When President Trump responded to criticism about his use of Twitter, he said “I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.” That struck me as very true.
The President owes his success to his ability to speak directly and informally to the American people, without the heavy filter of the news media. Those who long for the good old days where American Presidents were very formal do not realize how much power that ceded to an unelected media that thinks of itself as the Fourth Estate, claiming vital importance in a free society.
I have been appalled that so many of those I once respected in the media have defected to the Dark Side, spewing little more than political propaganda, disguised as expert commentary or even “balanced journalism.” Yet what we have witnessed may be simply ‘business as usual’ in the mainstream media that we finally recognize as heavily biased journalism, supporting an out-of-control identity politics and government domination of everything including science.
My awakening came on election night 2016 when Donald Trump won the Presidency. The journalists I had long admired were despondent and even crying at the outcome, while I could not stop cheering. I knew that Trump would be transformative, because few septuagenarians would undertake such a monumental job unless they intended to make a big difference. Trump has certainly pleased those of us who voted for him. In fact, he has done much better than I expected he would, in the face of non-stop attacks.
But where can we turn for news and information in the age of Fake News? Fox News has done an admirable job of keeping us informed, either as classic journalists presenting multiple sides of every issue or as supporters of the President, dissecting the avalanche of disinformation coming from those constantly plotting a coup.
Yet the problems of our society run far deeper than those playing out on a national level. Here in Oregon with one political party controlling most of the politics and indeed most of the discourse, we lack a monumental figure like Trump able to overcome the endless nonsense. Most media are hostile to the Trump revolution and everything that goes with it, including opposition to climate hysteria.
Even local TV meteorologists, like Matt Zaffino, are not content with presenting tomorrow’s weather. They want to promote the popular cause of the day, Global Warming, without entertaining contrary views. Professional meteorologists should know better. They should understand that science is only science if it can be discussed freely.
The Oregonian and most other local media are scientifically illiterate, although they write about science all the time. Unlike the Northwest Connection, they rarely have anyone on their staff with any scientific training. In an earlier era, the media understood how to handle this lack of expertise. They actively looked for real experts, and if those experts disagreed, they would quote the differing opinions. That was what was known as “journalism,” now a nearly extinct profession.
Over a period of hardly more than a decade, the Oregonian went from having an excellent reporter who had some scientific training and who cared about getting things right to a reporter without scientific training, Scott Learn, whom I characterized as their ‘religious reporter’ for his devotion to the Gospel According to Gore. But at least Learn would listen occasionally when we briefed then Editorial Page Editor Bob Caldwell.
As newspaper fortunes turned down, Learn moved into politics, Bob Caldwell died, and the Big ‘O’ became the little ‘o’. Now the Oregonian’s pretend “scientist” is a former house painter turned propagandist, Kale Williams, who constantly pushes climate hysteria at the direction of Editor Therese Bottomly. His notable success was a sad story about Nora, a polar bear, whose problems in captivity were supposed to mimic those of wild bears in the Arctic enduring ‘climate change.’ Of course, the real science shows that polar bears in the wild have rebounded from about 5,000 individuals in 1973 to perhaps 40,000 today. All attempts to engage in a dialog with either Williams or Bottomly go unanswered.
Furthermore, now that the Oregonian is heavily involved with the Washington Post, owned by climate alarmist and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the ‘o’ quietly refuses all commentary from skeptics and calls scientists “deniers.” To make matters worse, the ‘o’ has eliminated their online comment sections to avoid the negative responses they got from readers who saw through their fact-free content.
The Bend Bulletin, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, has carried climate alarmism a step further. New Editor Gerry O’Brien publicly announced that his paper will henceforth refuse all commentary that casts doubt on Global Warming orthodoxy and not permit any online comments that dare to disagree with the prevailing paradigm. That brought cheers from the usual suspects who could not survive fair discussions.
In quick succession, the Bulletin printed climate commentary from Matt Orr, a population biologist at OSU who knows little about the physical sciences and is too politicized to be objective, to a sixteen year old high school student who knows only what he has been spoon fed, to a political operative without scientific training who congratulated the Editor for suppressing “a manufactured debate meant to confuse the public.” How would any of these people even know what is competent science and what is not? The most fervent believers know the least.
All of this means that Oregonians can no longer get the honest information they need on important topics from the local sources they have depended upon for generations. That has immediate consequences for those who need good information to understand what the prevailing political party is doing to them.
Take, for instance, the ‘Carbon Tax’, ‘Cap and Trade’ , SB 1530, or whatever they are calling it today. Oregonians have been led to believe that this draconian tax will improve our climate. That is woefully dishonest, because Oregon is far too small on a global scale to make any difference. Even if we gave up ALL fossil fuels and reverted to the horse and buggy days of the 19th century, we would make no difference. That is not just my conclusion. It is also the conclusion of the OSU professor who was recruited by the Oregon legislature to promote climate hysteria, Phil Mote.
If this were the 19th or 20th centuries, we would be in big trouble, because the “Establishment” tightly controlled much of the information we received. Even science came under the thumb of established scientific journals, able to suppress ideas that challenged their preferred perspectives.
But as the 20th century was waning, a new technology was born that has confounded the totalitarians. This technology (ARPANET) was originally developed for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to allow scientists to communicate better and faster. But it quickly proved so transformative that it spread around the world, reaching much of the world’s population in hardly more than a decade. I am of course referring to the Internet. While it has problems characteristic of any new technology and can be misused, the Internet has made it impossible for propagandists to hide the truth for very long.
President Trump constantly runs around Fake News, as we constantly battle Fake Science. Readers worldwide wanting honest and authoritative scientific information about the climate controversy need only read the Northwest Connection online or visit websites such as:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://icecap.us/
Thank Heaven for the Internet.
Gordon J. Fulks lives in Corbett and can be reached at gordonfulks@hotmail.com. He holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research and has no conflicts of interest on this subject.
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