Is “lying” too strong a word? “Corrupt” may work better to describe the process in which the media has transformed itself into a propaganda amplifier, as Neil Winton described yesterday in the Daily Sceptic. A former science-tech reporter and editor at Reuters for 32 years, Winton had access to the top minds in those fields, as well as the studies and data they produced.

At first, Winton believed the hysteria from the activists — until the scientists and the data convinced him otherwise:

When I became Reuters global Science and Technology Correspondent in the mid-1990s, the global warming story was top of my agenda. Already by then the BBC was scaring us saying we would all die unless humankind mended its selfish ways. Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated. I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact. I was wrong.

My Reuters credentials meant that I had easy access to the world’s finest climate scientists. To my amazement, none of these would say categorically that the link between CO2 and global warming, now known as climate change, was a proven scientific fact. Some said human production of CO2 was a probable cause, others that it might make some contribution; some said CO2 had no role at all. Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why. The sun’s radiation, which changes over time, was a favoured culprit.

That kind of balanced reporting — relating the facts and the arguments from both sides — eventually disappeared, at Reuters as well as at most other media outlets. Winton at first chalks this up to plain laziness:

But even then, the mainstream media seem to have run out of the energy required, and often lazily went along with the BBC’s faulty, opinionated thesis. It was too much trouble to make the point that the BBC’s conclusion was challenged by many impressive scientists.

Does laziness explain it? Perhaps on an individual basis, but the industry itself has sold out to the activists, Winton alleges. Reuters and other outlets began partnering with an activist group called Covering Climate Now (CCN) to “contextualize” its reporting on weather-related events. ABC, CBS, Bloomberg, AFP, and others have also partnered with CCN, and other news organizations have similar relationships with climate-change groups.

CCN and its partners claim to be fair in their approach, but Winton writes that they act much different in reality:

CCN may claim to be fair and balanced, but it not only won’t tolerate criticism, it brandishes the unethical ‘denier’ weapon with its nasty holocaust denier echoes. This seeks to demonise those who disagree with it by savaging personalities and denying a hearing, rather than using debate to establish its case.

CCN advises journalists to routinely add to stories about bad weather and flooding to suggest climate change is making these events more intense. This is not an established fact, as a simple routine check would show.

Even so, CCN isn’t a regulatory body, and it has no real authority or constituency among activists. Why have these media outlets decided to abandon proper journalistic practice and principles to instead use stealth methods to make claims unsupported by data and science? Winton believes that the industry has deliberately advanced climate hysteria to generate a sense of emergency that will allow the Left to gain what it could not get through reasoned argument and debate:

The Left had lost all of the economic arguments by the 1990s, and its activists eagerly grabbed the chance to say free markets and small government couldn’t save us from climate change; only government intervention could do that. Letting capitalism run free was a certain way to ensure the end of the planet; smart Lefties should take charge and save us from ourselves.

“Smart Lefties” would necessarily include the people at the top of the news industry. Or at least that’s what they must believe.

This corruption of news reporting into narrative journalism has been apparent for years to climate-hysteria skeptics. Until recently, however, that revolution-by-evolution process hadn’t become apparent to most of the rest of the populace. Now, however, with all sorts of new data coming out about masks and natural immunity in the COVID pandemic, many more people have seen The Science® exposed as based entirely on political agenda. The mainstream-media refusal to cover new and conclusive meta-analyses of scientific studies that refute their three-year narratives in support of government emergency rule now demonstrates that corruption on a much broader scale.

Expect to see a lot more skepticism on the Sky Is Falling narrative — and especially directed at those who keep trying to serve it up, either as entrées or side dishes.

Addendum: Once again, this points up the necessity of maintaining independent and skeptical voices to challenge the Left’s propaganda via “narrative journalism.” Join us in the fight. Become a HotAir VIP member today and use promo code SAVEAMERICA to receive a 40% discount on your membership.