With street riots seemingly breaking out in just about every one of our cities, it is easy to understand why journalists and politicians are currently in agreement that right-wing thuggery is one of the greatest threats to our democracy. And since this all started out following the spread of a factually incorrect rumour that the Southport assailant had been an illegal refugee from Syria, one can also understand why the rise of fake news, spread by bad actors, has also been resurrected as a primary threat. These are well-established narratives that our society has come to hold dear. So it is no wonder that bringing the ‘scum’ to justice and clamping down on online misinformation have featured so prominently in the approved response. After all, whenever democracy itself is under threat, the authorities cannot afford to appear weak. So just lock them all up, they say. Throw away the key and fine the internet platforms as heavily as you can. That’ll sort it out.

I don’t wish to play down the importance of the societal unrest we are currently experiencing, and I certainly am not condoning the criminal behaviour we are witnessing. But I would like to offer an alternative perspective on where the real threat lies here. And bear with me, because it is a threat that has much wider ramifications than the excesses of the extreme right-wing or the threat of online misinformation. Furthermore, it is particularly important when reflecting upon Net Zero and the prospect of a peaceful challenge.

To put it simply, democracy is never under greater threat than when journalists and politicians are seemingly in lockstep. For example, both Kier Starmer and Yvette Cooper have been at pains to point out that what we are seeing is not legitimate protest but mindless and opportunistic thuggery. And, apart from a few mutterings, so say all the newspapers. There is very little evidence that journalists are in much of a mood to question what Starmer and Cooper are saying. Nobody, for example, seems to be headlining with the claim that recent events are primarily the inevitable result of years of political failure. Nobody seems to be pointing out that these ‘thugs’ are nevertheless sincere in stating their grievances; that they just happen to prefer to express themselves through the magic of mindless violence. Yes, they are being outrageously non-democratic in their approach, but that does not mean that they have no point to make, no matter how knuckle-scraping they may be. Nor does it excuse a failure to analyse the path of political failure that has led to this horrific situation. Surely, to say that the rioters are just hooligans looking for any excuse to destroy is both simplistic and unhelpful. And yet that is what most of our journalists are letting our politicians get away with.

As a completely different example, what are we to make of the 20 billion pound ‘black hole’ that the incoming government ‘discovered’ when they opened up the spreadsheets on the shiny new PCs presented to them as they entered office? The best we have had from the journalists is a straightforward reporting of the inter-party squabbling that this ‘discovery’ has led to. And yet this is what Paul Johnson, Head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies had to say, four weeks prior to the general election, when he referred to a 20 billion pound financial hole revealed by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR):

We will be very rude if the new government comes in and says ‘oh look, this is a terrible shock. We’ve opened the books. The OBR have told us something we never expected and that’s why we didn’t tell you about all these tax rises we are going to introduce, or why we didn’t tell you we are going to have an entirely different set of fiscal rules. Or that’s why we didn’t tell you about spending cuts’. I think that would be fundamentally dishonest of them.

So why are not all of the papers now running with the headline ‘Reeves you are a blatant liar’, or ‘Oh how little time we had to wait before the Labour government’s duplicity was exposed’? More to the point, why had the journalists not called out both main parties for completely failing to address this black hole during their election campaigning? There were some, such as Owen Jones, who tried to raise this issue whenever they had the chance, but they tended to be voices in the wilderness. It is almost as if the press had been complicit in the silence back then. If so, that explains why even now they can’t bring themselves to call a lying cheating spade a lying cheating spade.

Whatever the case, this complicity has serious consequences for democracy. In the first example, politicians are being allowed to focus upon the need for an iron-fist approach to policing, rather than conceding that their previous political position had a role in increasing the likelihood of societal unrest. In addition, by framing the problem as a straightforward issue of law and order, they escape any discussion that perhaps their political position needs to change if we are to address the root causes. In the second example, a massive and profound deceit of the electorate is aided and abetted, and subsequently passed off as little more than a bit of creative accountancy that has raised some eyebrows. With such levels of journalistic delinquency the democratic process becomes worthless.

So why is our journalistic profession sleeping on the job? Why are they not prepared to challenge our politicians when it matters? And, most importantly as far as my current readership is concerned, what does this say for our chances of Net Zero being adequately challenged before rioting breaks out on the streets?

One of the problems seems to be the way in which our journalists and politicians interact. Too much of the mainstream political journalism now seems to operate through the auspices of so-called client journalists. It’s the journalism made famous in Yes Prime Minister, in which cosy relationships are established in Westminster watering holes, and where privileged access is courted and protected in quid pro quo relationships. The brutal fact is that most journalists are too interested in the next scoop that would enable them to win an award, and so dare not alienate the political benefactors who can service their needs (albeit for a little bit of tenderness in return). No one dared call out the Labour Party politicians during the election campaign because everyone was too busy fostering healthy client relationships that would see them through the next five years. No one who covets continued access to the corridors of power is now going to jeopardize any of that by calling out Reeves as being the bare-faced liar that she clearly is.

One can assume that similar thinking was behind the strange reluctance of the average hack to force the Labour Party into detailing just what Ed Milliband had in store for the hapless electorate. During the campaign, no one in the party seemed keen to push him forward, and no one seemed to find that strange. Furthermore, claims that fuel bills will go down, that Great British Energy would save the world, and that everything was fully funded were errant nonsense. Yet, weirdly, no one with a microphone seemed to know what questions to ask.

In fact, as far as Net Zero is concerned, the problem is so much more deep-rooted than that. Not only does your average journalist share Milliband’s delusion’s and failure to grasp basic principles of engineering and economics, there isn’t a great deal they can now do about it anyway because the irreversible damage was actually done during 14 years of client journalism supporting the Conservatives.

No doubt as reality dawns on the great British public, and the laws of physics catch up with Milliband, there will be an increasing level of challenge in the press, particularly the sector that leans to the right. But it is unlikely that journalists will force a U-turn in time to avoid the ‘mindless thuggery’ that will break out in the communities feeling the Net Zero pain first and hardest. No doubt, at that point, pledges to clamp down and restore law and order will feature prominently in the speeches of politicians and the reporting of journalists. After all, there will be democracy at stake. It’s just a shame that, before it got to that stage, the same journalists hadn’t thought to better protect democracy’s integrity by doing their job properly and demanding that politicians face reality.

97 Comments

  2. John, fascinating. I have just been reading about client journalism in Anthony Sampson’s book “Who Runs This Place?”, that I mentioned in another comment earlier today.

    Secondly, thanks for linking to Owen Jones. I usually find that I disagree with pretty much everything he says and writes, but credit where credit’s due.

    Finally, typo – it’s Ed Miliband, not David, though Miliband senior has also been in the news (without much criticism being obvious, it has to be said) for his $1M pay package at an international charity that is part-funded by the UK taxpayer, so the mistake is understandable.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. Richard, Mark,

    Thanks for pointing out the error. I’m cringing with embarrassment 😳

    Like

  4. Hi John, as a journalist who put in 43 salaried years on the job, I can endorse what you’ve written. In Australia some rare surveys have shown journalists to skew way Left, and for decades now their career paths have started with indoctrination in journalism courses at the way-left university system. Here there is nothing even-handed about journalists sucking up to the government: they broadly regard conservative governments as their foe and their job is to help bring them down and then enjoy the fruits of their alliance with the green/left incumbents. In journalism there is also a ‘hive mind’ where certain stories are designated as the “news” and the whole pack pursues. Other stories are not “news” and not pursued but dropped within days. I’ve written stuff about it like

    https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/media/2022/02/the-media-is-the-massage/

    Liked by 2 people

  5. Well, client journalists of the MSM eager to report the authorised narrative of far right thuggery on the streets of northern towns are instead getting an up close and personal crash course in Muslim thuggery, which is quite amusing.

    I think even the mainstream news reporters might be starting to realise that their “Asian victims” versus “far right thugs” narrative isn’t entirely accurate

    https://x.com/profnfenton/status/1820551459169071205

    What is happening on the streets of Britain is causing real tensions among communities. As a reporter, I’ve just been chased out of an area of east Birmingham by groups of Asian men who had come out to ‘protect their community’ against a planned far-right demonstration. The security guard with me decided immediately it wasn’t safe for us – it was clear we weren’t welcome – but there wasn’t a safe place for us to go for miles. Cars followed us, we had abuse shouted at us and at one point a group of around 6 men ran after us down a road with what looked like a weapon. We were forced to run. The far right didn’t appear to show up but the community here was on edge waiting and ready for them. They were on all corners of a roundabout and lined the roads that surrounded it. We were warned that we’d regret it if we hung around. We’re safe now.

    https://x.com/Fraser_Knight/status/1820532972887388328

    Knight probably wishes that he had found the elusive ‘far right’ thugs because they might have kept the Muslim thugs at bay and may have been rather less likely to deliberately target journalists. Earlier, Sky News were interrupted twice by gangs of Muslim thugs whilst out trying to film ‘far right’ thugs. On the second occasion, a criminal clad in a balaclava followed the female reporter back to the car with a knife and then tried to slash the car tyre; this is after the film crew were verbally threatened and a pulling trigger gesture was made – all caught on film.

    Even the BBC was forced to report that a peaceful anti-immigration was disrupted by Muslims who had to be held back by a line of police horses – no beatings and arrests by riot police of course.

    Like

  6. Accurate and unfortunately very telling that the full effect of Net Zero will cause what Starmer and his ilk call, the lower orders to protest vigorously which they will describe as rioting. In Harehills, buses and cars burned and the Left said that the “community” were protesting about austerity and a feeling of alienation, in Southport anger had the Left stating it was racism. None of what we have witnessed in the last seven days is forgivable, but the ease at which it was immediately neatly bundled up into the wrapper of Hard Right thuggery which negates any attempt or indeed requirement to look at the underlying reasons for the feeling of helplessness and two tier systemic discrimination by Police, Housing and Council resources, it’s no wonder that having spent years being told that because you have White Privilege and are at your core Racist both conscious and Un-conscious, it’s the perfect breeding ground for dissent and made worse by politicos who obviously look down on all but the Westminister elite.
    We have mounting problems, caused by years of promises broken, and now the solutions promised amount to labelling groups rather than listening to them.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. Tony,

    Thank you for the endorsement.

    I don’t wish to give the impression that all MSM journalists are cowardly or corrupt. The fact is that those who ask awkward questions tend to be treated with contempt by the authorities they attempt to challenge. See, for example, Sir Mark Rowley in action:

    https://news.sky.com/story/amp/met-police-chief-sir-mark-rowley-was-in-a-hurry-after-throwing-sky-news-journalists-microphone-13191381

    Also, who can forget how the nightly press conferences proceded during Covid? Those journalists who asked awkward questions only got the one chance! By the end, it was clear that only the client journalists were to be given the microphone.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Michael,

    I remember being at school many years ago and I was in the library putting the finishing touches to my latest homework masterpiece, when a big lad from my class came in and sat down opposite me. Without saying a word, he took the papers from my hand and neatly stapled round the borders so the work could no longer be read. I was incensed and let him know what I thought. “You’re just jealous,” I protested, “so you destroy what you can’t create for yourself.” He didn’t reply, he just looked me in the eye and then struck me hard across the face. “You have your words,” he conceded. “I only have my fists.”

    And thus it was at a very early age that I learned that violence is a form of communication.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. Jaime,

    Yes, I suspect as things become ever more ugly that some pundits are going to have to recalibrate their views. And it is such a shame that we are forced to focus on these issues when we should be focussing upon the tradegy of those three girls and their broken families.

    Liked by 3 people

  10. Just for the record, here is the BBC’s analysis.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czx66dkx3wlo

    In a nutshell, there is some discontent within society, created entirely by the right-wing’s misinformation, and subsequently exploited by them. But don’t worry. The reality is that we are a fundamentally tolerant society and we have got their number.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. And now here is the BBC doing its best to ensure that the Government’s views on the role played by online misinformation are well-publicised, together with the reiteration that accusations of two-tier policing are baseless:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ydddy3qzgo

    I’m not trying to take sides here but merley point out that on matters such as this, the MSM journalists rarely take a neutral position.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. In the BBC’s opinion, Muslim thugs carrying weapons, attacking cars with white occupants, randomly selecting and beating up lone white men in the street and in pubs, intimidating news crews, blocking traffic on the streets etc., constitutes “largely peaceful” demonstration. In the BBC’s opinion, “two tier policing” is “a myth”. TV Licensing reckon they are going to come round to my house tomorrow and interrogate me as to why I have not bought a licence without providing them with a valid reason for not doing so, with a view to prosecuting me for a crime which they presume I must have committed. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to interrogate them about the dis/misinformation which they disseminate routinely on their news channels – which quite obviously I don’t watch or record live.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Jaime,

    When I read the headlines that Tommy Robinson was fomenting the riots from his holiday in Crete, and posting deliberate misinformation about two-tier policing and Muslim criminality, it did not ring true to me. The reason being that I had only seen one such video and yet it was quite obvious from it that he was explicitly and categorically deploring the violence, particularly against the police. Whatever things he may or may not be guilty of, deliberately stoking the riots whilst relaxing in the sun is certainly not one of them.

    Another detail that I have found baffling is all the talk of proscribing membership of the EDL. I have even seen a BBC article discussing the practicality and likely effectiveness of doing so. That seemed very odd to me, since the EDL hasn’t existed for years now. So how can you ban a non-existent group, I wondered. The BBC’s answer was that it has only ‘technically’ been disbanded. What the feck is that supposed to mean? Well, apparently, in the eyes of the BBC, it still exists in essence because the sentiments expressed by former members still exist within society today and, besides which, these former members aren’t actually dead yet! WTF?

    Anyway, now I have watched the podcast you have just posted, I think I can more readily see what is going on. Tommy Robinson may be a dodgy geezer in many respects but he certainly isn’t what is being portrayed by Starmer, as feverishly supported by a craven MSM.

    Liked by 2 people

  15. John,

    It’s not hard to see what they’re up to by banning membership of a non-existent organisation and then qualifying this by targeting the ‘sentiments at large in society still’ which former members of the now defunct organisation harboured. What they are saying is that EDL-type wrongthink, in the population at large, should be illegal because it’s far right, and anyone caught in the act of doing it (by posting hurty words online for example) should be arrested and prosecuted.

    It’s rather the same with the non-existent climate crisis, but in this case if you deny the existence of the non-existent climate crisis, rather than promote it by thinking and acting like any good climate alarmist should, then you are also guilty of wrongthink. I’m sure they’ll get round to making climate crisis denial a criminal offence in due course.

    I can see, in the next few years, if Labour keep going the way they have started in just 4 weeks, blue-lipped grannies on the streets protesting Net Zero austerity measures and the removal of winter fuel payments, will be kettled by riot police with dogs and arrested in their hundreds, whilst JSO protestors, who live and breathe the non-existent climate crisis, and who have just threatened to emulate the ‘Southport style’ riots if they don’t get their way, will be treated with kid gloves by plod.

    Like

  17. Jaime,

    I don’t think the BBC will consider the EDL to be defunct until after all former members have been rounded up, humanely put to sleep, and buried with a priest sprinkling their headstones with holy water whilst chanting “The power of Christ compels you”.

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Thanks again to John for getting this thread started. I haven’t watched the Tommy Robinson (though I will) but I want to return to how climate debate is affected – or will be – as all these things develop. Like the many calling for X (Twitter) to be banned in the UK. I thought I’d take a look at the BBC’s current take (as of around 5pm) on that

    Musk also tweeted #TwoTierKeir – a hashtag that has been used in recent days to criticise the prime minister over apparent ‘two-tier policing’.

    As my colleague Mark Easton points out, the phrase refers to often unevidenced claims that senior police officers are more lenient towards ethnic minorities when they protest. This view is promoted by far-right activists on social media.

    — https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cw5yyynpwnzt

    ‘Often unevidenced’ really tickled me. Maybe there is just a teeny weeny bit of evidence at the moment? That’s why X must be banned, of course, to remove that. Then we can go back to unalloyed misinformation as declared by BBC Verify.

    On climate John’s made the very important point about the wasted years of Tory rule where so few journalists bothered to ask intelligent questions about what has become Net Zero, bastard child of Ed Miliband’s original Climate Change Act.

    The situation in the States is different but similar. Here’s the inimitable Democrat (assumed) nominee to run for President back a while (word salad video attached)

    Flashback: May 2021

    VP Kamala Harris: “The lack of climate adaptation and climate resilience” are “root causes” driving the surge at the US’ southern border.

    — https://x.com/LASHFORD_17/status/1820415775246791143

    There seems now to be strict policy that Kamala cannot be questioned on what on earth she meant, right through to the election itself. That will I assume fall apart.

    Interesting times.

    Liked by 4 people

  19. Richard,

    Yes, I smiled at that also. ‘Unevidenced’ has morphed into ‘often unevidenced’, by which they must mean ‘evidenced’.

    They know the bloody reality but dare not acknowledge it because democracy is at stake, don’t you know? Or, more to the point, it’s the moral imperative of ethnic tolerance no matter what.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Mark,

    Point taken. It is a bit of a minefield and discussing the riots can degenerate into a political argument for or against immigration. That’s not what I wanted. The Owen Jones video is the thing. That’s where most of my insights came from. But I was struck by how yesterday’s headlines seemed to also illustrate his point. Maybe we should move on and talk more about the implications for Net Zero.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. John – from your 06 Aug 24 at 12:40 pm comment & link –

    “An Ofcom spokesperson told BBC News it is “moving quickly” to implement the Online Safety Act, so it can be enforced “as soon as possible”.

    “When it comes fully into force, tech firms will have to assess the risk of illegal content on their platforms, take steps to stop it appearing and act quickly to remove it when they become aware of it,” they said.

    “We expect the illegal harms duties to come into force from around the end of the year… and the additional duties on the largest services in 2026.”

    Not an expert on X etc, but like NZ it seems to me they have no clue how this will work.

    Like

  25. I’ve got bad news for you guys. Apparently we are all silver-tongued amoral rogues. At least that’s what they think of us over at Terra Infirma:

    “And we have to be very aware that many of the same people currently pretending not to fan the flames of the riots are also trying to weaponise Net Zero as some kind of threat to the ordinary man and woman in the street. This is not a battle of facts, but a battle of emotion, of gut feeling and confirmation bias.”

    Oh gosh, confirmation bias. What can we do about this?

    “We need to use Green Jujitsu and reframe Net Zero for each audience, whether that’s for energy security, for warmer homes, for cleaner air and, yes, for child safety (road safety, asthma etc) – whatever button works – because if we don’t make a compelling case for, some silver-tongued amoral rogue will make the case against.”

    Well if it does come down to people rioting, presumably because their energy is too secure and their children are too safe, it doesn’t look like it will be the riot police they will have to deal with. It will be knights in shining armour riding white horses.

    https://www.terrainfirma.co.uk/the-uk-riots-hold-warnings-for-net-zero/

    Liked by 3 people

  27. dfhunter,

    What they are going to do when they get the Online Safety Bill up and running terrifies me, not least because those who will get to dictate what constitutes misinformation are turning out to be such inveterate liars themselves.

    Liked by 3 people

  29. John,

    What terrifies Spring, the BBC, the captured MSM and our hard left government is:

    X has become a largely uncongested information super highway which is outcompeting the strictly controlled legacy media. As such, alternatives to and direct challenges to the authorised narrative, can quickly gain traction and go mainstream almost immediately. Sometimes, this backfires – as in the case where the Southport attacker was identified as an illegal immigrant. But even here, it forced the authorities to reveal the actual identity of the attacker, which they were very reluctant to do at first and may not have revealed his identity at all were it not for this (incorrect) speculation. Most of the time though, the direct challenges to the authorised narrative consist of verifiable inconvenient facts and thus the general public are immediately armed with a defence against propagandised news items from the media spouting the usual institutionalised and authorised, hitherto factually unchallenged narrative preferred by the government.

    What is even more terrifying is that the owner of X, not content to reside passively in the background of his own news/social media platform, has come out and revealed his political leaning which . . . . is not liberal/far left! OMG. A disaster! The general public, who generally are not far left and who do not share the minority partisan ideologies and concerns of our Glorious Leaders, might start to feel comfortable sharing their disgusting, anti-immigrant, anti-science, far right nationalist views on X, knowing that the owner himself agrees with many of their concerns.

    This is why Sander Vander desperately accuses Musk of becoming ‘radicalised’ on his own platform. He needs to pathologize Musk and hence his extremely popular media platform. He can’t accept that Musk might simply have an opinion which is different from the far left globalist agenda propagated by the legacy media and shared by almost all of our governments and the people in charge of our institutions. This is why the government and the Left are gunning for X and its users, even threatening people with criminal prosecution now for just retweeting posts which challenge the mainstream narrative.

    Liked by 2 people

  30. I’ve now had time to respond to the Spring article.

    The first thing to appreciate is that Spring never writes anything unless she wants you to start thinking about Spring and how important she is to truth and democracy. Often, the self-importance is very explicit, such as when she blathers on about how she is the most hated woman online, but she doesn’t care because it just proves she is doing an excellent job. On other occasions the self-aggrandisement is a bit more subtle, but it is still there. In this case we see it in two ways.

    Firstly, she is obviously miffed that Musk hasn’t granted her an interview, thereby depriving her of her Frost-Nixon moment. She portrays this as hypocrisy on Musk’s part because he is always on about challenging power but then won’t allow himself to be challenged. She can’t accept that the real reason is that she is a nonentity to someone such as Musk and she has no right to expect him to want to talk to her. Only in her head does she have such an importance. And so she satisfies herself instead by writing an article that does nothing more than baselessly impugn his integrity. ‘What’s he up to?’, she asks. In fact, she should be grateful that she is not on his radar. The last BBC journalist who was arrogant enough to assume he could outwit and expose Musk in a head-to-head interview didn’t fare too well. Even so, her time may yet come, and if it does I will watch with interest.

    Secondly, there is more than a little assumed superiority in the way in which Spring writes disapprovingly of Musk’s endorsement of a Tommy Robinson tweet — or, as Spring describes him, “far-right activist and convicted criminal, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson” (I think we are supposed to be impressed that she knows his real name; nothing gets past her). She refers to it as ‘stirring the pot’. Why? Because she understands better than Musk or Robinson what the Prime Minister was really saying when he referred to the protestors as ‘thugs’. She knew that he wasn’t wishing to paint all the protestors with the same brush – Musk and Robinson have got it all wrong and now they seek to misinform.

    Either she is being terribly naïve or, as I suspect, she is just falling in line with the rest of the MSM in denying that those who might suggest there is a wider political debate to be had, that doesn’t just focus on law and order (both off- and on-line), have a valid point. Misleadingly, she says:

     Yaxley-Lennon had also been critical of the prime minister’s comments about increasing policing powers in response to the riots.

    The cad! Well, being a convicted criminal himself, he wouldn’t like the idea of law and order, would he? In fact, Robinson was simply making the same observation that I make in my article – that the Starmer speech was a deflection, and the MSM are happy to go along with it by agreeing that these were not protestors but mindless thugs (though I see the BBC seemed happy enough to use the term ‘counter-protestors’ this morning). I happen to agree that they were mindless thugs, but their behaviour is also the product of failed politics. Can we talk about that Starmer? Would that be alright with you, Spring? Apparently not. Instead Spring simply says:

    Mr Musk, with his own blue tick and 193 million followers, has been interacting with some profiles sharing divisive content and, in doing so, amplifying their message.

    Oh how I wish I had her razor-sharp ability to discern divisive content. But never mind, in the end she is very magnanimous, saying of Musk’s tweeting:

    “..as a private citizen, like any user, he’s entitled to share his opinion about politics or other topics.”

    That’s really big of you to say, Spring. Coming from you, that means a lot.

    Liked by 3 people

  31. Oh, and TV Licensing didn’t turn up (surprise, surprise). They keep spreading disinformation by post to my home address in the hope that the resident (presumed to be guilty until proven otherwise) will be intimidated into purchasing a licence in order to fund their ongoing disinformation operation online and via the public broadcast network. OTOH, plod might well turn up to kick in my door if I spread ‘the wrong type of disinformation’ on X or Substack. Welcome to Starmer’s Soviet era Chinese Communist style Britain.

    Liked by 1 person

  32. Jaime,

    That’s interesting that they didn’t show up. I’m due a visit from my energy supplier to do a routine ‘safety’ check of my meter. It not being a smart one, I’m sure he will want to condem it and bully me into upgrading. Wish me luck.

    Liked by 2 people

  33. I guessed they wouldn’t come round John. They’ve been threatening to send the SWOT team round for about a year now and I’ve lost count of the number of fleas I’ve had ready and waiting to donate to their ears and send them away with. Do let us know what happens with the meter visit.

    Liked by 1 person

  34. This is the BBC’s latest offering:

    “Why are there riots in the UK?”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg55we5n3xo

    Despite the heading, I can’t see that it offers anything other than a highly superficial analysis of the reason(s) for the riots, because it is anxious to push the social media angle.

    I accept that there will always be violent things who don’t need a reason to riot, and no doubt a few such knuckle-draggers are among the rioters. However, most people don’t riot without reason, and I would have expected a better analysis than the one offered up by the BBC. Indeed, there are a couple of articles on the Guardian website today which make a better fist of it.

    Liked by 2 people

  35. Marianna is on a roll now. I guess you’d have to call it a Spring roll (you see what I did there?):

    The real story of the news website accused of fuelling riots

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y38gjp4ygo

    It’s basically a piece about Channel3Now, but Spring could not help linking it all to her favourite bugaboos:

    Channel3Now’s incorrect story did become a source cited by lots of social media accounts which made the false accusations go viral. Several of these were based in the UK and the US, and have a track record of posting disinformation about subjects such as the pandemic, vaccines and climate change.

    Ms Spofforth had previously shared posts raising questions about lockdown and net-zero climate change measures. However, her profile was temporarily removed by Twitter back in 2021 following allegations she was promoting misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine and the pandemic. She disputed the claims and said she believed Covid is real.

    However, this interested me more:

    While there have been calls from politicians for social media companies to do more in the wake of the riots, the UK’s recently enacted Online Safety Bill does not currently legislate against disinformation, after concerns that that could limit freedom of expression.

    If that’s true then I have allowed myself to become seriously out of date. The last time I looked, disinformation was definitely proposed for inclusion. Maybe things are not so bad after all, except there is also the European legislation to worry about.

    Liked by 1 person

  36. Jaime,

    I will keep you informed regarding the meter man.

    Mark,

    It’s coming thick and fast now. I’m struggling to take it all in.

    Like

  37. Mark,

    I agree, that was a very superficial analysis from the BBC. Once one had stripped away all the stuff about how awful the violence was, how it was organised, what the Government response has been, and how communities were responding, we had only this:

    While some have been intent on violence, there were initially also people with concerns about immigration wanting to exert their right to peaceful protest.

    And:

    Others may be lashing out in a general sense of frustration, according to a volunteer at Abdullah Quilliam Mosque in Liverpool.

    Hardly an in-depth political analysis. The rest is put down to misinformation, the far-right and racism.

    Like

  38. Mark,

    Is this one of the Guardian articles to which you referred:

    Starmer is being tough on the rioters, but history shows that preventing further unrest is the real challenge

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/07/keir-starmer-rioters-unrest-immigration-fears

    I am pleased to see that the author recognises that there is a political challenge to be met, as well as the law and order one. However, I think I might disagree with his left-wing take on that challenge:

    He [Starmer] must find ways of reducing rather than fanning public anxieties about migration, but without legitimising either the rioters or their hatred.

    Public anxieties about migration may actually be legitimate, and we need to at least take that possibility seriously. Nothing legitimises riots, but dismissing or ignoring anxieties that people feel are legitimate may be part of the problem. After all, no one prior to last week was saying that uncontrolled immigration was a good thing and no one was claiming that our immigration controls were working well. We can’t put this all down to racism.

    And let’s, whilst we’re at it, mention the very well-evidenced claims of two-tier policing that Starmer denies exists. The BBC has come out in support of Starmer on that one, claiming that the idea is ‘baseless’. Who are the deniers now? I’m sorry, but this is another issue for which gaslighting the public is likely to be counterproductive.

    Liked by 2 people

  39. Well how about this for ‘two tier policing which doesn’t exist’?

    A 53 year old Cleveland man has been jailed for 26 months for . . . . . . “shouting and gesticulating” at police officers.

    The pair who violently assaulted police officers at Manchester airport, breaking the nose of one female officer, have not yet been charged and are walking around free.

    Meanwhile, only after an outcry on X, a Labour councillor in Walthamstow has been arrested for saying, in front of a baying mob of mainly middle class white leftists (one wearing an Amnesty hi-vis jacket), that far right protestors should have their throats slit and got rid of. I wonder if he will be charged and sentenced to at least 5 years (if two years is the penalty for yelling at police) within the week.

    The UK is in a very bad place at the moment and decent people are rightly extremely concerned about the next few years under this unbelievably atrocious government.

    Liked by 1 person

  40. XR-spinoff Palestine Action* is usually quite busy on social media but it has yet to comment about police officers being attacked with a sledge hammer when PA broke into Elbit’s HQ near Bristol on Tuesday morning. A female police officer was sent to hospital with back injuries. A male police officer was treated at the scene for sledge hammer injuries and at least one Elbit employee was injured, although perhaps not with a hammer – the proudly self-professed NVDA protesters brought other weapons with them.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mnnje4wlro

    ===
    *Founded in 2020 by Catholic anarchist Richard Barnard of XR and Christian Climate Action.

    Liked by 1 person

  41. Vinny, so far as I can tell, the BBC buried that in the local news section of its website – I certainly don’t remember seeing it before, and I check in to the BBC website at least twice a day (to see what they’re up to if for no other reason).

    By the way, apologies for the delay in digging your comment out of spam.

    Like

  42. John,

    Regarding the Online Safety Act, perhaps this starts to answer your question:

    “Online Safety Act not fit for purpose after far-right riots, says Sadiq Khan

    Exclusive: London mayor warns law must be revisited ‘very, very quickly’ due to falsehoods that contributed to unrest”

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/aug/08/online-safety-act-not-fit-for-purpose-far-right-riots-sadiq-khan

    Laws designed to counter misinformation are “not fit for purpose” and must be revisited after the spread of online falsehoods contributed to this month’s far-right riots, the mayor of London has said.

    Sadiq Khan, one of the UK’s most senior Muslim politicians, said ministers should act “very, very quickly” to review the Online Safety Act after the violent unrest in England and Belfast over the past week. There have been calls to hasten the act’s implementation.

    His comments came after the owner of X, Elon Musk, escalated his attacks on the Labour government, sharing a fake Telegraph article on his social media platform claiming Keir Starmer was considering sending far-right rioters to “emergency detainment camps” in the Falklands. The article was first posted by Ashlea Simon, a co-leader of the far-right group Britain First....

    Like

  44. Mark,

    To jog my memory I went back to this:

    https://cliscep.com/2023/07/01/where-is-the-harm/

    I think the salient points at the time were:

    a) There were plenty of people back then (e.g. Paul Scully) who were confident that the Bill, as drafted, would address the menace of ‘misinformation’ on topics such as pandemics, vaccines and climate change. So were they wrong?

    b) As you pointed out, clause 141 addressed the topic of misinformation, but nowhere was the term defined. The worry was that it looked like unelected officials in Ofcom would be the final arbiters when it came to matters of interpretation. Has that arrangement changed? Have definitions been pinned down now in a manner that doesn’t suit some people?

    c) There were those (e.g. the Carnegie UK Trust ) who were lobbying for the definition of harm to be extended to societal harm. This would have massively extended the scope of the legislation since it was originally only intended to protect children from online harm. Presumably such lobbying failed (for good reasons). Is that why Khan, etc. are frothing at the mouth now?

    d) A lot of people were just unhappy that the legislation was a huge dog’s dinner that would be far too complicated in practice. Is that already proving to be the case?

    I really can’t pretend to have my finger on the pulse on this one, but I do know that the riots have led to a great deal of dangerous nonsense being spouted about the need for further censorship. For example, this morning Kate Garraway and Rob Rinder were bemoaning the ‘misinformation’ posted online about the existence of two tier policing, and asking a Government minister why we can’t just ban X from this country.  

    Liked by 1 person

  45. On the subject of two-tier policing, we have this interesting article:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2024/08/08/keir-starmer-elon-musk-two-tier-far-right-riots/

    It’s behind a paywall but it can be accessed here:

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/two-tier-keir-showed-his-true-colours-years-ago-we-should-have-seen-the-warning-signs/ar-AA1or7xE

    But it isn’t just the policing that seems to be two-tier, it’s the whole judiciary. I don’t know how anyone can dismiss the accusations with a straight face when we see the contrast between the express justice handed down to the rioters and the fact that the Manchester Airport assailants have still not been charged. Be patient, say the police, this is a complicated case. Well, I’ve watched the video and it certainly doesn’t seem any more complicated than the videos that have led to swift justice for the rioters. So just what exactly are these complications, I wonder.

    Liked by 2 people

  46. Vinny,

    Yes, we have two-tier reporting as well it would seem. Which brings me back to the main theme of my article. The press are just as keen to avoid validating certain concerns as are the Government.

    Like

  47. The BBC News website’s front page often links to items that are filed under local news*, so Auntie didn’t necessarily hide its article about Palestine Action’s violent actions near Bristol. (I can’t remember whether I found it on Auntie’s front page.)

    And PA’s sledgehammer attacks on police officers also got coverage in The Times and The Telegraph (plus The Jerusalem Post and various local newspapers).

    The Guardian? Nope. Its website has only had one article about PA in the last week. On the evening of PA’s violent early morning Bristol raid it uploaded an article about two PA activists being arrested a week earlier because of a raid at a different Elbit facility two months ago. Which is pretty shitty, I reckon, for an outlet that bangs on about being impartial.

    But, Graun apart, I don’t think the PA raid near Bristol is a great example of two-tier reporting, especially as there’s been so much violent protest going on elsewhere in the UK this week.

    (Thanks for freeing my comment, Mark – and for your unnecessary apology.)

    ===
    *A current example: ‘Judge warns Katie Price after court no-show’, from Auntie’s Sussex section.

    **Orphaned footnote: Palestine Action still hasn’t commented about the sledgehammer attacks. Several sources say that it complained about the police using extreme violence before arresting the six protesters al Elbit on Tuesday. I can’t find PA saying that. Prolly deleted. Nor can I re-find a video that PA posted on X.com and perhaps on Instagram showing two cuffed female protesters giggling inside the Bristol Elbit facility after they’d been pepper-sprayed and arrested. If they’d been subject to extreme violence they didn’t seem very worried about it. (I’m pretty sure that one of them was shown using a sledgehammer to vandalise the Elbit facility in a different video that’s still online.)

    Like

  48. Here is an account of the political failings that I alluded to in my article:

    https://www.konstantinkisin.com/p/there-is-no-cope

    As I said, Starmer’s position may seem appropriate given the seriousness of the riots, but unless he acknowledges the real issues, he is just kicking the can down the road. Or as Kisin puts it:

    The riots you are seeing have many underlying causes. Many of the people who are burning things down and looting shops are just violent thugs looking for a cheap thrill. The authorities will throw the book at them which they have to do. But what they won’t do is address the cause of the tensions which are bubbling away under the surface. They will give the can another big kick down the road.

    Journalists need to step up to the plate but they won’t because they think it is not in their best interests. Instead, they attack Musk because he is saying, ‘well if you won’t do it, I will’.

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  49. Vinny,

    I guess it depends upon how you define your tiers. In my simplistic model it is tier one if it features on the national evening news. I may have just missed it, but I don’t think the reporting of the Bristol incident made that tier. And yet many similar events did without being obviously more newsworthy.

    Like

  51. When I recently wrote an article for this website questioning whether the Guardian was still fit for purpose, I drew attention to The Elements of Journalism, written by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel:

    The element most relevant to this thread is the one that states the following journalistic imperative:

    It must serve as an independent monitor of power.

    I mention this now because I have just been looking at the National Union of Journalists Code of Conduct:

    https://www.nuj.org.uk/about-us/rules-and-guidance/code-of-conduct.html

    I see nothing in this code that so clearly states the need to independently monitor power. That just doesn’t seem to be an ethical priority within the profession, at least if the employees’ code of conduct is anything to go by.

    Like

  52. Here’s another article that seeks to analyse the challenges facing modern journalism:

    Five Challenges for Journalism

    https://internews.org/blog/five-challenges-for-journalism/

    It starts off well enough:

    The future of journalism is about the future of public conversations. How do we communicate with one another, how do we access information we need to live our best lives, and how do we hold power to account.

    But then it rapidly goes pear-shaped. Of the five challenges identified, climate change is number three on the list. Apparently:

    Climate change hits already marginalized communities hard and these are the ones that need most urgently to take adapt to their changing environments.

    Yes, that is exactly what the author said, so I could facetiously suggest that proof-reading should be number one on journalism‘s list of greatest challenges. But I won’t, because there is a more important point to be made. This is what the author goes on to say:

    Journalism needs to adapt to these needs, and change their entire way of operating to ensure the climate story is covered effectively and with the urgency it needs.

    Whatever happened to holding power to account? It isn’t urgency that is needed, it is open-mindedness and a willingness to challenge what the scientists are telling them rather than acting as passive conduits. As climate scientist Patrick Brown said in a recent Unherd podcast interview, regarding the need for journalists to be critical:

    And I do think that journalists that cover climate should be thinking about that when they cover it, and when they interview researchers on their paper they should be trying to act like journalists — as a filter between the researcher and the public rather than as a PR or a megaphone to the researcher. I think that we give too much deference to scientists, saying ‘oh, you are the objective arbiters of truth so I cannot question you and I will tell the public what you have just said’.

    Journalists should not be here just to tell the ‘climate story’. They have an obligation to verify it and they are not even trying anymore.

    Liked by 2 people

  54. Taking up the theme of climate change being the greatest challenge to journalism, there is this Templeton Lecture given by Wolfgang Blau:

    Climate Change: Journalism’s Greatest Challenge

    https://wblau.medium.com/climate-change-journalisms-greatest-challenge-2bb59bfb38b8

    As with the Five Challenges for Journalism article I cited yesterday, we have the same presumption that the challenge is purely to get the story told, with no remaining need to verify it. This is clear from Blau’s opening:

    Good evening. When you read books or listen to speeches about climate change, they tend to begin with a seemingly mandatory first chapter on just how grim our future will look like if we do not take much more decisive climate actions now. And while I fully agree with that sentiment and reality, I want to spare you that chapter today. The fact that you are here today or are watching our live stream means that you know about the situation we are in and its urgency.

    Climate change always has been one of journalism’s greatest challenges, but the challenge arose because scientists were making an argument for the scale of a particular risk, and the journalists have never been equipped to know how to challenge such an argument. In particular, they lack an understanding of the subtleties of statistical analysis, the science of causal inference and the principles behind making decisions with incomplete information. Instead, we have people with degrees in humanities and languages who simply have to accept the executive summaries handed to them, because they have nothing more to go on than a naïve belief in the objectivity of scientists and the unimpeachability of consensus. They then profess to having a superior understanding of the science to anyone who might question the summary. Worse still, they have created a rod for their own backs because, once they have condemned any such challenge as ‘climate change denial’, they no longer have the option to ask the right questions even if they knew what they were.

    A journalist that cannot ask a question is no journalist at all.

    Liked by 1 person

  55. John R, you wrote yesterday, “Journalists should not be here just to tell the ‘climate story’. They have an obligation to verify it and they are not even trying anymore.” And today you have just written, “A journalist that cannot ask a question is no journalist at all.”

    With the above two quotes I think you have neatly summarised the West’s journalistic crisis. In short, it is the replacement of traditional journalism by propaganda. Endlessly repeating an error so that it falls within the Overton window of common knowledge or accepted wisdom is every propagandist’s dream.

    Clearly the journalists are compromised by their collective lack of investigative rigour; they could have teamed up with those that do have the necessary skills to challenge the dogmatic consensus. However, the journalists’ bosses (the publishers) are surely equally guilty for failing to challenge the groupthink.

    While, as just discussed, the journalistic profession has been compromised from top to bottom, I think we have to look to the academy for the source of the rot. For example, you wrote that the journalists “lack an understanding of the subtleties of statistical analysis, the science of causal inference and the principles behind making decisions with incomplete information”; these (and many other technical skills) are the expertise that, properly used, used to found in the academy.

    While individual universities have done very well from contracts seeking to confirm various aspects of the climate consensus, the academy as a whole completely failed (in the West) to challenge the IPCC’s preference for investigating only man-made sources of climate change. Naturally induced climate change has been largely ignored and thus under funded and under reported. Indeed, any mention of it tends to be howled down in our censorious times.

    We therefore find ourselves today with the West’s academy and its journalists singing repeatedly from just one half of the climate change hymn sheet. And we don’t even know whether that half is but a scrap or whether it is the larger part of the hymnal.

    Since our conclusions are only as good as our initial assumptions, it is no wonder that we find ourselves in a right royal propagandised pickle! Regards, John C.

    Liked by 2 people

  56. John C,

    Thank you for taking up the discussion.

    The shame is that, not having a background in climate science, I really don’t know the extent to which non-anthropogenic influences have been properly studied. The science (as per the IPCC) tells me that they have been and that we are therefore very confident that an anthropogenic causation is pretty much an established fact. Knowing how, even within science, a consensus can develop that is not entirely objective, I am disinclined to accept this certitude without someone fully exploring what has gone on behind the scenes. A well-qualified journalistic profession could do this for me, but no-one seems to be up to the job or prepared to stick their neck out. That leaves me with nagging doubts that I shouldn’t have. In particular, I have nagging doubts regarding how uncertainty is being handled when model ensembles are used to make predictions. I know enough to know that something is not quite right (e.g. the widespread use of aleatory mathematics to model epistemic uncertainty is well-dodgy) but what that means for the trust I should place in the scientific conclusions is unclear to me.

    Here is a video made by Sabine Hossenfelder that covers just some of what concerns me regarding the models:

    Why are the journalists not all over this? Why is the wide disparity of absolute temperature predictions not being highlighted by journalists? Why are they not demanding to know its significance? And why is even Sabine happy to report that means and percentiles are being discussed, as if the models are a measurement of reality rather than a collection of theories? It’s not good enough that anyone who raises the question of model ensemble statistics and the intrigues of uncertainty propagation should be dismissed as a denier peddling old talking points. And I think it’s the journalists, as much as anyone, who have encouraged this situation through their own fecklessness and bandwagon riding.

    Liked by 2 people

  57. John – you say “Knowing how, even within science, a consensus can develop that is not entirely objective, I am disinclined to accept this certitude without someone fully exploring what has gone on behind the scenes. A well-qualified journalistic profession could do this for me, but no-one seems to be up to the job or prepared to stick their neck out.”

    Know you must be aware of Climate Audit – if you use the search option for “models” you get many/too many maybe , to pick from, Nic Lewis posts being the most recent from 2018.

    Unfortunately Steve Mac seems to have given up on the blog & moved elsewhere.

    Maybe someone else can point you to a more specific post re “someone fully exploring what has gone on behind the scenes”. good luck 🙂

    ps – have said this before, but given the reliance on climate models to dictate Earths/Life’s future, why have we not seen a good technical documentary on these amazing models that can go back in time & forward to 2100.

    Like

  58. Dfhunter,

    You have to go back to the BBC’s documentary Climate Change by Numbers to see a journalistic account of how climate model based projections work. The expert they used was none other than Professor Norman Fenton, who has since revealed that he was reading from a script given to him and he was not allowed to raise his own concerns regarding the models. He has also claimed that he was deliberately misinformed by a climate scientist expert who, when confronted about this later, said, ‘well, sometimes you have to lie for the greater good’. It was that experience that turned Fenton into a climate change sceptic:

    This is the sort of behind the scenes insight that interests me. But this example is not just one of journalists failing to investigate behind the scenes, it is actually behind-the-scenes shenanigans within the journalism!

    Another good example would be the way that Climategate was ultimately handled by the media. Ask any MSM journalist now and you will be told that the emails were hacked, cherry-picked and taken out of context. As such they were deliberately chosen to give a very misleading impression of impropriety and, besides which, everyone involved has been fully exonerated by multiple independent enquiries. But anyone who has read Andrew Montford’s books The Hockey Stick Illusion and Hiding the Decline will know that there is so much more to it than that. These books are the result of good old-fashioned journalism, and you don’t have to agree with everything within them to appreciate that there are simply not enough journalists like Montford around nowadays.

    And where were the journalists when scientists were huddling in small groups at conferences and muttering about the closing down of awkward questions? Perhaps if journalists followed up this sort of thing rather than accepting the consensus at face value, we might just get somewhere. Everyone seems to be in thrall of a particular narrative and the profession that could potentially break the spell cannot do so because they too are under the spell.

    Liked by 1 person

  59. A further peculiarity is the political angle, most notably on what used to be the Left. Where were the Due Diligence and Cost-Benefit analyses (not to mention the red-blue team review of the science) endorsing the switch to renewables well BEFORE we started to abandon 300 years of well proven fossil-fuel powered economic growth? Regards, John C.

    Like

  61. John, I fear you have it wrong…George Monbiot should be able to put you straight:

    “For those with power and rich donors – the AC is always on, even if it’s melting outside

    This has been a summer of extreme heat around the world. The Guardian is investigating how it harms our planet and leaves the world’s most vulnerable people exposed to its impact”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/07/for-those-with-power-and-rich-donors-the-ac-is-always-on-even-if-its-melting-outside

    ...Extreme heat events are killing people in their thousands, but we hear remarkably little about them in the wider media. Why? Because almost all the victims are underprivileged. In Africa, heat deaths go almost entirely undocumented. Only very rarely do more prosperous people, like the series of tourists who died or went missing during the early summer heatwave in Greece, become victims of these events. It happens to other people, not us.

    At the Guardian, we seek to break out of the core and the mindset it cultivates. Guardian journalists tell the stories the rest of the media scarcely touch: stories from the periphery, of the outlanders exposed to the impacts of the insider economy, such as David Azevedo, who died as a result of working on a construction site during an extreme heatwave in France. Or the people living in forgotten, “redlined” parts of US cities that, without the trees and green spaces of more prosperous suburbs, suffer worst from the urban heat island effect. Or the prisoners left to cook in sweltering facilities.

    Among the duties of journalism is to break down the perceptual walls between core and periphery, inside and outside, to confront power with its impacts, however remote they may seem. This is what we strive to do.

    I’ll leave you to dissect that if you feel it’s worth it.

    Liked by 1 person

  62. Yes, Mark, I stand corrected. Those fearless journalists at the Guardian will always be there to stand up for the poor folk of Africa– except, of course, when it comes to endorsing their desire to exploit fossil fuels to generate the electricity to keep their AC units working. The heat deaths the Guardian reported corresponded with such a failure, caused it seems by cash flow problems for the electricity supplier.

    Poverty is the killer in Africa, so let’s see the Guardian journalists doing more to bravely challenge the Western-led anti-fossil fuel movement that denies Africa the opportunity to lift itself out of poverty.

    “Guardian journalists tell the stories the rest of the media scarcely touch“, my backside!

    Liked by 1 person

  63. See he links to – Lethal heatwave in Sahel worsened by fossil fuel burning, study finds | Climate crisis | The Guardian from apr 2024.

    which in turn links to a dead link for me, but the website World Weather Attribution – Exploring the contribution of climate change to extreme weather events has many other “scary” posts.

    It also has this in the “about” tab – Information for journalists – World Weather Attribution

    the English version – ENG_WWA-Reporting-extreme-weather-and-climate-change.pdf (worldweatherattribution.org) is authored by, wait for it – Ben Clarke University of Oxford & Friederike Otto Imperial College London.

    Probably worth a read, but not tonight.

    Like

  64. OK, I lied, just read the Foreword by – Sarah Sands is a British journalist, BBC Today programme bla bla.

    Partial quote –

    “The Today programme did a terrible job when we invited the former UK chancellor Nigel Lawson to discuss green subsidies . He adroitly moved the subject on to one of his pet themes, challenging the view that there had been an increase in extreme weather. I wish we had had this guide for journalists to help us mount a more effective challenge to his claim. It begins by explaining that extreme weather events are becoming “more frequent and stronger in many parts of the world”
    but follows that with a very important point: “Crucially though, not all events are becoming
    more likely and changes are uneven across the world .” There is no blanket explanation
    for extreme weather, although human caused global warming is a major underlying factor.”

    And that’s only a partial quote from the foreword !!!

    John Ridgway – journalist/churnalist – your points writ large for all to see.

    Liked by 1 person

  65. Dfhunter,

    That’s a very interesting journalists’ crib sheet on extreme weather event attribution you have found there. It is written by Ben Clarke (an Oxford University DPhil student) and Prof. Freidericke Otto (who needs no introduction). Just what Ben’s contribution would have been is anyone’s guess. Also, I note with interest the following acknowledgement:

    The authors would like to thank Wolfgang Blau and Rose Andreatta for their useful comments and suggestions

    Wolfgang Blau is the journalist I quoted earlier on in this thread as saying:

    And while I fully agree with that sentiment and reality, I want to spare you that chapter today. The fact that you are here today or are watching our live stream means that you know about the situation we are in and its urgency.

    Wolfgang is a big player in this story since he is the founder of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, which provides journalists (such as the BBC’s Marco Silva) with training on how to communicate climate science to the masses. Its mission statement is:

    Every story is a climate story. Our network supports reporters and editors who want to make the climate crisis a central element of their journalism.

    Why Wolfgang should be so interested in climate science isn’t clear to me because when I read his LinkedIn entry he doesn’t appear to have had any scientific training. In contrast, he did for a time head up Condé Nast, the publishing group that specialises in women’s fashion magazines. Anyway, whatever skills he has, the scientists Clarke and Otto were certainly thankful for his contribution.

    Which makes it all seem like something of a cosy arrangement. It is clear from its Foreword that the crib sheet is gratefully accepted. There is no question that it should be questioned in any fashion. After all, these are the writings of scientists who, of course, are not to be questioned. So there is no curiosity about the models that underpin extreme weather event attribution; nothing about whether the statistical treatment is sound, nothing about whether it is acceptable to base a causal statement purely upon the probabilities of necessity, nothing about whether it is actually a fair and accurate summary of the state of scientific knowledge, nothing to challenge the presumption that climate change is the most important causal factor in all those cases were there are others, nothing to challenge whether the scientific consensus has been arrived at entirely objectively.

    I could go on. The point is that it is obviously all being treated as gospel, and questioning any part of it would constitute climate denial. Theirs in not to question the story, theirs is just to know how to sell it.

    Liked by 2 people

  66. Oxford Climate Journalism Network:

    ‘Every story is a climate story. Our network supports reporters and editors who want to make the climate crisis a central element of their journalism.’

    Straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals:

    ‘Pick yr target, freeze it, personalise it and polarise it.”

    Liked by 2 people

  67. Started reading the – “Reporting extreme weather and climate change A guide for journalists”

    But a statement in “Event attribution studies – An overview” section has caused me brain freeze.

    Sorry if a bit long –

    “The first extreme event attribution study was published in 2004, relating to a heatwave the previous year. The summer of 2003 was exceptionally hot in western Europe, an unprecedented extended heatwave in which 70,000 people died. Following this regionwide catastrophe, researchers used climate models to work out the role that climate change played.

    They took the following steps:
    • First, they simulated the modern climate — warmed by human activities — thousands of times.

    In simple terms, this means running climate model simulations again and again with the same conditions, essentially producing thousands of years of weather in the current climate. This is useful for studying extreme weather because it is rare by definition. Within these simulations, they counted the number of times that a heatwave as extreme as the 2003 event occurred. They found that it was a very rare occurrence, even in a warmed world.

    • Second, they simulated the climate as it would be without any emissions from humans, including greenhouse gases and aerosols, effectively removing the human-caused climate change. It is clearly known how much greenhouse gas is in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels, so this can be done relatively straightforwardly. Then they counted the number of times such an extreme heatwave occurred . It was far rarer again. In fact, so rare that the event would have been almost impossible without human influence.

    • Finally, they compared the numbers with and without global warming and concluded
    that the effect of human-caused climate change had made events like the European summer twice as likely, at the very minimum, and probably far more likely.”

    Don’t think I will read any further.

    Like

  68. It’s just lovely how the Guardian can find speculation regarding civil war to be dangerous:

    Monday briefing: How Elon Musk is shaping a dangerous political moment

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/12/first-edition-elon-musk-misinformation-riots

    Except when it is doing the speculation itself:

    Political rifts have left the US haunted by fear of civil war. Here’s how France can do better

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/11/us-civil-war-france-film-tv-election

    Operating within a consistent moral framework is one of the challenges that newspapers such as the Guardian seem to find so difficult nowadays. It’s another reason why I say that, when it comes to protecting democracy, they are too often more of a liability than an asset.

    Liked by 1 person

  69. Dfhunter,

    When I read that section of the crib sheet (‘Event attribution studies – An overview’) I was left with a stack of questions in my head. I very much doubt that any of those questions will pop into the head of the average journalist when he or she reads it. Here’s just one:

    The overview states:

    The summer of 2003 was exceptionally hot in western Europe, an unprecedented extended heatwave in which 70,000 people died. Following this regionwide catastrophe, researchers used climate models to work out the role that climate change played.

    Presumably, it means ‘played in that death toll’. But how is that possible when the climate models have nothing to say regarding non-climatic causations? All they can say is how much more likely certain temperatures were; the rest is speculation.

    And here is another:

    Why is it thought sufficient to focus upon the extent to which an event was made more likely by climate change? Why is there not more said regarding sufficiency? Could it have anything to do with this quote from Dr Peter Stott of the Hadley Centre, which makes it clear that focusing upon probabilities of necessity is important for getting the ‘right’ message across to the public?

    If the public hears that a particular weather event is consistent with climate change they may conclude that it is further proof of the immediate consequences of human-induced global warming. On the other hand, if the public hears that it is not possible to attribute an individual event, they may conclude that the uncertainties are such that nothing can be said authoritatively about the effects of climate change as actually experienced.

    And here is another:

    I hear that there is a great deal of controversy within the field regarding the legitimacy of your methods and that the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6) is now advocating a ‘story telling approach’ instead. What do you say about that?

    And there are so many more questions — too many to list here. What we need is a clued-in journalist. Oh, I forgot.

    Liked by 1 person

  70. John – Ha – you forgot “journalists’ crib sheet on extreme weather event attribution”‘

    No questions or thought needed, our intrepid journalist/hack has a busy schedule, easy living on climate scare stories.

    Like

  71. John: Through my interaction with Geoff about Walter Kirn I was reminded of Matt Taibbi being accused of not being a journalist by a congresswoman because he had been trying to grapple with the truth of the ‘Twitter Files’

    As ever, it depends on one’s definition.

    Liked by 2 people

  72. Richard,

    Yes, that is where I first heard of Matt Taibbi. It seems to me that the congresswoman was invoking Alex Cockburn’s First Law of Journalism: ‘to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it’. However, Cockburn was, of course, making a wry observation rather than proposing an ethical standard.

    So it isn’t that journalists are unprepared to dig deeper to uncover ‘the story’, it’s just that they are unprepared to do so unless in order to defend an existing prejudice (by which I mean an authoritative prejudgment). You can see this in every BBC Verify article. The congresswoman immediately recognised that Taibbi was not in the business of defending an authorised prejudgment and so was very comfortable in labelling him a ‘so-called journalist’.

    Like

  73. Alex Cockburn’s First Law of Journalism: ‘to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it’.

    Almost as good as his dad’s

    “believe nothing until it has been officially denied”

    Claud Cockburn was of course a communist and coined the term (and the conspiracy theory) The Cliveden Set in 1937. It was only when Roosevelt used the same term that it became official. Or something like that.

    The congresswoman immediately recognised that Taibbi was not in the business of defending an authorised prejudgment and so was very comfortable in labelling him a ‘so-called journalist’.

    Quite so. And the point Taibbi made is that the amount of disturbing new information that Elon Musk had allowed to be released meant that there was a great need for both journalism and open debate (if the two are ever different).

    That was what was needed in 1937 and so it is today.

    Liked by 2 people

  74. This article caught my eye this morning:

    Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/18/inciting-rioters-in-britain-was-a-test-run-for-elon-musk-just-see-what-he-plans-for-america

    It wasn’t so much because it was accompanied by a picture of Musk, deliberately designed to make him look like Dr Evil.

    It wasn’t because the whole premise of the article was absurd (Musk is powerful enough to single-handedly foment civil wars and that’s what he obviously wants).

    It wasn’t so much because of the blatant hypocrisy of an article that blasts Musk for speculating about civil war in the UK but then goes on to do exactly the same with respect to the USA.

    It wasn’t so much because of the rabidly conspiratorial tone of the whole article and its frenzied narrative of mis- and disinformation being peddled by the right-wing, who then go on to attack the wonderful academics (think the ‘all-star’ Sander van der Linden) who are, after all, only trying to protect democracy with their fact-checking.

    It wasn’t so much because of the tiresomely repeated accusation that those who want to misinform are hiding behind the right of freedom of expression.

    It was because it was written by Carole Cadwalladr, the Observer journalist who was successfully sued by Arron Banks for peddling misinformation on Twitter (of all places) and elsewhere that amounted to libel. She was forced to pay £35,000 damages together with ‘hundreds of thousands’ to cover part of Banks’ legal bills. She is currently appealing the latter because she thinks it sets a “chilling precedent” that “has the potential to stifle freedom of expression in this country”.

    Cough, tosser!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/23/carole-cadwalladr-to-appeal-ruling-that-she-pay-legal-costs-in-arron-banks-case

    Liked by 2 people

  75. Hmmm, the codswallop in the coalmine.

    Because while Kamala Harris is enjoying her hot girl summer and liberal America is sighing with relief, it’s to Britain that the US needs to look. To rioters in the streets and burning cars and contagious, uncontained racism spreading like wildfire across multiple platforms. To lies amplified and spread by algorithms long before the facts have been reported, laundered and whitewashed by politicians and professional media grifters.

    Because just as Brexit prefigured Donald Trump’s election in 2016, there are signs that we are again the canary in the coalmine.

    Both times I found Telegraph pieces to disrupt your other thread, John, I was actually looking for Charles Moore’s op-ed about the riots and the government’s response. He helpfully dials down on the ‘wildfire’ based on our past experiences:

    The scale of destruction and disorder was lower than in the riots of 2011, and much lower than in the 1981 riots in Brixton, Toxteth, Handsworth, Moss Side etc. In the Broadwater Farm riot of 1985, a mob of about 50 people set upon PC Keith Blakelock with machetes and knives and hacked and stabbed him to death. These latest, squalid riots did not attain such heights of horror.

    It is also true, as Tom Tugendhat, the former security minister, has pointed out, that Sir Keir Starmer was rather slow in reaction. He seemed not instinctively to understand the unique role of the prime minister in galvanising the entire official system (particularly in August, when it goes to sleep). But once he had belatedly convened the COBR committee, this gave the necessary signal. The law-and-order reaction was firm. Many arrests were made. Justice was swift – possibly too swift to ensure fairness in sentencing. The rioting stopped.

    I say all this not to play down what happened, but to try to approach it in the right way – not so much a terrible crisis as a serious warning.

    — Two-tier policing risks turning white British people into another ‘community group’

    The rest for me about ‘community’ policing is very well judged.

    Liked by 1 person

  76. Richard,

    When one reads articles such as Cadwalladr’s, one cannot help but suspect that the real reason why Musk has become such a target is because he is now the competition. People are turning to social media for their information and a chance to participate in an uncensored debate, and the MSM does not like it one little bit. They fear losing control of the narrative above all else.

    Liked by 3 people

  77. And Musk also understands this. He seems to have a lot of fight in him.

    Trump’s “Fight, fight, fight” rang bells for him, as he made clear in their little chat.

    I didn’t expect to be in this place (in the world) either.

    Like

  78. Richard,

    I must admit that I haven’t taken the time to look into Musk and Trump’s ‘little chat’; which is quite remiss of me given that one of them may soon become the most powerful man in the Western world and the other is a presidential candidate.

    Liked by 1 person

  79. That bit is right at the beginning (skipping the DDoS problems, thanks Hindustan Times)

    By the way, who said Trump doesn’t have a sense of humour or the gift of timing?

    Like

  80. The BBC is, in my opinion, deliberately spreading misinformation on X, regarding their own article.

    They say:

    A 67-year-old man has been jailed after chanting “you’re not English any more” at police officers during a violent demonstration in London. A 67-year-old man has been jailed after chanting “you’re not English any more” at police officers during a violent demonstration in London.

    Custody mugshot of David Notley

    But, if you read the article the post links to, it says this:

    Alex Agbamu, prosecuting, said Notley made his way to the front of the crowd and confronted police in a “fighting pose”, surging back and forth.

    Notley also joined in the chant “you’re not English anymore” and sang derogatory remarks about Islam.

    He helped push another demonstrator into a police officer which “precipitated a physical confrontation involving the police [and] demonstrators”, the prosecutor said.

    Mr Agbamu added that Notley then remained at the front of the crowd.

    Two years is still an extraordinarily harsh sentence for such behaviour, but, he was not jailed just for chanting “You’re not English anymore” at police. Lots of accounts on X are amplifying this misinformation which is understandably causing much alarm. The BBC are complicit in causing alarm and I think deliberately so. Their journos want to give the impression that if you’re ‘far right’ then you are going to go to prison just for chanting mild insults at the police.

    Liked by 1 person

  81. Jaime,

    Insinuation is an old journalistic ploy. They say he was jailed ‘after chanting’, not ‘for chanting’. You’re not supposed to notice the difference.

    Like

  84. Jaime,

    Re: I will keep you informed regarding the meter man.

    Well, the man from E.on turned up today and it turned out to be a non-event. I had been warned that he would be checking the safety of my meters with a view to ‘encouraging’ a transition to smart metering. In the event, he just took readings and buggered off.

    Although it was a waste of my time, it did at least prompt me to find out where I stood with respect to the regulations. The first port of call was E.on’s own website:

    https://www.eonnext.com/help/metering/meter-certification

    It says:

    Electricity and gas meters like many things have a “best before” date when they’re manufactured. This certification date is set by the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) and once a meter has passed its certification date it needs to be replaced.

    And:

    If we supply both your electricity and gas we’ll replace both of your meters if one has passed its certification date.

    The clear implication is that both electricity and gas meters are subject to OPSS certification periods. This is an outright lie. The truth is to be found in the Ofgem Fact Sheet on Meter Approval and Verification:

    https://www.eonnext.com/help/metering/meter-certification

    This makes it clear that only electricity meters are subject to certification expiry, as mandated by the Meters (Certification) Regulations 1998, SI 1566. Gas meters, in contrast, are subject to the Gas (Meters) Regulations 1983, SI 684 (as amended). The meter suppliers have no obligation under those regulations to replace gas meters unless they are clearly faulty or dangerous.

    It’s a shame I didn’t get the chance to discuss E.on’s blatant misinformation with their engineer. I was quite looking forward to it.

    Liked by 3 people

  85. John,

    Hmm. Well, that was a bit of a damp squib. Just when you’re looking forward to an eco-fascist representative goose-stepping up the garden path to come knocking on your door so that you can then read them the Riot Act, send them packing and sit down to cuppa with a glowing sense of righteous satisfaction, all they do is read the meter and then bugger off! Oh well, tyranny comes to those who wait so they say. You’ll just have to be a bit more patient, as will I with TV Licensing.

    Like

  86. Jaime,

    How strange that the TV Licensing people haven’t yet paid you their threatened visit (sarc). I suppose it’s because they’re so busy with their campaign of harassment against other innocent members of the public who don’t require a TV licence. I have now had loads of letters from them, promising me a visit, but it’s all quiet so far. It’s a shame, because like you I am really looking forward to it.

    Liked by 2 people

  88. John – WOW – thanks for that link – that NBC Journalist really wants to dis Musk for his views/thoughts on UK/EUROPE descending into civil war.

    Konstantin shows him to be the biased hack he is.

    Like

  89. Dfhunter,

    Or perhaps more to the point, the dialogue illustrates how journalism works in general. As Kisin said, he wasn’t having a go at that particular journalist specifically.

    Like

  90. Britain’s ‘self-destructive’ net zero policies sparked riots, says Trump

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/22/uk-self-destructive-green-policies-sparked-riots-trump/

    Not yet they haven’t. But thanks for the idea Donald.

    Also, I note that the MSM are keeping up their protection of the Government narrative:

    Rioting across Britain following a mass stabbing in Southport in July has been widely blamed on misinformation, far-Right agitators and criminal opportunists.

    Nothing to do with discontent with immigration policies then.

    Liked by 2 people

  92. Here is another good example of how the first instinct of the MSM is to confirm existing prejudice rather than challenge it. In this case, it’s an official judgement rather than a prejudice that is being confirmed, but the principle still applies; there is no hint of the MSM supporting the challenge:

    Lucy Letby: Questions grow in debate on killer’s convictions

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39k44n8j1mo

    Notice the subtle message conveyed in that title: Letby is not someone who has been found guilty of killing; she is a killer that has been convicted. The distinction may seem pedantic, but it is far from it when you consider that it is the safety of the conviction that is being discussed. Furthermore, whilst the BBC had no choice but to report upon the growing calls for a fresh look at the evidence, it was keen to begin by making no secret of where it stands on the matter:

    Six expert medical witnesses and many former colleagues testified against her. Thousands of documents were presented by the prosecution and pored over in many months of painstaking examination. Their case was wide ranging, including blood test results which showed that two babies had been given an insulin overdose, X-rays which indicated that air had been injected into seven others, while others still were shown to have been force-fed with milk.

    And on it goes. By the time one gets to the concerns raised by statisticians, the reader has already been ‘inoculated’ against the idea that there could be any reasonable doubt. Then, after a detailed account of the questions being raised, the BBC article feels the need to finish on a dismissive note by quoting a barrister who “has spent 40 years as a defence lawyer, and worked on many cases which he successfully referred back to the Court of Appeal and the Criminal Cases Review Commission”:

    “There needs to be something new and compelling which calls into question the fundamental case theory presented to the jury at two trials,” he said, adding that so far, he has not seen that…”I’m seeing lots of people putting forward theories. They are making assumptions without the solid basis for it.”

    After which, the BBC adds philosophically:

    But still the questions continue.

    It’s as if the article came straight out of the infamous Debunking Handbook: First inoculate the reader against the idea to be debunked. Then introduce the idea. Then finish with a sound rebuttal.

    Job done.

    Liked by 3 people

  93. It’s a shame that there are not more people like yourself John who have self-inoculated against attempts by the BBC to inoculate the unwary reader. Debunking the debunkers should be deemed to be an essential life skill.

    Liked by 2 people

  94. “Journalism vs the people“

    Interesting essay by Jenny Holland at Spiked, describing the way a “transnational media class” has taken over journalism, with the result that they have become estranged from the people they are supposed to be informing, and end up instead spreading elite propaganda.

    Liked by 2 people

  95. Jit,

    That is indeed an interesting essay. The two most pertinent quotes for me were:

    The growing hand-in-glove relationship between the transnational media and the ruling elites is already coming at a huge cost to journalistic reputations…

    And:

    Many mainstream journalists may still imagine that they’re ‘speaking truth to power’. But all too often they’re siding with power against the people.

    I think the BBC’s brainchild, the Trusted News Initiative, is the principal embodiment of the transnational media to which this essay refers. It is sold as the last bastion of the right-minded, fighting against the proliferation of online misinformation. However, my own take on it is that it is  ‘little more than a liberal-leaning cartel of information-trading platforms’. Trust has got nothing to do with it. It’s all about ramming the ideologies of the liberal middle-class down everyone’s throats:

    Trust Me, I’m From the BBC – Climate Scepticism (cliscep.com)

    Liked by 1 person

  97. Another Interesting post – Is Journalism Ready for a Second Trump Administration? – The Atlantic

    Partial quotes “conversation with The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg”-

    “So when the subject of Trump comes up, we’re not looking at what he thinks we should do about the taxation of tips, or even his position on NATO, as ridiculous as I personally find it.

    It’s about his honesty. It’s about his mental fitness. It’s about his moral fitness. It’s about his racism. It’s about his expressed misogyny. It’s about all those things. So it’s not about party. It’s not about ideas. It’s about behavior and disposition and the threat that he poses.”

    “If we could run pro-Trump material that could pass through our fact-checking process, I would print it. Our goal is to say things that are true, right?”

    Like

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