The DAILY SCEPTIC

BY CHRIS MORRISON

A massive global grooming programme aimed at mostly mainstream media involving climate catastrophism and Net Zero promotion is detailed in a recently published report from the green billionaire-funded Internews’s Earth Journalism Network (EJN). The work is a shocking insight into the corruption of independent, investigative journalism. At one point the report observes “a concerning trend among journalists in some countries still seeking to ‘balance’ their climate change reporting”. The report shows clearly that the green billionaires are calling most of the shots in promoting stories of Net Zero-inspired climate collapse. It is noted that they may fund journalists “to cover stories in a particular subject area, determined by funder interests and goals”.

Over the last 20 years the tax-efficient billionaire foundations have stepped into the funding gaps left by declining circulation and advertising sales across mainstream media. It is noted by the EJN that journalists “overwhelmingly agreed” that support from external funding organisations was “essential” to enabling their climate and environmental reporting. Any journalist can apply to be a member of the EJN and the “primary benefit” is said to be access to grant funding for stories and “training opportunities”. The operation claims over 25,000 members in 200 countries.

The list of EJN funders is a long one and includes many well-known supporters of climate fear-mongering work. Included is the European Climate Foundation, heavily supported by Michael Bloomberg and Extinction Rebellion paymaster Sir Christopher Hohn. Other supporters include Tides, Gulbenkian, Oak, Packard, Climate Justice Resilience, MacArthur and Rockefeller. Helping out with taxpayer money are political and government organisations including the United Nations and the British Foreign Office.

The EJN report is said to provide a novel, truly global benchmark of the current state of climate and environmental journalism. Unhappily this would appear to be true. As we have seen in many past issues of the Daily Sceptic, very few ‘grassroots’ green operations can survive without elite billionaire funding. The same is true of media coverage. Much of the global barrage of climate catastrophe reporting would not exist without this vital outside lifeline. It is obvious that the cash handouts have a clear political agenda, namely an elite-mandated Net Zero global collectivisation made easier by the growth of supranational organisations.

The report makes the obvious point that climate and environmental journalists have long been criticised for lacking objectivity. However the “literature” is said to suggest that journalism as a whole “has been moving away from objectivity as a professional practice in the digital landscape”.  Some researchers are said to have pointed to a need to think ‘beyond journalism’ and to formulate a broader definition.

It might be argued that if you are being paid to be a poodle, you are already ‘beyond journalism’. As 1984 author George Orwell once wrote: “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; anything else is public relations.”

Alas, it would seem that some climate scepticism remains, despite all the best funding efforts. The scientific opinion that humans control the climate thermostat by burning hydrocarbons is disputed by some of the finest scientific minds in the world. Fudged figures, pseudoscientific weather attributions and the huge downplaying of the role of natural variations do not convince everyone. According to the EJN, this means that in many countries, media audiences are being led to believe that the causes of climate change are not clear. Certainly it might be said that the causes of climate change are unclear to believers in the scientific discovery process, such as the 2022 winner of the Nobel physics prize Dr. John Clauser. He said recently that the link between temperature and carbon dioxide was a “crock of crap”. Or the distinguished Princeton Emeritus Professor William Happer, who when asked to choose between ‘climate scam’ or ‘hoax’, said he preferred ‘scam’, but could live with ‘hoax’.

For the billionaire-funded EJN this is “highly problematic”, since widespread public understanding of the causes and impacts of climate change “is so urgently needed to support climate action on a global scale”.

Alas, again, the report seemed to find some disturbing evidence that some Comrades are not fully on board with the wishes of Big Climate Brother and the ‘settled’ science promoted by the Ministry of Truth. Citizens are reminded that at the time of the Great COVID-19 Pandemic, “media in many countries clearly aligned with government positions on vaccine mandates and lockdown orders – often under the uniting phrase of ‘we are all in this together’”. On the basis of this example, it is suggested that journalists should be less hesitant to advocate the climate message in the ‘public interest’.

Given that the newsrooms of the world are full of journalists trying to hide their manic support for cloth mask wearing, implausible computer modelling, years of social distancing and school closures, untested and novel medicines, economy-destroying lockdowns and crippling public debt, there might be some concern that another science-lite campaign could eventually lead to more grovelling public accountability, laughable scorn and diminished credibility.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.