In 1932, Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty of the New York Times won the Pulitzer Prizefor his glowing reports of happiness and progress in the Soviet Union. He followed that with denials of the genocide-by-famine in the Ukraine, in which Stalin engineered the death by starvation of four million peasants. Duranty’s peers at the time described his reporting as “the most enlightened, dispassionate dispatches from a great nation in the making which appeared in any newspaper in the world.”[1] But the verdict of Duranty biographer Sally J Taylor in “Stalin’s Apologist” (1996) was that his output involved “some of the greatest lies history has ever known”.

Prizes for journalists are akin to the beads and mirrors offered to grateful savages. High-profile print and TV journalists locally – I’d better not name them — have been showered with recent prizes for Canberra stories involving more spin than substance.

An international renewables-lobby outfit called Covering Climate Now (CCN) this week announced its 2023 prizes for media’s best hyping of the non-existent “climate crisis”, objectivity be damned. This “crisis” was most recently elevated to “global boiling” by the UN’s top idiot and socialist Antonio Guterres. And who should feature among the CCN prize-winners but our taxpayers’ very own Australian Broadcasting Commission. The ABC’s podcast “Who’s gonna (sic) save us?” won the radio/podcast category. The CCN commendation:

This engaging podcast tells the story of people who are standing up for their convictions and pushing back against organizations and companies acting with disregard for the climate crisis. The production draws the listener in with moments of high drama, like an Aboriginal woman boldly approaching an energy executive at a company board meeting to present “cease and desist” papers for trespassing on her people’s land, followed by a discussion about how Australians are using the law to stop climate change … Highlighting how everyone can take action, the podcast speaks to audiences in a way that sounds like an everyday conversation.

As a journalist myself, I don’t like outfits that work to turn journalists into propagandists, whether for “climate crises”, renewables or anything else. I remember 30-40 years ago, when the media had more ethics, my boss at BRW magazine banned journos from making extra money from media-training consultancies. Those outfits coached company chieftains on how dodge around aggressive interviewing. But today the ABC not only solicits and accepts prizes from media-corrupting groups like CCN, but has joined several international consortia dedicated to censoring inconvenient views which the censors label as ‘misinformation’.

CCN is a creature of the leftist Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, and the dark-green Guardian. It has persuaded close to 600 media groups to sign up to “educate” the public about supposed climate peril, and to stifle evidence that then campaign for Net Zero is sabotaging the West’s fossil-fuel-derived prosperity. As it boasts,

CCNow collaborates with journalists and newsrooms to produce more informed and urgent climate stories, to make climate a part of every beat in the newsroom — from politics and weather to business and culture — and to drive a public conversation that creates an engaged public.

CCN’s 600 rogues’ gallery includes news-syndicating giants Reuters, Bloomberg and AFP, along with a host of print, TV and radio channels such as Al Jazeera, CBS, NBC, Deutsche Welle, Lancet, New Scientist, NZ Herald, Teen Vogue, Science Alert(Australia), Nature, and of course The Conversation(Australasia). CCN claims its members indoctrinate a two-billion strong audience.

The ABC has not signed up to CCN because it would be too naked a breach of its statutory charter for taxpayer-funded impartiality. It’s signed up instead to “truthist” coalitions like Reconciliation Australia and the troubled RMIT/ABC Fact Check. It’s also in alliance with UK-based BAFTA-albertwhich wants to “set the cultural agenda” by promoting leftist memes in TV shows, documentaries and movies.

Last year the ABC joined the BBC’s “Trusted News Initiative” (TNI) – an international censorship alliance and, according to Robert Kennedy Jr, a cartel that labels material hostile to leftism as “misinformation”. TNI, with ABC assistance, stifles internet sites opposing Deep State narratives about Covid, elections, climate, and renewables being the cheapest form of energy (checked your power bill lately?)

So, what about the ABC’s prize from Covering Climate Now? It’s for the podcast called Who’s gonna (sic) save us, which is “a co-production of the so-called “science team” at ABC Radio National and triple j’s Hack.” Its brand logo involves, appropriately, a drum being banged, and a diversity-tick youth of colour screaming into a megaphone. In the background is a mob waving placards like “Don’t be a fossil fool”, “Go Solar! Save the planet”, and the hackneyed one about “No Planet B”. The text below reads,

We’re all looking for a way through the climate crisis. [Better, “climate madness”]. Who’s going to get us there — and how will they do it? Meet the people who are trying to draw the map to a better future. 

These people, led by Climate Minister Chris Bowen, are giving us a “better future” involving tripling of household energy bills and, probably, blackouts.

The podcast’s presenter is Jo Lauder, who we’re told has “reported extensively on climate change, the environment and young people.”

When I checked her social media, her top post on Xread

So I messaged her, “Hi Jo, isn’t it hypocritical to be carrying on about climate change while jetting to hang out in New York?” No reply yet.

The “Who’s gonna (sic) save us” series ran intermittently late last year. Although its ABC Listen app says we can “hear the world differently” the Jo Lauder series is same-old climate guff, with episodes of up to 50 minutes including “Citizens assemble!”, “Standing up for the climate”, “[activist] Scientists on strike”, “We fought the law”, “Community power”, and “Who do YOU think is going to [as distinct from ‘gonna’] save us?”

Dutifully, I listened in for well over an hour, absorbing Jo’s material:

“Who is your climate hero? Think big and small. Is it Saul Griffith, with his ambitious plan for decarbonising the entire nation or, hey! the world, or a small local like the gang at Totally Renewable Yackandandah who are focused on transforming their community’s future?”

“Traditionally Australia’s electricity system has been dirty, and heavily centred around coal communities. But there’s a shift happening. Towns around the country – from Yackandandah to Shackleton to Marlinja – are using renewables to take control of their energy. The benefits are flowing back into local communities, and remote places are finally getting reliable power.” 

I’d say that if Yakandandah wants to go right off the (coal-assisted) grid, good luck to them when the wind drops.

Who, by the way, is that ABC world-decarbonising climate hero Saul Griffith? The podcast invite reads,

Saul Griffith has an ambitious plan to save the planet. And it all begins at home. It’s an electrified revolution for the Australian household!

Saul turns out to be (thanks, Wikipedia) a successful Australian-American engineer and inventor from a Greenpeace-oriented family, now back in Wollongong after great times with Silicon Valley startups like Otherlab and Squid Labs (no relation to Squid Games). He advocates forcing every citizen into compliance with the Net Zero agenda. He’s also truly on board with the need for urgings from the likes of the ABC. Jo Lauder’s podcast opens with him saying, “Don’t under-appreciate the importance of storytellers. We need story-tellers more than anyone right now. We need the storytellers to make it OK for you to give up the V8 [desirable car engine].”

 As he’s written, (it sounds to me like one of those Soviet-era five-year plans):

Across the board we now need [renewables] adoption rates of 100%. This complete adoption rate [e.g. for electric cars] is required by the end-game decarbonization we ultimately need… A 100% adoption rate is only achieved by mandate—and robust financial incentives to back it up… The challenge of 100% adoption presents a giant conflict that we need to address head-on: the “free market” as we know it is not up to the task… This is not to say that businesses and the market don’t have roles; they are critical [I welcome that he rejects the North Korean model]. But in emergencies, ideologies must be put aside. When Mother Nature arm wrestles with the invisible hand, she will always win. As my friend, the economist Skip Laitner, says, the free market needs an invisible foot to give it a swift kick in the ass now and then…

We can rebuild a prosperous and inclusive middle class, as we enjoyed after World War II, with tens of millions of good new jobs that are vital and prideworthy. If America does it right, everyone’s energy costs will go down. [Should that read, “up”]. Everyone has a role to play in the war effort.

We now face a climate emergency as challenging as all of our other 20th-century emergencies combined. [e.g. World War One, the Great Depression, Hitler, Stalin, Tojo and the Cold War combined]. It requires mass mobilization with extraordinary speed and resources. Without a doubt, you are worried, scared, or worse. That’s reasonable, but we can’t do nothing, and this is also a vast opportunity to make the world, and our economy, better for everyone. (My emphases).

Call me out for misinformation but isn’t the real question, “Who’s gonna [sic] save us from Covering Climate Now, Saul Griffith, Buffoon Bowen and the ABC?”

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 and available here

[1] Conquest, R. Reflections on a Ravaged Century, Oxford University Press, New York. 1986, p. 320.

21 Comments

  1. Tony,

    isn’t it dissonant of *you* to claim to want to destroy the world (or whatever you science-denier’s agenda is), all the while writing searing, addictive and revelatory journalism like the above, knowing full well that those of us who value the art will have little choice but to buy your book, made almost entirely—I remind fellow clisceppers and others who have been so misdirected by your calculatedly and intentionally brilliant writing that it’s simply never occurred to them—*of carbon dioxide*? Carbon dioxide you knowingly are causing to be taken out of the natural cycle, where every last part per million of it is urgently needed if we’re actually *sincere* in our professed commitment to maintain the biosphere at or around its current boiling state (95 – 105 C)?

    The most sickening thing is how *easy* it is these days to transition with minimal drop in income to the e-journalism model. That’s right: ethical, eco-hostile e-journalism, which would allow your readers to rest easy, knowing the planet would not be 10e-14C cooler just because they bought the latest Thomas to read on the plane to work tomorrow morning, leaving the corresponding gases free to wreak full Australian-reading, Quadrant-subscribing carnage upon our bubbling and roiling oceans until what few trees remain inevitably make ‘plant food’ out of it?

    You just can’t be bothered, can you? The UN Conference of the Parties’ thousands of partygoers will finally decide to check out this whole “Zoom” thing everyone’s talking about before you, the great Wizard of Oz, deign to lead *our* men by example and make a positive contribution to keeping the seas on the literal simmer.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Tony we who reside in our hemisphere of the world, who live a core and two mantle’s thickness away from your own antipodean paradise, probably get most of Australia’s climate news from your good self. In my own case, all of it. The problem therefore is that I cannot establish whether or not your writings are about topics that are typical of antipodean society in general. You give an impression of a society seething with climate angst. With regard to your description of climate infiltration into schools you paint a devastating picture, one that I cannot accept as being 100% true. It can’t be as bad as your paint (can it?)

    I realise that your writings are primarily for an Australian audience and your readers have the necessary background to put them into context. I, for one, would greatly appreciate some additional context being supplied when you re-post here at Cliscep. I will still avidly read your pieces, even in the absence of additional context but I would continue to be puzzled.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. “This is the year of the climate election. Journalists should cover it that way
    Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope
    The press is covering the 2024 campaign as if climate isn’t on the ballot, but 56% of US voters are ‘concerned’ or ‘alarmed’ about the crisis”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/07/climate-change-presidential-election-media-coverage

    …In coming weeks, we’ll roll out additional resources, including a calendar of cross-referenced elections and climate events, a tool to help identify and debunk climate-related disinformation, a handbook for getting started as a campaign climate reporter, and events such as a webinar with Margaret Sullivan and Ben Tracy next Tuesday called Beyond the Stump Speech: Integrating Climate in Elections Reporting…

    Which makes elections crucial to addressing the climate crisis. But for voters to do their part, they first have to be informed, and journalism remains a singularly powerful tool for providing the information they need.

    So much is at stake this election season, in the US and around the world. Journalism will be judged by how it responds. Our hope is that 2024 is the year in which reporters focus on what matters most to people and how they live; not on what insiders obsess about or what’s easiest to produce and seems to be driving clicks in the moment.

    At this make-or-break moment in the climate crisis, it’s hard to think of a more important issue facing voters. Journalism should cover it that way.

    Mark Hertsgaard is executive director and co-founder of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration committed to more and better coverage of the climate story, and the Nation magazine’s environment correspondent
    Kyle Pope is executive director of strategic initiatives and co-founder of Covering Climate Now, and a former editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review
    This article is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now

    Like

  4. “in coming weeks, we’ll roll out additional resources, including a calendar of cross-referenced elections and climate events, a tool to help identify and debunk climate-related disinformation, a handbook for getting started as a campaign climate reporter”

    Is it just Mark & me that find this (not sure the best word).

    Seems we now have in the west, major media & news channels giving a biased narrative, and no one cares (mainly driven by hatred for Trump I guess)

    Like

  5. df, do you think part of the BBC audience might (misguidedly) appreciate the climate calendar being proposed? Well, the BBC are catering for them. You (and Mark) needn’t listen.

    Like

  6. Alan,

    I don’t think the BBC should be part of any campaigning media organisation. It bills itself as being an organisation we can trust to report objectively, and bigs up its own news output by using dubious brands such as “BBC Verify”, suggesting thereby that it somehow represents the gold standard of news reporting.

    It shouldn’t seek to pander to any part of their audience regarding a contentious subject when it is supposedly being reported as factual news.

    The BBC may insert this stuff in its non-news programme if it must (let’s face it – it already does so endlessly. It’s almost impossible to switch on the radio without hearing this propaganda), but the news should be a propaganda-free zone.

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  7. Alan – the link & my reply was to the Guardian article (I thought), which is as Mark says “part of campaigning media organisation” as they admit openly.

    the campaign they all will champion is “At this make-or-break moment in the climate crisis, it’s hard to think of a more important issue facing voters. Journalism should cover it that way”

    Now you may think “You (and Mark) needn’t listen” means it’s OK for this “campaigning media organisation” to forge ahead & cancel/ridicule any other opinions, but I find that troubling.

    Like

  8. Thank you both for responding to my admittedly provocative questions. However, I note with some fulfilled expectation that neither of you actually addressed the main question I posed which, rephrased ,was “isn’t the BBC catering for its larger audience?” We can all agree that it doesn’t cater for one minor segment of its audience, namely us, but given our small numbers, how much effort should the BBC expend on us.

    Thank you for not bringing up that old (and incorrect) chestnut about the licence fee.

    I am really torn by these questions. I can see, and sympathise with,arguments on both sides.

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  9. Alan,

    Thank you (as always) for questioning our narrative (a vital role) and (as always) for doing so with great courtesy.

    My position remains that it’s simply wrong for the BBC to campaign about anything. That’s not it’s role under its Charter. I hope I can truthfully say that I would be opposed to a BBC campaigning role even if (say) it was campaigning against net zero.

    I might add that if (and it’s a big if) the majority of the population agrees with the climate alarmism promoted by the BBC, that might be because they have been subjected to years of brainwashing by the BBC (and others). Claiming to speak for the majority, having brainwashed the majority into your point of view by years of incessant campaigning and propaganda, isn’t a great look.

    Liked by 2 people

  10. “**We** can all agree that it doesn’t cater for one minor segment of its audience, namely us,”
    Ah that will explain that why BBC progs hardly have any black people, shows almost never feature Muslims and political shows never feature Marxists, there are never any trans on …../ sarc

    The point is the BBC is by law supposed to reflect its UK audience
    Yet it’s actually LondonSupremacist, Green Supremacist, WokeSupremacist
    Certain minority groups endorsed by “WE know better than you” Guardianland folk are elevated
    and other groups suppressed.

    The BBC would never air small boys voicing opinions about the Emperors new suit
    Instead the suitmakers would have special tribute shows and grace the sofa on news shows on the One Show etc.

    Like

  11. R4 Just now
    Of course I don’t listen to radio4 news cos it is just hatey lefty student radio
    and sure enough they are using a DOCTORED Trump speech to say Trump is going to abandon countries

    They clipped the audio before “and the money came flowing in”
    which shows Trump was actually explaining how he got countries to pay to NATO in the past.

    I check Twitter and the whole lefty school bully gang, like CNN, Guardian are promoting the misleading version
    … https://youtu.be/9Smt7uNH6LU?t=9318

    “it’s very simple hundreds of billions of dollars came into NATO and that’s why they have money today because of what I did
    and then I hear that they like Obama better they should like Obama better you know why because he didn’t ask for anything
    we were like the stupid country of the world and we’re not going to be the stupid country of the world any longer
    we’re not going to be got bad under under this guy so he now wants to send him 50, 60 billion dollars I have to say one thing I think the greatest salesman ever in history is zalinski and I like zalinski ….”

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  12. Oh Konstantin Kisin was in hours before me
    … https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1756610269176889421
    starts “Oh great, we’re in the “Don’t make me defend Trump against your blatant lies” season again.

    Several mainstream media outlets are angrily (or happily?) promoting the idea that he said he wouldn’t defend NATO allies and would let Russia do whatever it wanted.

    They’re deliberately omitting the context…

    Like

  13. More like it’s let’s defend Trump whatever incendiary thing he spouts. I listened and watched his comments on the BBC and ITV News (where the context was clear) and then later read his diatribe in a newspaper. (Note that I agree with him that all NATO countries should pay their bills).

    Like

  14. Well, for once on this thread I’m with Alan. I think we can all agree that Trump raises a very valid point in demanding that NATO members pay their fees in full. The USA does have a valid complaint in this regard and countries such as Germany have got away with bad behaviour for far too long in this respect. Perhaps the BBC and others reporting on the story should have done more to provide that context, but I think the reality is that Trump is a danger to us all, and his comments were grossly irresponsible and potentially dangerous, given that there is (astonishingly after all he has done and said in the last few years) a decent chance that he will be the next POTUS. It’s a mystery to me how anyone could even contemplate voting for him, let alone be a fervent supporter.

    Like

  15. Sorry Mark you and Alan are just wrong
    The BBC and MSM are insane ..they are what they make out Trump and Tommy Robinson to be
    Previously they made a false gotcha story saying Trump suggested that people drink bleach
    FFS of course he didn’t say that, full video shows he said no such thing.

    Now it’s as if Democrat PR decided that it was time to do another fake gotcha against Trump
    Their story is Trump is telling Russia it can attack NATO countries in the future.
    Yet the footage is an an extract from a 3 hour video where Trump speaks for 90 mins unscripted
    And at one point he explains how in the PAST he told a country pay up,or you’ll be on your own
    and since then Non US NATO spending has risen by $184bn
    “Hundreds of billions ” he says
    Now the framing is genuine Trump hyperbole
    cos in the 5 years of course there has been some inflation and there was a pattern of it rising by about half that rate in the past

    But UK 2024 is a banana republic as if people are hypnotised by the power of suggestion
    In that if MSM make a great claim, people just accept the premise is true
    Same on Twitter .. some nutter makes a great claim , and people start arguing about the detail
    even though the great claim is false.

    I’m with Kisin , I’m no Trump fanboy, he kind of let us down by not smashing the establishment.. And confronting the libmob head on is probably not the way to get results.. You probably have to lie more to get people onside

    Like

  16. On Putin TV they would do things like splice two different sets of footage to make an incredibly deceptive video
    Someone has just pointed out that The Independent did this in November .
    A certain person was not a participant in an afternoon March. He was livestreamed all the time he was at the morning march, then he walked to location 2 and got straight in a taxi and left.
    cos he knew that people were out to get some troube against him
    Yet the Independent video is titled that he led the afternoon march at Location 2
    Then when you watch the video you see that there is continual interspliceing of the crowds at location 2 and the man at location 1.
    Lots point that out in the comments.. that the video is FakeNews

    That is a bit weird that TheIndependent video LIE, sits on YouTube whilst hundreds of other video makers have to dance around, cos YouTube bans their videos at the drop of a hat
    eg the Blackbelt Barrister explains he has to say P-word not paedophile otherwise his video would get banned.
    And other producers complain thee are a whole heap of YouTube unwritten rules.

    Like

  17. Today I saw a False Community Note on a tweet
    These community corrections are generally a good thing , but they can be gamed if you have enough friends

    This time the Community Note said that a search of RECENT Wall St Journal articles showed no article ..so that proved the tweet was false
    In fact “recent” is a cherrypick cos the actual article comes from July 2023
    Now the WSJ article doesn’t actually contain the claim
    but a sister article from the same time in the New York Post does contain the claim with exactly the same wording as the tweeter
    So I don’t know if the tweeter misstated the source or whether the WSJ article was re-edited after publication
    Anyways there is a prime source and that is the congressmen that obtained the secret Facebook management emails the article is about .. and he did actually tweet the email at the time.
    So the tweet claim is true .

    Like

  18. Stew, It’s true Trump was boasting (surprise, surprise) that in the past he had complained that some NATO countries were not spending 2% of their wealth upon defence as they had committed to do and he threatened to act to the detriment of any mutual defence commitments. But by restating those threats now, and apparently even encouraging Russia to attack those parts of NATO that are in deficit he, reprises his original stupidities. Perhaps it’s entirely bragging but opponents may see it otherwise. American isolationism threatens the whole of Europe, including fully paid up members. A new Trump presidency is something perhaps to be feared.

    Like

  19. Agreed that Trump is a idiot.

    But mention of Konstantin Kisin reminds me of a highly related debate between that articulate climate sceptic and another, Peter Hitchens. And an apparent climbdown by Kisin.

    Related because it has to do with whether Ukraine should now accept a peace deal with Putin. Until three months ago Kisin had been adamant that without a return to original boundaries this was totally out of order. And many would expect a newly-minted President Trump to force Ukraine to accept far less.

    Historical parallels can be fraught and in that original debate Hitchens drew one that has resonated with me ever since: the ‘sordid’ deal at Yalta between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. We in Western Europe have known nothing but peace and economic growth since 1945 as a result. That’s all my life. Yet it was a disgusting, sordid deal.

    And the election of Trump would surely make such a sordid deal between Ukraine and Russia more likely.

    Like

  20. “apparently even encouraging Russia to attack those parts of NATO that are in deficit ”

    I’ll stop the discussion now
    We’ll never get anywhere.
    BTW see how I just contested Jaime’s last post which seems to have falsely smeared the BBC about something else.

    Like

  21. Pingback: Same Old Story, The ABC’s Climate Team | No B-S here (I hope)

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