A few weeks ago, a Canadian newspaper behaved despicably.
It demanded that climate skeptics be denied a public voice. It demanded they be silenced. Censored.
Rather than the eccentric opinion of an individual, this is the ‘consensus view’ of the Winnipeg Free Press’ editorial board.
Having once served on the editorial board of the National Post, I was gobsmacked. The idea that people employed by a newspaper would collectively and publicly call for the silencing of anyone is astonishing.
Nations in which people are silenced aren’t safe for journalists. The choice is always between freedom and tyranny.
Prior to the publication of my first post about this matter, I sent an e-mail (two sentences long) to three senior editors, asking “how many people wrote/agreed to” that editorial.
Maybe this was the work of a rogue writer. Privately, I prayed I wouldn’t be advised that a dozen individuals had calmly sat around a conference table and signed-on to the idea.
Shortly after publication, Brad Oswald, the Perspectives Editor, responded. To this day he has declined to say whether there were three, 10, or 20 people involved.
Instead, he explained at some length that “our editorial board is composed of a collection of senior Winnipeg Free Press writers from a variety of disciplines; we meet regularly to discuss issues and potential editorial topics.”
He told me newspaper editorials “are by design not attributed to an individual writer or writers.”
Then he said this:
As the Perspectives Editor at the Winnipeg Free Press, I am responsible for the content of our editorial pages and stand fully behind the editorial, and am happy to respond to questions regarding it or any other content that appears on our editorial pages. Free Press editor Paul Samyn also approved and supports the editorial in question. [bold added]
In other words: that newspaper is staffed by people who think people like me should be silenced.
Perhaps we’ve all been done a favor here. The publishing of that foul editorial has dragged professional journalism’s decaying corpse out into the sunlight.
Most news outlets, even highly prestigious ones, are now run by activists. Rather than performing the traditional task of keeping the public fully informed, these people are propagandists for their own worldview.
Newspapers have abandoned the notion that they should behave in a neutral, evenhanded manner. They have abandoned universal skepticism.
The Toronto Star, for example, now describes itself as “the leading progressive news source.”
As I told Oswald in an e-mail response,
It is not the job of journalists to decide who’s correct in a scientific debate, and then to freeze out entire swaths of the scientific community. The public has a right to hear a wide range of opinion, and to make up its own mind.
Instead, the Winnipeg Free Press is loudly and proudly repudiating free speech.
Read more at Big Pic News
BBC and most UK media more or less doing the same. BBC has a deliberate policy not to give voice to any who take a different view about climate change. Trump is now pilloried as “World’s Number One Climate Denier”. BBC has almost daily reports pushing the AGW agenda. It is pretty outrageous, not least as the BBC Charter demand impartiality and fair exchange and debate.
Also take a look at Google News:
https://news.google.com/?hl=en-CA&gl=CA&ceid=CA:en
The listings are nearly all left wing sites.
CNN BBC CBC NYTimes Bloomberg The Guardian MSNBC
The MSM is mostly left, so Google News would have to adjust their algorithm to be more inclusive.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for that.
Since liberal rags like the New York Times is pretty much a liberal news rag its no doupt that they only allow for their side to be heard the rest of the M.S. Media pretty much edits the news so the only news allowed is that of the papers leftists Chief Editor
The liberals can’t tolerate actual science or facts that contradict their brain-washed dogma.
Censorship = tyranny
Like blaming witches for what happened in the 1600 America Liberals prefer to blame others for all whats going on they never blame the crinimals for all those crimes they always look for Scape Goats Greta s not going after the Worlds two biggist polluters India and China
Not climate related, however, the formerly distinguished Denver Post fired a freelance columnist John Caldara (Libertarian) for the sin of claiming scientifically there are only male and female genders/sexes, in total opposition to the AP style guide recently updated. The two liberal females (???) who are the publisher and editorial page manager decided by fiat that Caldara was no longer an acceptable voice to be heard despite their continuing commitment to a diversity of voices on the editorial page…
I also experienced rejection by the prominent newspaper in my country when trying to have a letter to the Editor published in the New Zealand Herald.
The latter content was basically why Greta is wrong based on established scientific facts which even IPCC accept.
The letter is still not published.
The climate change movement has worked to silence climate realists for over 15 years. The movement’s very survival depends on it. There is no way it can stand up to facts like the poor correlation between carbon dioxide levels and the earth’s temperature, the impact of solar forcing, the failure of the typical climate model, and the 100% failure of all climate change predictions that have come to term. If this information were made available to the general public, today the climate change movement would be just a historical foot note.