Murdoch's Sins Go Way Beyond the Hacking Scandal (Grist)

[OneGrassRoot]

On Tuesday, officials arrested another News Corporation executive in the ongoing phone-hacking scandal that has plagued the now-defunct News of the World newspaper. As revelations of these tactics emerge, public outrage is fully appropriate. But as offensive as the hacking is, News Corp. and its executives must face up to an even larger scandal, one that is deeper, longer-lasting, and more profoundly detrimental: the damage they've caused to the institution of journalism and, as a result, to the planet itself.

As far back as the 1950s, long before climate science had reached the sophistication that it has today, the journalistic establishment was helping audiences understand what was occurring in the Earth's atmosphere. "Today, more carbon dioxide is being generated by man's technological processes than by volcanoes, geysers, and hot springs," wrote Waldemar Kaempffert in The New York Times in 1956. "Every century, man is increasing the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere by 30 percent -- that is, at the rate of 1.1 degrees Celsius <1.98 degrees F> in a century. It may be a chance coincidence that the average temperature of the world since 1900 has risen by about this rate. But the possibility that man had a hand in the rise cannot be ignored."

A year later, in 1957, Robert C. Cowen wrote in The Christian Science Monitor, "Industrial activity is flooding the air with carbon dioxide gas. This gas acts like the glass in a greenhouse. It is changing the earth's heat balance. ... Every time you start a car, light a fire or turn on a furnace, you're joining the greatest weather ‘experiment' men have ever launched. You are adding your bit to the tons of carbon dioxide sent constantly into the air as coal, oil, and wood are burned at unprecedented rates."

But over the past few years, led in part by News Corp., dialogue in the media has moved backward, replacing reasoned coverage of science with deliberate rabble-rousing -- and unfortunately, public understanding and the health of the planet have moved backward in tandem.


FULL ARTICLE: http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-08-03-murdochs-sins-go-way-beyond-the-hacking-scandal

[Chimichurri]

1. Great piece.

[CanonRay]

2. Seems to be coming full circle now.

Very good article.