Journalism

The Clean Coal Bait and Switch

The coal industry's campaign to "make coal sexy again" has included every trick in the book -- even a music video ad featuring supermodels dressed up as coal miners.

David Roberts, an environmental writer for Grist.com, has written a great critique of the coal industry's "clean coal" campaign, pointing out that "it's an obvious scam -- easily exposed, easily debunked. Just because it's obvious, though, doesn't mean the media won't fall for it. Indeed, the entire 'clean coal' propaganda push is premised on the media's gullibility."

Roberts notes, as have others, including a recent report by the Center for American Progress (CAP), that "the companies funding 'clean coal' PR aren't spending much on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) research." They have therefore made no progress in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that make coal a potent cause of global warming. The concept of "clean coal" was invented to answer concerns about global warming, and its advocates play a rhetorical game of bait-and-switch on precisely this topic. When pressed about how coal can be clean, Roberts observes, "they revert to the other definition of 'clean' -- the notion that coal plants have reduced their emissions of traditional air pollutants like particulates and mercury (as opposed to greenhouse gases)."

Reporters Help CIA Torture the Truth

"There is a fierce battle going on over what kind of a CIA director Barack Obama should appoint, when he should close the prison camp at Guantanamo, and whether there should be a full scale investigation (and possible prosecution) of the torture advocates in the Bush administration," notes Charles Kaiser in the Columbia Journalism Review. Unfortunately, reporting on this issue in the New York Times and elsewhere has been flagrantly one-sided, from a position that falsifies the facts and defends torture.

"Most of the Times's sources don't think that anyone who formulated or acquiesced in the current administration's torture policies should be excluded as a candidate for CIA director, or prosecuted for possible violations of criminal law," Kaiser writes. A recent story by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, for example, falsely repeated John O. Brennan's description of himself as a "strong opponent" of torture, even though "most experts on this subject agree that Brennan acquiesced in everything that the CIA did in this area while he served there."

Why Were Financial Reporters so Blind?

Jesse Eisinger was one of the few financial reporters to sound an early warning about Wall Street's financial meltdown. In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, he explains that business reporters failed to see it coming because "the people who have gravitated to business journalism didn't get into journalism for the same reasons that people in political journalism tended to get into journalism. ... It's not necessarily fired by a sense that we should right society's wrongs. ...

No Science for You!

CNN has announced that it will cut its entire science, technology, and environment news staff, a move that Christy George of the Society of Environmental Journalists called "disheartening." Other networks have also been slashing science and environmental jobs, including NBC Universal's The Weather Chan

Journalists for Sale

"Dan Abrams, the chief legal correspondent for NBC News who recently lost his prime-time cable news show, is forming a consulting firm that he hopes will connect a global Rolodex of media experts with businesses that need strategic advice," reports Brian Stelter. "The firm, Abrams Research, may resemble a narrowly focused version of 'expert network' firms that connect investors to industry experts.

Good Money for Goodwin

Psychiatrist Frederick K. Goodwin, who hosts a popular show on National Public Radio called "The Infinite Mind," earned "at least $1.3 million from 2000 to 2007 giving marketing lectures for drugmakers, income not mentioned on the program," reports Gardiner Harris.

Too Much Information

The Associated Press recently conducted a study of news consumption by young people which found that participants "showed signs of news fatigue; that is, they appeared debilitated by information overload and unsatisfying news experiences. ... Ultimately news fatigue brought many of the participants to a learned helplessness response.

Science Reporting by Press Release

Science reporting "is more and more the direct product of PR shops," according to Charles Petit, a veteran science reporter who runs MIT’s online Knight Science Journalism Tracker.

NYT Kudos: SourceWatch Revealed Hoaxter Eisenstadt

CMD's SourceWatch project has earned kudos from the New York Times: "It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Newspapers Fall Further

Newly released figures on newspaper sales show a decline of nearly five percent from a year ago, accelerating a trend that has been occurring since the 1990s. Richard Perez-Pena notes that "Newspaper circulation has fallen about 2 percent annually for years but began to drop faster in the 2007 reports, and faster still in the reports issued last spring, which showed declines of 3.6 percent on weekdays and 4.6 percent on Sundays. ...

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