Pointman’s March 8, 2013 posting is titled “A Species Facing Extinction”. In the posting Pointman concludes the public is growing tired of one scare after another by the alarmist’s. This is coupled with the economic problems the world is having. The public has to cope with new taxes and the threat of making the price of energy skyrocket. They have had enough. Pointman says that this is evident in that major media players understand that this is one crisis that is not selling papers or TV space that it once was. The New York Times has closed its environmental desk. The Washington Post is reassigning environmental reporters to other work. We are aware that the profit motive is draining away as people begin to look to more rational presentations of the news in other arenas.
Pointman says:
“Newsrooms around the world are being culled, but I think it’s significant that it’s the environmental area which is now taking the brunt of the cuts and seen as surplus to profitable requirements. It can safely be given the chop. That would have been unthinkable four or five years ago. Of course, the quasi-state television channels will continue to push the alarmist line, simply because they have no commercial pressures they’re obliged to respond to. In the long term though, that doesn’t matter in their particular case, as the advent of internet television stations will ultimately push them into extinction as well. In passing though, it’s interesting to note that the BBC have over the past few months, dispensed with the services of a number of so-called reporters, whom any reasonable person would have to class as nothing better than climate activists.
This slow demise of so-called environmental journalism is actually an act of euthanasia, a mercy killing. To my mind, it always embodied the very worst aspects of journalism. All the grubby professional sins were there; advocacy dressed up as balanced reportage, an intolerant moral arrogance, totally one-sided reporting, knee-jerk churnalism, absolutely no distinction between opinion and factual pieces, suppression of stories that didn’t square with an approved set of viewpoints, selective misinformation, hit pieces dressed up as respectable journalism directed at their pet hate figures, a crusading willingness to sacrifice truth, by both omission and commission, in the name of a higher cause and a basic dishonesty to both the reader and their profession”.
Pointman finishes with this: “Like all species who are no longer fit for purpose, the environmental journalist is facing extinction.”
The posting can be read in its entirety by clicking here.
cbdakota
Climate Change Sanity 