JoNova

We want evidence, reason, and well informed opinions from all sides on important topics. Instead we’re coerced into paying for propaganda, character assassination, and the personal views of journalists.

The ABC has been outdoing itself lately. It doesn’t just ignore skeptics, it’s been actively working to denigrate them. No ad hom is too low, no fabrication too far fetched. Could it be complete fiction? Why not? Could it be the most expensive high profile ABC programs, costing tax-payers hundreds of thousands an episode? Yes sir.

It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a culture. When comedians and scriptwriters live off a diet of dogma at the ABC (it starts with the science unit), why would we be surprised that they’d churn out the same half-truths, deceit, and sloppy reasoning in their fictional work?

The ABC Chairman — Maurice Newman — recently worried about the poor intellectual quality of ABC “investigations” in The Australian, “Ad hominem attacks substitute for logical and evidence-based discourse that would otherwise allow viewers and listeners the opportunity to decide for themselves where they stand on the issues.”

Our billion-dollar ABC is supposed to represent the diverse views of the country:

The ABC editorial policy tells us the ABC must: “4.2 Present a diversity of perspectives so that, over time, no significant strand of thought or belief within the community is knowingly excluded or disproportionately represented.” [Thanks Bob Fernley-Jones]

The diversity of opinion is clear: the latest polls show  34% of Australians are in favor of a Carbon Tax and 57% are against.

So how do the ABC represent the voices of 57% of the people?

• A/ ignore them,
• B/ denigrate them, or
• C/ both of the above (see, e.g. “Anthony Watts”).

The lengths the ABC will go to, to destroy reputations of those they personally disagree with are considerable

I’ve already described how Wendy Carlisle called herself a “science journalist”, yet ignored Australia’s leading carbon modeler as he explained problems with climate models (twice, at length, with slides). Instead of asking Evans a single question when he was in the same room after the talks, Carlisle thought it was worth making international phone calls to people tenuously and distantly connected to the Monckton tour in order to talk about what their department was called in 1985.

The agit-prop is not just talk shows, it now extends to “comedy” and fictional dramas.

Crownies tries to defame Anthony Watts

Fictional character: James Watt

Two weeks ago, a legal drama —Crownies — put a lawyer-character  in a devilish quandry. The poor dear — fresh from being drilled in Climate Alarm 101 at school — was forced to defend a “denier” who’d been punched by the lawyer’s hero — a frustrated alarmist scientist. The ‘persistent climate denialist’ was a blogger called “James Watt” who ran a site called “CO2fraud”, a thinly veiled attempt to denigrate Anthony Watts who runs the skeptical website Watts Up With That(easily the most popular climate site in the world). At the end of the case, Watt looks like a loser nerd who deserved to be punched. The climate scientist reckoned he might do it again “for $1000, it might just be worth it.” As per usual the script writers attack strawmen and produce a caricature of errors.

(Note to Crownies writers: hundreds of studies show the MWP was not just “local”, no major skeptic says GHG’s break laws of thermodynamics, the hot spot wasn’t found, alarmists still can’t name any empirical evidence, and if a glacier melts that doesn’t mean fossil fuels caused it. Any cause of warming will melt ice, raise sea levels, change growing seasons, you know.).

To see Episode 13: Try this link, or this one or possibly  The ABC’s iView facility* (Parts of interest at 5.30, 15.30, 27.30, 30.30 and 38 mins.)

The ABC doesn’t even try to hide that the point was to make Watts look like an idiot — it’s written into their episode description:

Richard is prosecuting a case in court, this time with a good chance of winning. But he is not happy. He has to prosecute his climate scientist hero Tim Coghburn for assault, after Coghburn punched a persistent climate denialist, James Watt. Watt is an annoying gadfly and Richard detests all he stands for. And the fiasco is made worse when Richard sees Coghburn is being represented by Richard’s old, much admired law lecturer. Richard makes a stuttering start in court, and the defence QC makes Watt look unreliable and a bit of a goose. Part of Richard wants to lose because of his environmental concerns, but part of him needs a win. Richard finally cross examines Tim Coghburn and gets to reconcile his needs. He leads Tim through a series of questions as put by James Watt and his ilk, stirring Coghburn’s anger as he airs the simple rebuttals. Eventually Tim blurts out that yes, he did hit James Watt, and it felt great. Richard has his win, Tim is fined, and Watt still comes out of it looking like an idiot.

A Hamster tries satire on Monckton. If only it were funny…

While we toured with Christopher Monckton in Sydney in July, he mentioned that an ABC related team had interviewed him for 45 minutes, and then it all turned out to be a gotcha pretending he was Sacha Baron Cohen.

Now, What-Ho, three months later, they’ve finally scraped it into a 4 minute comedy sketch. The central idea was a good one — the riotous notion that Monckton was Cohen all along and has tricked everyone from the US Congress to media outlets everywhere. It could’ve been good — if only the actors could act. None of them can deliver their lines in any half-way convincing style. Watch Shaun Micallef self-consciously fake a laugh, see someone called Tony Martin overact his scripted lines, and laugh at the big Gotcha Moment flop as Monckton doesn’t bite and politely tells them they ought take their equipment and go.

As is usual with religious zealots, they just can’t carry off a joke. The best and funniest comedians know their topic well. But the Chaser crew don’t know Monckton well enough to realize that he has Graves Disease, and Martin’s comment that Monckton looks so “ridiculous” chokes on its own poor taste. This is cheap-trick propaganda, except it isn’t cheap. (The 8 shows cost $3.2 million dollars and the Chaser boys are getting $1.2 million of taxpayer money themselves.)

[I predict that Hamster, like Crownies, will bomb. Who wants to watch predictable shows tell them what to think and who to sneer at.]

The weak scientific culture of the ABC starts with the science unit

Bob Fernley-Jones documents just how unscientific Robyn Willliams “science” program has become.

Williams personal views on topics like “climate science” dominate his show. He reviews sympathetic smear books that personally attack scientists, but he won’t interview authors of science books who hold different opinions to his own (e.g. Professor Bob Carter, who wrote Climate: The Counter Consensus). Nor will Williams interview well-informed critics like William Kininmonth (Climate Change: A Natural Hazard), Dr David Evans, or Prof Garth Paltridge (The Climate Caper). And this despite global warming being rather near the top of the national agenda.

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