Showing posts with label Rupert Murdoch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rupert Murdoch. Show all posts
Saturday, April 10, 2010
OutFOXing Themselves
If any object has become a universal target of revulsion for the global left wing, FOX News fits that particular bill.
It isn't all that hard to see why the left wing hates FOX News -- describing itself as "fair and balanced", the network is actually unabashedly conservative.
Nobody should realistically question this. The network has employed a number of left-wingers within its organization, but as OutFOXed notes, they have tended to be particularly weak.
But aside from this, OutFOXed fails to answer one important question: why, precisely, does this matter?
OutFOXed closes with an argument in favour of something akin to the Fairness Doctrine -- the Fairness Doctrine if necessary, but not necessarily the Fairness Doctrine.
The Fairness Doctrine was a legislative framework that required media outlets to present equal time from each of the two predominant points of view (the conservative view and the liberal view).
They insist that such a framework is in the public interest.
But there is one lingering question that the producers do not answer:
Just how far should this extend? And just how far should the public interest extend?
Two of the principal supporters of OutFOXed are MoveOn.org and Media Matters for America. Like FOX News, Media Matters for America is unabashedly ideological -- in this case, they're a self-described progressive think tank, dedicated to researching conservative media bias.
If the public interest requires a fairness doctrine-esque framework in order to force balance into the news media, perhaps that same doctrine should foce balance of perspectives into think tanks -- like Media Matters for America, and its conservative alternative, NewsBusters.
Interestingly enough, now that MSNBC has made the same transition OutFOXed attributes to FOX News (attack dog to lap dog), one doesn't hear individuals like Robert Greenwald citing MSNBC as evidence that such a framework is needed.
Perhaps the producers of OutFOXed never had any such thing in mind. After all, if they curbed the unabashedly conservative FOX News just to curb MSNBC alongside it, they would just be outfoxing themselves.
Monday, January 07, 2008
DeSmog Blog Shows Its True Colours
DeSmog cannibalizes its contemporaries, gets indigestion
If there's anything climate alarmists have embraced as their top tool of intimidation, it's the awarding of "prizes" to prominent people who either disagree with them or don't quietly go along with their political agenda.
The DeSmog blog's SmogMaker awards have turned out to be a prime example.
Who won? Well, predictably, the Canadian government won in the governmental category for "environmental hypocrisy". The award organizers showed the restraint of criticizing the government's inaction as an institution, as opposed to slinging partisan mud, noting the failings of both the sitting Conservative government and the preceding Liberal government.
They should be applauded for that.
Toyota was named Industry's worst polluter. Again, this may be a fair assertion.
However, once one gets past these two justifiable awards, one gets a real idea of how the publishers of the DeSmog Blog think, and unfortunately, it isn't a very pretty picture.
In the media category, Rupert Murdoch was "honoured". Despite noting that Murdoch has recently expressed concern about climate change, DeSmog gave him the media award apparently for failing to fire Brit Hume and Steve Milloy, who runs the junkscience.com news aggregator.
Apparently, failing to correspond to the DeSmog publishers' belief that anyone who disagrees with them should be fired earned this particular award.
Two of the awards, however, demonstrate nothing less than the proclivity for some people who would probably describe themselves as progressives to cannibalize their own, and in the end prove themselves to be a good deal less than progressive.
In the "non-profit" category (quotation marks as original), the Copenhagen Consensus and its organizer, Bjorn Lomborg, were awarded for disagreeing with climate alarmists about whether or not Kyoto represented the best choice for spending money to help people. In fact, the Copenhagen Consensus ranked Kyoto as the worst choice, and spending money on fighting AIDs as the best choice.
They reached these conclusions via a cost-benefit analysis. Their conclusions have consistently been very damaging to the Kyoto protocol, so naturally DeSmog's publishers have been very annoyed -- to say the least.
Perhaps where the DeSmog publishers overreached the most, however, is in naming Barack Obama the SmogMaker of 2007.
This was the category where, quite frankly, the said publishers simply demonstrated that they aren't the smartest people, when they castigated him for treating climate change as a political issue. "Global warming is an environmental problem, not a political one. And people who try to ‘solve’ it with political or public relations spin are just making the problem worse,” said James Hoggan, DeSmogBlog co-founder.
This despite the fact that the DeSmog blog has been linked to David Suzuki who, despite the entirely benign intent of his lobbying, has very much treated climate change as a political issue (and rightfully so -- because regardless of whether or not one buys into the panic, it is a political issue). Also, despite the fact that the DeSmog blog is a prime supporter of the Kyoto protocol -- a political "solution" to an environmental problem.
They also hammered Obama for his support of the coal industry, despite the fact that coal can be used to produce the clean-burning fuels that climate alarmists should favour, even if they lack the mental acuity to recognize it. Obama is a strong supporter of developing such technologies.
Yet going after legitimate progressive and golden boy of the hour, the illegitimate progressives at the DeSmog blog must have found the resulting backlash simply too much to handle, as they fucked off, kissed ass, and apologized.
They made the claim that they were attempting to highlight the lack of attention given to climate change during the ongoing presidential campaign. Yet it seems much more likely that they were attempting to give a boost to the most likely alternative to Obama, Hillary Clinton, with whom DeSmog's golden boy, Al Gore, would most certainly hold the most sway.
The SmogMaker awards has rendered the DeSmog blug utterly transparent: no debate regarding climate change can be tolerated, even amongst those who agree on the science, and political preferences always trump the facts.
That isn't how real progressives would conduct themselves. To real progressives, debate is always welcome. To real progressives, the facts matter. To stifle debate or disregard the facts for political gain is actually regressive in nature.
The DeSmog blog's desperate need to stifle debate and disregard fact seems only to demonstrate that they feel whatever scientific advantage they felt they hold in the climate change debate -- and like it or not, children, there is and will be debate on the matter -- is slipping away.
The DeSmog blog's true colours may well be green, but it's a much darker shade of green than they would otherwise like to think.
If there's anything climate alarmists have embraced as their top tool of intimidation, it's the awarding of "prizes" to prominent people who either disagree with them or don't quietly go along with their political agenda.
The DeSmog blog's SmogMaker awards have turned out to be a prime example.
Who won? Well, predictably, the Canadian government won in the governmental category for "environmental hypocrisy". The award organizers showed the restraint of criticizing the government's inaction as an institution, as opposed to slinging partisan mud, noting the failings of both the sitting Conservative government and the preceding Liberal government.
They should be applauded for that.
Toyota was named Industry's worst polluter. Again, this may be a fair assertion.
However, once one gets past these two justifiable awards, one gets a real idea of how the publishers of the DeSmog Blog think, and unfortunately, it isn't a very pretty picture.
In the media category, Rupert Murdoch was "honoured". Despite noting that Murdoch has recently expressed concern about climate change, DeSmog gave him the media award apparently for failing to fire Brit Hume and Steve Milloy, who runs the junkscience.com news aggregator.
Apparently, failing to correspond to the DeSmog publishers' belief that anyone who disagrees with them should be fired earned this particular award.
Two of the awards, however, demonstrate nothing less than the proclivity for some people who would probably describe themselves as progressives to cannibalize their own, and in the end prove themselves to be a good deal less than progressive.
In the "non-profit" category (quotation marks as original), the Copenhagen Consensus and its organizer, Bjorn Lomborg, were awarded for disagreeing with climate alarmists about whether or not Kyoto represented the best choice for spending money to help people. In fact, the Copenhagen Consensus ranked Kyoto as the worst choice, and spending money on fighting AIDs as the best choice.
They reached these conclusions via a cost-benefit analysis. Their conclusions have consistently been very damaging to the Kyoto protocol, so naturally DeSmog's publishers have been very annoyed -- to say the least.
Perhaps where the DeSmog publishers overreached the most, however, is in naming Barack Obama the SmogMaker of 2007.
This was the category where, quite frankly, the said publishers simply demonstrated that they aren't the smartest people, when they castigated him for treating climate change as a political issue. "Global warming is an environmental problem, not a political one. And people who try to ‘solve’ it with political or public relations spin are just making the problem worse,” said James Hoggan, DeSmogBlog co-founder.
This despite the fact that the DeSmog blog has been linked to David Suzuki who, despite the entirely benign intent of his lobbying, has very much treated climate change as a political issue (and rightfully so -- because regardless of whether or not one buys into the panic, it is a political issue). Also, despite the fact that the DeSmog blog is a prime supporter of the Kyoto protocol -- a political "solution" to an environmental problem.
They also hammered Obama for his support of the coal industry, despite the fact that coal can be used to produce the clean-burning fuels that climate alarmists should favour, even if they lack the mental acuity to recognize it. Obama is a strong supporter of developing such technologies.
Yet going after legitimate progressive and golden boy of the hour, the illegitimate progressives at the DeSmog blog must have found the resulting backlash simply too much to handle, as they fucked off, kissed ass, and apologized.
They made the claim that they were attempting to highlight the lack of attention given to climate change during the ongoing presidential campaign. Yet it seems much more likely that they were attempting to give a boost to the most likely alternative to Obama, Hillary Clinton, with whom DeSmog's golden boy, Al Gore, would most certainly hold the most sway.
The SmogMaker awards has rendered the DeSmog blug utterly transparent: no debate regarding climate change can be tolerated, even amongst those who agree on the science, and political preferences always trump the facts.
That isn't how real progressives would conduct themselves. To real progressives, debate is always welcome. To real progressives, the facts matter. To stifle debate or disregard the facts for political gain is actually regressive in nature.
The DeSmog blog's desperate need to stifle debate and disregard fact seems only to demonstrate that they feel whatever scientific advantage they felt they hold in the climate change debate -- and like it or not, children, there is and will be debate on the matter -- is slipping away.
The DeSmog blog's true colours may well be green, but it's a much darker shade of green than they would otherwise like to think.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)