate News it "expect[s] to cover the subject just as aggressively going forward." Many -- including the Times' own<a href="http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/keeping-environmental-reporting-strong-wont-be-easy/" style=" outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">ombudsman</a>, Margaret Sullivan -- expressed concern that coverage would suffer. In March, the other shoe dropped, as the Green blog, an able complement to the Times' long-form environment coverage that often <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/03/04/how-closing-new-york-times-green-blog-will-hurt/192901" style=" outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">covered</a> stories neglected in print, was <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/03/04/how-closing-new-york-times-green-blog-will-hurt/192901" style=" outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">discontinued</a>. This time Sullivan was less equivocal, <a href="http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/for-times-environmental-reporting-intentions-may-be-good-but-the-signs-are-not/?smid=tw-share" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">writing</a> that she was "not convinced that The Times's environmental coverage will be as strong without the team and the blog. Something real has been lost on a topic of huge and growing importance." The Times <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/04/ny_times_kills_its_environmental_blog_green_to_devote_resources_elsewhere.html" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">continued</a> to host <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/blogs/directory.html" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204);">blogs</a> dedicated to horse-racing, its crossword puzzle, and "eavesdrop[ping] on The New York Times Magazine."

Outlets across the U.S. have <a href="http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/down_but_not_out.php?page=all" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">reduced their coverage</a> of climate change in recent years. With the newspaper of record apparently not immune to that trend, it is only becoming more difficult for audiences to stay <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/01/22/after-failed-climate-coverage-cnn-reports-ameri/192345" style="outline: none; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);">well-informed</a>.

</div>

===

duhigg targetted by whelan:

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2013/atrazine-page2

In an Oct. 17, 2009, memo to Syngenta’s Ford, Jayne Thompson warned that some of the

language in four Op-Eds penned by the White House Writers Group is suggestive of their

source, which “should be avoided at all costs.”

Syngenta had $14.2 billion in total sales last year.

Court documents include an email dated Oct. 28, 2009, from a Syngenta employee asking her

boss how to pay these third-party allies who write in support of atrazine. There are

consistent warnings to be sure supporters appear independent, with no links to the

corporation.

In one case, Syngenta paid $100,000 to the nonprofit American Council on Science and Health

for support that included an Op-Ed piece criticizing the work of journalist Charles Duhigg of

the New York Times, who wrote a story on atrazine as part of its Toxic Waters series in 2009.

Without disclosing this financial support from Syngenta, president and founder Elizabeth

Whelan derided the New York Times article on atrazine as, “All the news that’s fit to scare.”

ACSH is a nonprofit that advocates against what it considers government’s over-regulation of

issues related to science and health.

“Dear Syngenta friends,” began a 2009 email from Gilbert Ross, a physician at ACSH, thanking

Syngenta for its payments and financial support over the years. “Such general operating

support is the lifeblood of a small nonprofit like ours, and is both deeply appreciated and

much needed,” wrote Ross.

In response to emailed questions for this article, Ross defended the decision not to publicly

disclose the payments, and dismissed Hayes as an “outlier.”

“To ‘disclose’ funding on every topic we cover – and there are many – would give the mistaken

impression that the donations came first to encourage or persuade us to cover a topic, and

cover it in a manner beneficial to the donor,” Ross wrote.

===

Joe Nocera of The New York Times is back with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/opinion/nocera-canadas-oil-minister-unmuzzled.html?hp" target="_hplink">another column</a> in support of building Keystone XL. I counted four errors or willful oversights in Nocera's piece, although I'm sure I missed some. Let's review.

1. Speaking about KXL's importance: "Energy independence is a long-sought national goal. We would no longer need OPEC, a cartel of countries with values, in many cases, antithetical to ours."

First, it remains unclear how "energy independence" can be achieved by continuing our reliance on fossil fuels and the corporations that supply them. Exxon <a href="http://energy.aol.com/2013/02/07/exxon-paid-roughly-twice-the-income-tax-as-apple-last-year/" target="hplink">made $45 billion last year</a>; its CEO Rex Tillerson <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/12/us-exxon-proxy-idUSBRE83B1ME20120412" target="hplink">made $100,000 a day</a> by supplying our fossil fuel addiction. If Joe wants to keep lining their pockets and strengthening their grip over our democracy that's his deal, but you can't argue in favor of independence if you want to keep a supplier from whom you can't shake loose. Second, no one that I know of seriously thinks that the Keystone XL export pipeline would lead to us no longer needing OPEC. The only way to do that is to drop Big Oil and petro states once and for all. And the only way to do that is to get serious about green energy which Nocera treats like a punch line. I wonder if they are laughing in Iowa now that they are getting 25 percent of their electricity from wind?

2. "That oil is coming here anyway -- by rail and boat, where spills are common, and via pipelines that are older, and hence less safe, than Keystone would be."

===

syngenta went after duhigg?

While aiding in attacks on Duhigg’s New York Times reporting, Whelan pushed the idea that people expressing concerns were engaged in “chemophobia,” an irrational fear of chemicals.

The e-mails contained in the court record are incomplete regarding ACSH’s project grant proposal, the total funding it has received over the years, and the subsequent funding for ACSH, WHWG, and others post-spring 2010.

===

Less than two months ago, <a href="http://grist.org/news/the-new-york-times-dissolves-its-environment-desk/">The New York Times dissolved its environment desk</a>, eliminating its two environment editor positions and reassigning those editors and seven reporters.

Now the paper is swinging the hatchet again, shutting down the <a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/">Green blog</a> that had been home to original environmental reporting every weekday. The news was announced in a <a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/a-blogs-adieu/">brief post</a> on the blog today:

<h1 class="title-blog">NYT Eliminates Environment Desk</h1>

<div class="blog_padding relative" style="padding-top: 15px;">Posted: 01/11/2013 8:57 am</div>

</div>

Disappointing news this morning from The New York Times. The paper's 9-person environment desk is folding.

According to <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130111/new-york-times-dismantles-environmental-desk-journalism-fracking-climate-change-science-global-warming-economy" target="_hplink">Inside Climate News</a>, which reported the story this morning, no one is being let go, and the environment and climate change will continue to be key areas of coverage. But the reporters and editors who made up the cluster will be reassigned to other desks.

The fate of the paper's <a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/" target="_hplink">Green Blog</a> remains unclear.

(Full disclosure: I launched The Times' Green Blog -- originally dubbed Green Inc., back in 2008, and I worked closely with many of the reporters and editors on the environment desk).

As noted by The Daily Climate earlier this week, coverage of global warming <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/us-climate-change-coverage-2012_n_2434290.html" target="_hplink">has declined</a> steadily since the failed 2009 Copenhagen climate summit.

The Times, of course, remains dedicated to the story. "Climate change is one of the few subjects so important that we need to be oblivious to cycles and just cover it as hard as we can all the time," Times managing editor Glenn Kramon was quoted as saying by Inside Climate News.

<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-zeller-jr/nyt-dismantles-environmen_b_2455656.html?view=print&comm_ref=false">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-zeller-jr/nyt-dismantles-environmen_b_2455656.html?view=print&comm_ref=false</a>

===

arthur hayes sulz pal of guate amb patterson, junket, assigned writer to trash? bitter fruit

pal of bernays;

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird</a>

...

In 1948, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wisner" title="Frank Wisner">Frank Wisner</a> was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP). Soon afterwards OSP was renamed the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Policy_Coordination" title="Office of Policy Coordination">Office of Policy Coordination</a> (OPC). This became the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_operation" title="Covert operation">covert action</a> branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda" title="Propaganda">propaganda</a>, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage" title="Sabotage">sabotage</a>, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-communism" title="Anti-communism">anti-Communist</a> elements in threatened countries of the free world."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-ig_inv-1">[2]</a>

Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence foreign media. Wisner recruited <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Graham" title="Philip Graham" class="mw-redirect">Philip Graham</a> from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post" title="The Washington Post">The Washington Post</a> to run the project within the industry. According to Deborah Davis in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_the_Great" title="Katharine the Great">Katharine the Great</a>; "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times" title="The New York Times">The New York Times</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek" title="Newsweek">Newsweek</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS" title="CBS">CBS</a> and other communications vehicles."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-2">[3]</a> Wisner referred to this apparatus as a "Mighty <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wurlitzer" title="Wurlitzer">Wurlitzer</a>", referencing the theater organ capable of controlling diverse pipes, instruments, and sound effects from a central console.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-wilford-3">[4]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-4">[5]</a>

In 1951, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_W.Dulles" title="Allen W. Dulles" class="mw-redirect">Allen W. Dulles</a> persuaded <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_Meyer" title="Cord Meyer">Cord Meyer</a> to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism" title="Liberalism">liberal</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalism%28politics%29" title="Internationalism (politics)">internationalist</a> organizations he had been a member of in the late 1940s.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-5">[6]</a> According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-6">[7]</a>

<table class="metadata mbox-small" style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249);"><tbody><tr><td style=" width: 1px;"> </td><td class="mbox-text">"I’m proud they asked me and proud to have done it" - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Alsop" title="Stewart Alsop">Stewart Alsop</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-7">[8]</a></td></tr></tbody></table>

In 1977, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People" title="People">People</a> article by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alexander_Butler&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Alexander Butler (page does not exist)">Alexander Butler</a> alleged that one of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Alsop" title="Joseph Alsop">Joseph Alsop</a>, whose foreign affairs articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists alleged by People Magazine to have been willing to promote the views of the CIA included <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Alsop" title="Stewart Alsop">Stewart Alsop</a> who headed the international bureau of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Herald_Tribune" title="New York Herald Tribune">New York Herald Tribune</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bradlee" title="Ben Bradlee" class="mw-redirect">Ben Bradlee</a> foreign affairs correspondent for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek" title="Newsweek">Newsweek</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Reston" title="James Reston">James Reston</a> for the international section of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times" title="New York Times" class="mw-redirect">New York Times</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Douglas_Jackson" title="Charles Douglas Jackson">Charles Douglas Jackson</a> foreign photo-journalist for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Magazine" title="Time Magazine" class="mw-redirect">Time Magazine</a>, and international correspondents such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Pincus" title="Walter Pincus">Walter Pincus</a> of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Post" title="Washington Post" class="mw-redirect">Washington Post</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_L.Bartlett%28journalist%29" title="Charles L. Bartlett (journalist)">Charles Bartlett</a> of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattanooga_Times" title="Chattanooga Times" class="mw-redirect">Chattanooga Times</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Baggs" title="Bill Baggs">William C. Baggs</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Gold" title="Herb Gold" class="mw-redirect">Herb Gold</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miami_News" title="The Miami News">The Miami News</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-stones-8">[9]</a> According to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Burleigh" title="Nina Burleigh">Nina Burleigh</a> (A Very Private Woman), these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank Wisner. The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-9">[10]</a>

Congressional hearings in 1976 proved CIA had been paying off editors and reporters in most mainstream media outlets.

After 1953, the network was overseen by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_W.Dulles" title="Allen W. Dulles" class="mw-redirect">Allen W. Dulles</a>, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. The usual methodology was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to witting or unwitting reporters. Those reports would then be repeated or cited by the preceding reporters which in turn would then be cited throughout the media wire services. These networks were run by people with well-known liberal but pro-American big business and anti-Soviet views such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Paley" title="William Paley">William Paley</a> (CBS), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Luce" title="Henry Luce">Henry Luce</a> (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time%28magazine%29" title="Time (magazine)">Time</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Magazine" title="Life Magazine" class="mw-redirect">Life Magazine</a>), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Hays_Sulzberger" title="Arthur Hays Sulzberger">Arthur Hays Sulzberger</a> (New York Times), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Friendly" title="Alfred Friendly">Alfred Friendly</a> (managing editor of the Washington Post), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jerry_O%27Leary&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Jerry O'Leary (page does not exist)">Jerry O'Leary</a> (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Star" title="Washington Star" class="mw-redirect">Washington Star</a>), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hal_Hendrix&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Hal Hendrix (page does not exist)">Hal Hendrix</a> (Miami News), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Bingham,_Sr." title="Barry Bingham, Sr.">Barry Bingham, Sr.</a>, (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisville_Courier-Journal" title="Louisville Courier-Journal" class="mw-redirect">Louisville Courier-Journal</a>), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Copley&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="James Copley (page does not exist)">James Copley</a> (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Copley_News_Services&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Copley News Services (page does not exist)">Copley News Services</a>) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Harrison" title="Joseph Harrison">Joseph Harrison</a>[<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://toolserver.org/%7Edispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py?page=Operation_Mockingbird&editintro=Template:Disambiguation_needed/editintro&client=Template:Dn">disambiguation needed</a>] (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science_Monitor" title="Christian Science Monitor" class="mw-redirect">Christian Science Monitor</a>).<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-stones-8">[9]</a>

The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Policy_Coordination" title="Office of Policy Coordination">Office of Policy Coordination</a> (OPC) was funded by siphoning of funds intended for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan" title="Marshall Plan">Marshall Plan</a>. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers. Frank Wisner was constantly looking for ways to help convince the public of the dangers of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet" title="Soviet" class="mw-redirect">Soviet</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism" title="Communism">communism</a>. In 1954, Wisner arranged for the funding of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood" title="Hollywood">Hollywood</a> production of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm_%281954_film%29" title="Animal Farm (1954 film)">Animal Farm</a>, the animated allegory based on the book written by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell" title="George Orwell">George Orwell</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-10">[11]</a>

According to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Constantine" title="Alex Constantine">Alex Constantine</a> (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, "some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts". Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran" title="Iran">Iran</a> (see: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax" title="Operation Ajax" class="mw-redirect">Operation Ajax</a>) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala" title="Guatemala">Guatemala</a> (see: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PBSUCCESS" title="Operation PBSUCCESS" class="mw-redirect">Operation PBSUCCESS</a>).<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-11">[12]</a>...

----

son

published pentagon papers <a href="http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=102192">http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=102192</a>

Punch Sulzberger

AKA Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Sr.

Born: <a href="http://www.nndb.com/lists/553/000106235/" class="proflink">5-Feb</a>-<a href="http://www.nndb.com/lists/925/000105610/" class="proflink">1926</a>

Birthplace: <a href="http://www.nndb.com/geo/631/000069424/" class="proflink">New York City</a>

Gender: Male

Religion: <a href="http://www.nndb.com/lists/875/000071662/" class="proflink">Jewish</a>

Race or Ethnicity: White

Sexual orientation: Straight

Occupation: <a href="http://www.nndb.com/lists/265/000095977/" class="proflink">Publisher</a>

Nationality: United States

Executive summary: New York Times Publisher, 1963-91

Military service: USMC (1944-46, Korea 1951, Lt.)

Father: <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/639/000024567/">Arthur Hays Sulzberger</a>

Mother: Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger

Sister: Ruth Rachel Sulzberger

Sister: Marian Effie Sulzberger (m. <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/359/000159879/">Orvil Dryfoos</a>)

Sister: Judith Peixotto Sulzberger ("Judy", doctor, b. 1923, d. 2011)

Wife: Barbara Winslow Grant (m. 2-Jul-1948, div. 1956, one son, one daughter)

Son: <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/638/000024566/">Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.</a>

Daughter: Karen Alden

Wife: Carol Fox Fuhrman (m. 19-Dec-1956)

Daughter: Cynthia Fox

Daughter: <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/994/000170484/">Cathy J. Sulzberger</a> (adopted step-daughter)

High School: <a href="http://www.nndb.com/edu/354/000159874/">Loomis Chaffee School, Windsor, CT</a>

University: <a href="http://www.nndb.com/edu/477/000068273/">BA English and History, Columbia University (1951)</a>

<a href="http://www.nndb.com/media/640/000044508/" style="">The New York Times</a> Publisher (1963-91)

<a href="http://www.nndb.com/media/640/000044508/" style="">The New York Times</a> Assistant Treasurer (1957-63)

<a href="http://www.nndb.com/media/640/000044508/" style="">The New York Times</a> Assistant to the Publisher (1954-57)

<a href="http://www.nndb.com/media/640/000044508/" style="">The New York Times</a> European correspondent (1952-53)

Member of the Board of <a href="http://www.nndb.com/company/538/000119181/" style="">The New York Times Company</a> (1965-91)

The Milwaukee Journal Reporter (1951-52)

<a href="http://www.nndb.com/org/283/000088019/" style="">American Museum of Natural History</a> Department of Animal Behavior (summer job)

<a href="http://www.nndb.com/group/252/000160769/" style="">Sulzberger-Ochs Family</a>

Risk Factors: <a href="http://www.nndb.com/lists/786/000064594/" style="">Dyslexia</a>

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