Bogus Gold

One thing for which I've always envied liberals (I mean besides the guilt-free drug habits) is that their fundamental message is "government knows best." It doesn't get much more simplistically appealing than that.

I keed... I keed. Or rather I parody. Because failed media-critic Brian Lambert has written a screed a bit wordier, but no sillier about conservatives. But we shouldn't mock. He's in his terribly serious mode, you see. He's trying to explain that he - failed media critic Brian Lambert - has figured out the high holy scientific truths journalists ought to respect.

The ethical challenge for journalists and journalism (as opposed to infotainment personalities in "the media") is stark. It means accepting what the best available science has now concluded is fact about global warming — that it's happening and human activity is an aggravating if not principal cause — and pulling the plug on spurious "debate" engendered by conservative ideologues, much like what credible news organizations have done with Holocaust-deniers and creationists.

Of course to anyone with a degree studying science as opposed to journalism it's a grand load of hooey on it's face. What exactly is a phrase like "accepting what the best available science has now concluded is fact about global warming" supposed to mean? Real science hasn't "concluded" that any future predictions - about global warming or anything else - are "fact," because that's not how science works. And "pulling the plug on spurious 'debate'" is about as blatant a rejection of the scientific method as one could propose.

But the journalistic question Lambert dances around throughout this entire article without ever answering is, "By what standards does a journalist conclude things are certain enough we must stop reporting scientific challenges?"

Obviously in Lambert's opinion current scientific knowledge on the global climate is about as certain as knowledge about actual historical events like the Holocaust, and dissent is as foolish as believing in a myth. But how did he arrive at this conclusion about this particular topic? There is a suggested answer that develops as he continues...

In the case of major newspapers like the Star Tribune and local television news outlets like KSTP, WCCO, KARE and KMSP, this would mean largely if not completely ignoring the vocal minority railing away at the work and findings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If the talk radio choir wants to have a "debate" among itself, fine. But for journalists the debate phase has ended and the story now is, "What to do?"

My emphasis, and it's a doozy. It's child's play to find leading experts in climate science dissenting from the IPCC report. Yet that's not something Lambert even finds relevant. Because "for journalists the debate phase has ended." Science goes in story phases, don't you know. It's not really about the search for truth, it's about framing the narrative. I don't think he intended to be nearly so honest, but wow is that ever telling.

The other telling thing here is how Lambert has drifted into the position that journalists should trust the scientific pronouncements of political scientific bodies. I know he thinks this is a special and singular scientific issue unlike any other before or likely to come after. But that just illustrates his naivety. Especially in the modern age, scientific funding is driven to a large extent by crisis-mongering. If Lambert is suggesting - and it seems he is - that in the case of a crisis journalists must abandon their skepticism, he's calling for journalists to become little more than government propagandists. And what could possibly go wrong there?

Lest you think I exagerrate, he continues...

In the most docile of times mainstream news organizations are reluctant to make declarations of such rancor-inducing finality. Doing so plays against most journalists' fair-minded, if mushy-headed, preference for "balance." It is a mind-set where "both sides" should always get equal space and treatment. But these aren't docile times, and the potential consequences of global warming are vastly more significant than those of, say, public subsidies for light rail or repealing the "death tax."

You see? The current crisis compels a change in journalistic ethics. They cannot afford to tell "both sides" in such times. "These aren't docile times," after all. Unlike the Cold War and stuff, one presumes.

We're at a critical moment where significant changes need to happen, specifically with regard to our use of fossil fuels. (Geopolitical reasons alone demand an immediate and dramatic change.) Serious journalists cannot honor their professional commitment to truth while simultaneously pandering to political ideologues who are substituting campaign-style spin and misinformation for science. More to the point, papers, op-ed pages and TV stations that continue to play the "balance" game with global climate change undermine any claim they may have to journalistic credibility. What they are "reporting" is a political battle, not a scientific debate.

Ladies and gentlemen? We call this "projection": "Serious journalists cannot honor their professional commitment to truth while simultaneously pandering to political ideologues who are substituting campaign-style spin and misinformation for science."

I agree with that statement. I just find Brian Lambert to be advocating the contrary, as he calls for journalists to adopt a supine position toward political organizations like the IPCC, while refusing to print actual science which challenges their conclusions.

In fact I'd like to see anything Lambert has ever written approaching what Canada's National Post has done with it's series investigating these strange IPCC "deniers." Remember, these are the kind of articles Lambert is calling to be suppressed. You, the reading public, shouldn't be allowed to see such scientific opinion. In Lambert's bizarro world, these scientists conducting research are actually engaged in politics, while Lambert's media censors would be holding the beacon of science. And they know it's science because they have the word of a U. N. approved group saying so.

It's hard to know which is the more pathetic aspect of Lambert's appeal. Is it the ethical bankruptcy of his preferred journalism, which he calls upon to "bravely" censor dissent? Or is it his abject scientific ignorance, because of which he's forced to rely upon appeals to authority as a replacement for reason in making such determinations?