An essential element of the Green movement has been the widespread corruption of journalism. Sacrificing reporting for activism, newsrooms around the globe have allied themselves with an ideological mission to legislate solutions to global warming.
Just last week, for example, Newsweek’s cover story asked of the presidential campaign: “Who’s the Greenest of The All?” Jerry Adler’s article was a thinly veiled endorsement of whichever Democrat gets the nomination. Editor Jon Meacham – in his “Editor’s Desk” column at the front of the magazine – betrays that the magazine has abandoned reporting on global warming for political advocacy: “Big reforms requiring economic sacrifice and devotion to the common good are not easy to accomplish . . . and (this issue) explores what history tells us about what makes a transformative president.”
On a local level, Detroit’s major news station — CBS-owned WWJ – has eliminated the line between reporter and advocate. On Earth Day, April 22, WWJ will sponsor “’Embracing a Green Michigan — Carbon Culture at the Crossroads,’ a half day business conference highlighting the work that’s being done in Michigan to develop new technologies and new thinking about energy and the environment.”
Rather than reporting from the pews, the news radio station’s science editor, Matt Roush, will be in the pulpit — joining a variety of activists from business, government, and academia – including keynote speaker Skip Pruss, Gov. Granholm’s Special Advisor on Renewable Energy, as he advocates Democrats’ plans for a state renewable energy standard.
Not all journalists are content to watch their organizations abandon journalistic principle, however.
Down under, staffers at the Melbourne daily The Age have rebelled against their management’s advocacy for Australia’s light-extinguishing “Earth Hour” stunt and other green government initiatives. Reports The Australian: “In a statement accompanying the resolution, [Age] staff said the Earth Hour partnership placed basic journalistic principles in jeopardy: ‘Reporters were pressured not to write negative stories and story topics followed a schedule drafted by Earth Hour organizers.’ ”
The paper’s involvement in green events and state programs, the staff protested, “breached the journalistic principle that the reporter and observer cannot be a participant without affecting objectivity.”
If only Newsweek, WWJ, and others would heed those sensible words.