Seeing as they each impact key pillars of what today passes for liberalism, there seems to be more than a few connections between the recent ACORN stings by Giles, O’Keefe and Breitbart, and the recent hacking of the emails of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, or “Global WarmingGate”, as Charlie Martin dubs it elsewhere at Pajamas. Not the least is that they each sent the legacy media into full gatekeeper mode, hoping to prevent exciting, important news of current events from ever reaching their readers. Or perhaps, like the scandal last year involving John Edwards, sitting on the stories for so long, while making claims that they have to endlessly research them to verify their authenticity — Keep rockin’! — that when the legacy media decides to go “public” with news that everyone already knows, they can dramatically dilute the ultimate impact of these stories.
In September, we noted the L.A. Times’ hypocrisy when they wrote, “O’Keefe’s hidden-camera methods are distasteful, and the extent to which his videos were edited is unknown” — as opposed to the hidden camera videos run almost every week by their fellow liberal brethren on 60 Minutes since the show debuted on CBS over 40 years ago.
And as a nice sequel of sorts to our previous post on leftwing cognitive dissonance, Orrin Judd spots this staggering moment of hypocrisy from the New York Times’ Andrew C. Revkin of their “Dot Earth” blog on Friday:
The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.
And they don’t contain any obvious state military secrets as well, unlike say the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War or more recently, the secrets of War on Terror, or any of a number of other leaked documents the Times has cheerfully rushed to print.
Back in 2006, when his paper disclosed the previously confidential details of the SWIFT program, which was designed to trace terrorists’ financial assets, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said on CBS’s Face the Nation, “one man’s breach of security is another man’s public relations.” Of course, much like the rest of the media circling the wagons with ACORN, it’s not at all surprising that the Times circles the wagons when it’s necessary to save the public face of their fellow liberals.
Incidentally, Tom Maguire explains the perfect way to square the circle:
If Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe are done tormenting ACORN maybe they can figure out how to pose as underaged climate researchers…
Heh, indeed.™
Related: “LA Times Changes Its Mind: Science Doesn’t Matter On Climate Bill.”
Update: At the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb adds, “As a journalist, there is no greater glory than publishing materials that were not meant to be published”:
If I could, I would only publish emails and documents that were never meant to see the light of day — though, unlike the New York Times, I draw the line at jeopardizing the lives of American troops rather than jeopardizing the contrived “consensus” on global warming.
And of course, the Times has those priorities exactly reversed. But then, for the Gray Lady, small government Republicans are “Stalinists”, but actual totalitarian governments are worthy of emulation and respect.
Update: On Twitter, “Justkarl” asks, “You don’t suppose the real reason Revkin won’t publish the CRU e-mails is that he’s implicated in them?”, adding, “Revkin CRU e-mail. Likely here too.”
Related: For those who would like to “Wear The Decline”, T-shirts are now available in the lobby!
Update (11/23/09): And speaking of bringing things full circle, the commenters below note that the Times had few ethical concerns when they linked to the hacked emails of Sarah Palin last fall during the presidential election.
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Having followed his writings, I’d tend to give Andy Revkin a break here. He has gone out of his way to approach his subjects with even-handed scientific skepticism, and has the track marks on his back to show for his treatment of AGW. As a blogger for the NYT, he’s entitled to set his own standards concerning what he’ll include or quote. The news division of the paper, whose motto used to be “all the news that’s fit to print,” has no such excuse and deserves our contempt for its many failures to live up to it.
I just posted a lengthy post on AGQ and how CO2, according to a number of scientists my not actually be the source of “global warming” after all.
http://thevailspot.blogspot.com/2009/11/global-warming-is-it-hoax-or-just-bad.html
Obama’s Green Jobs Snake Oil
Quip: We’re lucky that we have global warming. Fighting for our lives is going to make us rich.
Consider this to see the fallacy: If Obama could snap his fingers and make global warming disappear, should he do it? By his logic, no, because then we’d lose all those wonderful green jobs that will help pull us out of the recession.
Andy Revkin =Useful Idiot.
He and his paper are so done.
Here was the complete quote:
“The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here. We will only post this type of information if it is harmful to George Bush or to national security of the US. We will not impair the ability of the left to deceive the public.”
Good piece.
Civil wars are always the worst. We are in one now, my friends. And it’s not about easily-understood differences like slavery and secession: it’s about a corrosive and debilitating mental ebola, liberalism, that has been bleeding the US since TR and Wilson and is now this close to finishing the job.
We are on Seminary Ridge and we had better get our flanking movements down pat.
Well, look at the bright side. By not publishing the real data (e.g. the e-mails and other correspondence), folks with any curiosity at all will have to go look somewhere else, and the NYT loses more readers.
BTW, for those still looking for the raw info, last time I checked it was still here:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XD050VKY
(62 Mb zip file)
“The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.”
How much crack is Andrew Revkin smoking? The whole point of scientific is publication. That does not mean hiding data that is inconvenient and does not support your conclusions. It’s called fraud. It used to be intolerable.
I seem to recall that Sarah Palin’s inconsequential hacked emails weren’t too “illegal” to print.
I have a weekend subscription to the NYT. Revkin had a front page story Saturday that was a moderate whitewash, but I gave him a pass because his deadline hit early in the scandal and the worst may not have been known yet. But I couldn’t find a single mention in Sunday’s paper when the story had clearly evolved and new information was available.
It seems to me that since he wrote a softball front page story on this, at some point he has an ethical obligation to mention that the trove includes email exchanges he participated in and he is personally (if unwittingly) involved in one of the cover-ups.
SFAIK, he has never made this disclosure in a story.
For those who would like to “Wear The Decline”, T-shirts are now available in the lobby!
I’d prefer a “I’m HTD free” one.
Ellen is right. The New York Times linked to actual screen shots of Palin’s hacked emails here: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/palins-e-mail-account-hacked/
so andy is covering for himself by refusing to show his own email correspondance with CRU members that are contained in the leaked documents.
Return to the index page | Earlier Emails | Later Emails
I wonder if Mr. Revkin feels he has been manipulated. (He should)
From: Michael Mann
To: Andrew Revkin
Subject: Re: mcintyre’s latest….
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:27:25 -0400
Cc: t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
HI Andy,
Yep, what was written below is all me, but it was purely on background, please don’t quote
anything I said or attribute to me w/out checking specifically–thanks.
Re, your point at the end–you’ve taken the words out of my mouth. Skepticism is essential
for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But
legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in
particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition
for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate
scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside
of this system are not to be trusted.
mike
I appreciate the sentiment, the notion of the double standard at the NYT. However, there’s an important insight here regarding the Liberal perception of AGW – it’s an immediate threat to ALL life on Earth. This position suggests, in their own minds, how much more they love humanity than conservatives, who only seek to protect the lives of their countrymen. Yet, such hysteria is really just another metaphor for their fear of the more mature and responsible authority of conservatism to establish social guidelines … it’s like the end of the world to these narcissistic libertines.
The most amazing thing about Climategate and the global warming issue is the degree of respect given to “scientists” who refused to make their data public. Some of the most damning emails deal with avoiding Freedom of Information requests from Steve McIntyre and others. This violation of a basic principle of science is at least incompetent, if not criminal.
<>
Well, there’s a principle here. Publication of the WarmingGate disclosures would (1) not get any Americans killed, and even worse would (2) actually permit Americans to keep more of the money they earned. Thus they cannot be published at the Times.
Piltdown Mann.
The left, including the currency-manipulating billionaire George Soros, would never allow the NYTimes to suffer the fate the market would bestow: extinction. So we will always have like-minded editors and other gatekeepers taking their cues from the Gray Lady, ravaged as she is from any number of diseases associated with rotting and corrupt institutions. In time, the Times will have as much weight and influence at The Nation magazine.
Please! Please! Please!
This is a perfect opportunity to drop the “-gate” suffix for (political) scandals … and replace it with the much better “-quiddick” suffix.
‘Climatequiddick,’ Anyone?
And, “-quiddick” is fitting in this case, for, after all, have not the Global Warm-mongers been assuring us for years that we’d all soon be under water if we did not immediately turn over control of our economies (and, indeed, of our lives) to their control?
At least the NYT has printed *something* about the story. The Washington Post has only mentioned it on its website, and not in print at all.
I asked the Post’s media critic, Howard Kurtz, a lot of questions about the Post’s and the Times’ coverage in his live chat today. He chose not to answer any of them.
Wikipedia articles that should record this event in a neutral and balanced manner, with journalist-written sources (best to discuss on the talk page, don’t just start editing directly):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Jones_(climatologist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Mann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy
EXCELLENT article. I believe we are living in the days when ” they will call evil, good and good evil.”
Oh no, could it be? Why yes, it looks like a new and even more ‘inconvenient truth’…uh, Houston, we have a problem here… The straight truth is that LIBERALISM IS INDEED A MENTAL DISORDER. Of course I am a “right-wing extremist, conservative, nut job” according to the dept. of Homeland security. So please readers, keep that in mind when reading this post.
Today’s word class is C-O-N-S-T-I-T-U-T-I-O-N.
The link to Palin’s emails was by a NY Times BLOGGER, not the paper itself, which has other journalistic standards.
Shouldn’t the NY Times get some credit for mentioning the story at all. They could have just ignored it, but they didn’t.
Climategate
Let’s see:
a) subverting the peer review process
b) stacking the UN IPCC
c) obstruction of the Freedom on Information Act
d) breach of university and state ethics codes
… and we haven’t even talked about the data yet.
Climate Science – the new Ponzi scheme!
p.s. – Is this what Science is all about? Meet the new boss (science), same as the old boss (religion). When are they issuing funny hats to scientists?
p.p.s. – Who needs Wall Street when you have Science?