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Is there anyone online that hasn’t seen angry Democrats rioting, and beating up voters who made the “wrong” choice? In the land of meaningless slogans, this must be what happens when Love Trumps Hate. Presumably they are teaching Hitler’s disciples a lesson. As Mark Steyn says, every Republican candidate is called Hitler, and when everyone’s Hitler, nobody’s Hitler.
Around the world many people remain baffled as to how 60 million US citizens could vote for the sexist, racist, trash talking Trump. In one survey only 4% of Germans said they would vote for him. Here in Australia I don’t know the numbers, but The Flummoxed are everywhere. Thank the media for the one-dimensional caricature they sell.
Things are so bad here that The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) put out a story saying there were “reports from Trump Tower in New York on Tuesday evening” with crowds of thousands chanting: “We hate Muslims, we hate blacks, we want our great country back”. Michael Smith found a tweet pointing out that their entire source for this was a guy who runs a known parody account on Twitter @sRowntreeNews. Smith clocked up the screenshot, sure that the newspaper would correct their inflammatory uber […]
Who are Trump’s loyal army asks Michael Goldfarb of the BBC
America is so divided in 2016 that one half of the electorate can barely understand the other. Comprehending the Donald Trump phenomenon has become the dominant theme of US election coverage…
Dear BBC et al, half the electorate is mocked, reviled, and otherwise ignored. No wonder the other half are clueless… The divided electorates throughout the West don’t understand each other because there is no national conversation to understand. When was the last time the BBC (or ABC) employed a show host that was a skeptic, Brexit-fan, or UKIP voter? Count the years. How about a whole panel? A series? A doco? When was the last government grant awarded to someone to explain the dangers of big-creeping-government?
It’s practically BBC official policy not to even interview people who disagree with certain views, even if that includes 62% of the British public. This is a good way to divide the electorate and create ignorance and misunderstanding, yes? It’s not that the skeptical half can’t get half the evening news, they can’t even get a 10 second, heavily edited sentence in. Greenpeace, on the other hand, get invited to […]
Eggs and Bacon Bay, Tasmania
Their billion-dollar-ABC reports every irrelevant thought bubble a greenie group can dream up:
“PETA launches bid to change Eggs and Bacon Bay to healthy alternative”
The ABC can’t find a single local who wants the change, but they treat the fantasy to a three-photo feature, complete with expert opinions and interviews. The locals think the idea is a bad joke. Listen to Doug:
…Doug said locals were perfectly happy with the name.
“These single-interest groups ought to go overseas and annoy the shit out of ISIS,” he said.
The only person outside the ABC who thinks this issue is worth discussing is some poor chicken mayor who is happy to sell out the locals for fear of offending the busybody control-freaks:
Huon Valley Mayor Peter Coad is willing to consider the idea.
“Obviously these issues should be taken seriously and have some merit,” he said.
Dear Mayor Coad, PETA are demanding a meat-free map. You think this is serious?
One type of Eggs And Bacon Flower.
The town, by the way, is named after a flower. That’ll be next on the hit list, and before […]
…
Malcolm Roberts
Some in the love media have real trouble understanding preferential voting. Big numbers seem to confuse them.
There are headlines that Malcolm Roberts “only got 77 votes” as if to delegitamize the skeptic. The Courier Mail put it on the front page. What they couldn’t find was one voter who voted for Pauline Hanson who was unhappy about where their vote went. And there were plenty to ask: Hanson’s party got 593,000 first preference votes nationally and won four Senate seats.
Apparently to be considered a real senator the magic number of first preference votes this year is “100″.
In South Australia, Stirling Griff of the Nick Xenophon Team won “103″ votes, and Sky Kakosche-Moore won “129″. Alex Gallacher, Australian Labor Party, won with “330 votes”. No newspapers seem to be suggesting that they don’t deserve to be there, or that their success is a reason to axe preferential voting.
In WA, the Liberal Party won fully 3 of their 5 Senate seats on a average of just 600 “votes” each. Let’s ignore that the Liberal group ticket in WA had 510,000 votes. They ended up getting five senators elected with less votes than […]
The good news is that a majority of people are aware of media bias, and are skeptical of what the media tells them. The bad news is that this is just another marker showing the average Western citizen is losing faith in the integrity of so many key institutions.
The activist journo’s have overplayed their hand. They are not even trying…
“Voters Expect Reporters To Help Clinton Over Trump”
[July 21st, 2016] A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that only 20% of Likely U.S. Voters think that when covering a political campaign, most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage. Most (69%) say reporters try to help the candidate they want to win. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure (To see survey question wording, click here.)
The media have lost so much influence. They described Brexiteers as loony, selfish and xenophobic, but more than half the country ignored them and voted for Brexit. Similarly, the US media mocked and denigrated Trump supporters, and continually predicted he wouldn’t stay in the race, and wouldn’t make it through the primaries, and yet he did. Poor pundits keep being surprised by the people.
The key word in this […]
It’s panic stations over at Believer Central. They are losing their grip on the media. And 2015 was a bumper year for Climate Scares – the hottest ever year, the giant Paris Junket, The El Nino, The Pope! (The Pope?) Despite all that, the media spent less time on the climate. It doesn’t get any better than 2015 for the Global Worriers — there is no higher level of panic. But the free propaganda machine is slowing…
Lookout, climate denial is on the rise (don’t ask about the error bars):
…
Dana Nuccitelli, The Guardian
During the most important year for climate news, TV coverage fell
A report by Media Matters for America reveals that the media are failing to inform the American public on the most important issue of our time.
Media Matters for America has published a report detailing US broadcast news coverage of climate change in 2015, and their findings are stunning.
Stunning eh? Or not.
Dana might be knocked over, but I see ABC down 20, Fox up 20, and some “other stuff”. It’s not really much of a trend. The thing that really bugs Dana seems to […]
UPDATE: For those who can’t see the ABC footage we have a copy at dropbox, thanks to Panda.
UPDATE #2: This episode has now been pulled from the ABC website 13 days early. The ABC, with its billion dollar budget, has a website to show all its programs for 14 days after they run. But for no stated reason this one has been deleted after just one day. Did the ABC not like us discussing it? (H/t to Panda). Thank goodness we have a copy. [Screencap of current ABC page here.]
h/t to Peter Q. Thanks to Andrew M as well.
Dennis Jensen has a lot to say on matters of national importance, but the ABC doesn’t ask him very often about those.
Tonight Dr Dennis Jensen was just the “Climate denier” target who had stepped over the line on another topic — breaking a sacred taboo. He might lose pre-selection. He might be out of a job. The ABC seem to think we care about the party political machinations more than the suffering of Australian citizens, which Jensen had been trying to get us to discuss. Instead the ABC went into great details of […]
The media hype and the story of the false Penguin Panic
Image: UNSW/Chris Turney
Much fuss was made of 150,000 missing penguins in Antarctica as if climate change had killed them. A monster iceberg had washed in, stopping the cute swimming tuxedos from getting to dinner and the colony of 160,000 suddenly shrank to 10,000. Where did all those penguins go? In previous tough times, when they could be tracked they just split up and went to different colonies.
Given that the penguins have survived repeated ice ages and warming for millions of years who would have thought that they would have a strategy for dealing with the odd big iceberg?
The penguin catastrophe:
[Grist] Researchers found that a colony of Adélie penguins in Antartica’s Cape Denison has decreased from 160,000 to just 10,000 since 2011, when a huge iceberg ominously named B09B became grounded in nearby Commonwealth Bay. The penguins were once a short waddle from their food source, but the arrival of the iceberg — which is nearly the size of Rhode Island — has turned that jaunt into a 75-mile round trip. Talk about a long lunch.
Cry for those penguins:
“It’s […]
It’s taken five years to figure it out, but apparently climate change is even worse than the last time we thought it was worse. Who knew? Once upon a time, glaciers were at a constant perfect position. Life was paradise on Earth and all the animals were happy. But then mankind built that first planet-destroying coal powered station in 1880 and now mountains are being moved, the Earth is changing.
Or at least, that’s sort of what the press release implies. What this tale is really about is the way the media hyperbole is just another excuse to repeat The Climate Mantra even if has nothing much to do with what the paper. What were those observations again?
If Nature, the formerly esteemed journal, was half what it used to be, it would have helped young Michele Koppes keep a longer term perspective, and not lace the press release with baseless speculation. Probably she’s seen a few too many Greenpeace-BBC specials and thinks Antarctica is warming (when the satellites show it isn’t). And curiously, the part that is warming happens to be right over the edges of the tectonic plates where the volcanoes are. She might think climate models work […]
Imagine the crime of trying to audit the BOM?
Last year, Graham Lloyd wrote in The Australian about how the BOM had made whopping two degree adjustments to data which turned cooling trends to warming trends and instead of improving the data, it created discontinuities. The BOM’s eventual explanation lamely exclaimed that the stations “might” have moved. (And they might not, too. Who knows, but remember this is what 95% certainty looks like.) Lloyd wrote about how historical records of extreme heat at Bourke had effectively been thrown in the trash. Who cares about historical records?
In response to the embarrassment and revealing questions, Tony Abbott wanted an investigation. But Greg Hunt, and The Dept of Environment opposed the investigation and opposed doing “due diligence”. What are they afraid of? Instead, Hunt helped the BOM set up a one-day-wonder investigation with hand-picked statisticians that wasted another nine months before admitting that the BOM methods would never be publicly available or able to be replicated. If it can’t be replicated, it isn’t science.
The BOM’s defense is always that their mystery method is considered “best practice” by other agencies around the world — who share the same incentives to exaggerate warming, […]
What to do with the public broadcasters? ABC BBC CBC (Can anyone explain public media in NZ?)
Big-government fans forcibly take funds from all citizens to support big-government propaganda by journalists who predominantly vote left or very-left (see here or here). The question is not whether or not they should do this but whether to privatize the public broadcasters, or to split them in two. I say, let’s forget the submissive plea to get one conservative commentator among a monoculture of “progressives”. Chop the current one in half and call it what it is: pro big-government. Then set up a new counter half to match — the pro-small-government broadcaster with the same funds but new staff. (Game on — let the best team win that ratings war.) Abbott could keep ABC funding promises. ABC-L plus ABC-R equals current ABC-LL+ funding.
Obviously, true free-market libertarians want public broadcasters 100% sold — their incentives are always going to run counter to unbiased reporting and the hunt for the truth. On the other hand, among the populace, the ground is not remotely laid for a big-sell. Many voters remain blind to the bias, and have no idea how filtered the half-truths are: […]
In years to come when people wonder how so much money came to be wasted in a frivolous attempt to stop the storms, people will marvel at the failure of parts of the free press. The Guardian will rise above that pack, standing out as the one that dressed itself in the color of gullible.
There are more than 31,000 whistleblowers inside science, 9,000 with PhD’s, 2 with Nobel Physics prizes, and 3 men who walked on the moon. There are meteorologists who won prizes in Meteorology, and physicists who studied with the greats — and they’re warning that the science is not settled, but the journalists at The Guardian know better.
Instead of asking hard questions of both skeptics and believers, the writers saw the passion and energy of namecalling activists and were swept off their feet to join the march. Now they dish out their infinite wisdom on science, on national policy and finance. If only the rest of us could be as genius and kind as Alan Rusbridger, eh?
But what are the Guardian guarding these days? They want to silence skeptics, and push a committee consensus. It isn’t free speech, and it isn’t science. If there […]
The wall of money is enormous, and the media oblivious to the real flow from taxpayers to corporate welfare freeloaders.
The wall of money, part 23
Citigroup promised to spend, invest and loan $50 billion in 2007 and found it so easy, it managed to do it by 2013, three years ahead of schedule. This month it promised to send another $100 billion more towards “sustainability”.
How much of this is about being a green corporate citizen? Not much apparently. Citigroup are making the Citigroup buildings energy efficient, but what they didn’t say was whether they would stop investing in or taking money and profits from their fossil fuel customers. As it happens Citigroup might Big-Green, but they are also Big-Ungreen too, they were one of “the top providers of funding for the most damaging practices of the U.S. coal industry last year. “ Not that any journalist mentioned that when they repeated the press release.
The banks can sniff out a good subsidy — it’s money for jam, and they are happy to feed the machine that feeds them.
Easy money for “sustainability” will also generate thousands of scary press releases from each and every sub-project as they […]
People are bored of the sermons, the half-truths, and carefully filtered messages. Who wants to be told what to think?
The ABC lost nearly 4% of its audience last year. Australians are tuning out the $1.1 billion ABC public broadcaster, and it has nothing to do with the small 5% efficiency cuts. The fall in popularity occured before the cuts. The three commercial TV channels in Australia all did much better at maintaining their popularity — despite suffering larger cuts to their budgets.
The ABC share is down to 10.08 per cent of 16 – 54 year olds. Nearly 90% of working age Australians are paying for the ABC but not watching much. The losses in the over-55 age group, traditionally the ABC stronghold, were almost as large as the younger groups.
Is the ABC biased towards Green politics?
Christine Milne leader of The Greens, at a rally outside Parliament House. Photo: Daily Telegraph.
“Only” 40% of ABC journalists vote Green.
The Australian, last week: Older viewers abandon the ABC
THE ABC was the worst performing television broadcaster last year, losing 3.95 per cent of group audience across all the channels before the government announced budget […]
I said the vaguest scientists in the world lie by omission, and it’s what they don’t say that gives them away. The “hottest ever” press release didn’t tell us how much hotter the hottest year supposedly was, nor how big the error bars were. David Rose of the Daily Mail pinned down Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS to ask a few questions that bloggers and voters want answered but almost no other journalist seems to want to ask.
Finally…
Nasa climate scientists: We said 2014 was the warmest year on record… but we’re only 38% sure we were right
Nasa admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all
Does that mean 97% of climate experts are 62% sure they are wrong?*
The thing with half-truths is that they generate a glorious fog, but it has no substance. Ask the spin-cloud of a couple of sensible questions and the narrative collapses. This is the kind of analysis that would have stopped the rot 25 years ago if most news outlets had investigative reporters instead of science communicators trained to “raise awareness”. (The media IS the problem). If there was […]
What’s better than Pravda? When Pravda is controlled by big government but masquerades as “commercial” and, even better, when it competes with and sucks money from independent competitors–making it harder for journalists who do ask the government hard questions to be heard at all.
Who needs the ABC? The BBC has arrived to provide the propaganda for free and wants to compete with commercial news outlets. They’ve appointed the most gullible journalists they could find (who’ll believe any official edict). Their new Australian Editor, Wendy Frew, accidentally revealed that while she’s good at rearranging a press release and calling it news, she is not too good with numbers.
In a BBC article yesterday by Wendy Frew titled “Australia has hottest spring on record as temperatures soar” comes the extraordinary news that Australia has warmed by 90C since 1910.
“Australia has been warming up by about 0.9C [a year] since 1910,” Dr Braganza told the BBC.
The online article was fixed this morning (with no mention of the mistake), though copies of the error appear elsewhere. It says something that Frew went out of her way to add “[a year]” into Braganza’s quote without doing the numbers and […]
What’s almost as good as an actual record? A could-be-a-record Headline!
“2014 could become the hottest year on record” — said CBS, The Guardian, Time, Washington Post, Discover Magazine, The Japan News, Wired, and 319 other outlets.
None of the investigative hardened editors or science reporters knew enough to ask the question, “what do the satellites say?” Which would have been interesting because the satellites say “bollocks”. h/t SPPI
On his site, Dr Roy Spencer explains that 2014 won’t be the warmest year on record. Satellites track almost all of the Earth for 24 hours a day and the data shows that we don’t need to go back to the Medieval Warm Period to find a hotter year, just back to 2010.
….
It might be the hottest year if you live in a white louvered box above a carpark, next to a concrete-heat-sink-superstructure, and not far from a runway. Though even then you might need to be homogenized and adjusted to really feel the heat. But for the rest of the surface of the Earth, 2010 is not a record, not even close.
It’s all pretty pointless anyway Roy points out — we’re arguing over […]
A new report shows ABC journalists are fond of renewables and overlook their dismal economic value, while putting out bad news on coal, and ignoring the benefits of vast cheap profitable energy. Who could have seen that coming: a large public funded institution attracts employees who like large public funding?
The IPA arranged for a media analysis firm to compare the ABC reporting on coal and renewables.
ABC gives the green light to renewables, and the red light to Australia’s largest export industry and provider of 75% of our electricity.
ABC accused of bias against coalmining
Andrew Fraser, The Australian
The analysis of 2359 reports broadcast on the ABC over six months before March 15 this year found 15.9 per cent of stories on coalmining and 12.1 per cent of those about coal-seam gas mining were favourable, while 53 per cent of those on renewable energy were favourable.
It also found 31.6 per cent of stories on coal mining and 43.6 per cent of stories on coal-seam gas were unfavourable, while only 10.8 per cent of stories on renewable energy were unfavourable.
The ABC has become its own best case for privatizing the ABC. How much could we get? […]
We’re all doomed:
West Antarctic ice sheet collapse ‘unstoppable’ [ABC]
Irreversible Changes Now Affect Antarctica and the World [Live-science]
‘Nothing can stop retreat’ of West Antarctic glaciers [BBC, By Jonathan Amos]
West Antarctic ice collapse ‘could drown Middle East and Asia crops’ [The Guardian, Suzanne Goldenberg]
Antarctica’s ice collapse threatens metres of sea level rise within decades [The Ecologist]
Global warming: it’s a point of no return in West Antarctica. [The Guardian Eric Rignot]
“Last week saw a ‘holy shit’ moment in climate change science. A landmark report revealed that the collapse of a large part of Antarctica is now unstoppable”
What else is going on in West Antarctica? Oh. Look where those volcanoes are…
Guess which science correspondent mentioned the word “volcano”? None of the above. Did any of those responsible publicly funded climate scientists mentioned it in their press releases? (A gold star to anyone who can find one). Lucky Antarctic volcanoes are not hot.
Thanks especially to Janama, Jaypac, John, Sophocles and Tom. That is what comments are for!
Locations of volcanoes in Antarctica known to have been active since […]
Look out, Australia might trim a tiny slice from the Tithe to the Gods of Weather (protest coming)
The Australian budget is in dire straits after the Rudd-Gillard years of promised surpluses but exploding arithmetic. The Commission of Audit is here to test public reaction to all the possible ways of paying off the Labor debt. Somehow, it missed the biggest cherry waiting to be plucked. We could save billions if the the Abbott Government become more rigorously scientific. Abbott should cut funding to any scientists who are using models that don’t work, and only fund ones that do.
“Abbott should cut funding to any scientists who are using models that don’t work, and only fund ones that do.”
I expect the Greens will join me in declaring that if the Abbott government cared about the environment it would immediately launch a royal commission, a real audit, or an independent investigation into the effect of carbon dioxide. Only the best science for the planet, right? All funding to environmental programs dependent on unverified research should be frozen until the audit is finished. Easy eh? Let me be PM for a day. :- )
But apparently the sacred carbon cow must […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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