Media Propaganda – Page 10

Climate communications: “The Trouble With Climate Emergency Journalism | Issues in Science and Technology”

November 16, 2019 Edward MS

A paper in a journal published by the National Academy of Sciences faults journalists for focusing on dystopian, catastrophic, fear inducing dramatization of future climate projections – while failing to present the likelihood (or lack of likelihood) of such scenarios and the uncertainty presented in the science papers and conferences. It is gratifying to see others at a higher pay grade than I are also seeing that stories designed to create emotional outrage and responses are a turn off and counter productive to effective climate communications.

Climate communications: Time Magazine changes headline three times, uses false headline “How Asthma Inhalers are Choking the Planet”

November 10, 2019 Edward MS

Time Magazine engaged in deliberate, and false, propaganda messaging to influence readers to take action. After contacting the magazine, they did, at least, revise the headline (for the 3rd time). They began with the accurate headline “How Asthma Inhalers are Contributing to Climate Change” but immediately changed it and promoted this rude and 100% false headline: “How Asthma Inhalers are Choking the Planet”.

First, making crude humor of asthmatics “choking” is not funny and is rude and insensitive. Second, it is physically impossible for inhalers to be “choking the planet”. In homes where someone uses an inhaler, annual inhaler usage produces about 1% of the total CO2-equivalent gases emitted by the home and life activities during the course of a year. If all inhalers were eliminated tomorrow, there would be no measurable impact on weather or climate over the next 100 years. A worst case inhaler, using data cited by Time and BMJ, produces about half the CO2-equivalent GHC as does a person breathing and exhaling CO2. Seriously. Just breathing is a bigger threat than using inhalers.

Time eventually changed the headline to the better, but still misleading “How One Commonly Used Asthma Inhaler is Damaging the Planet”. Their fiction story also referenced the wrong gas used as a propellant, cited an exaggerated greenhouse gas effect multiplier from an environmental activist group rather than the more modest IPCC AR5 science-based estimate, and then omitted many article changes from their Corrections List. The text itself continues to climate shame asthmatics with the false “Choking the Planet” claim.

This is an example of garbage journalism and how not to do do climate communications.

Journalism: “1 in 4 Americans defaulted on their student loans” is misleading

November 7, 2019 Edward MS

The claim that “1 in 4 Americans defaulted on their student loans” is a misleading headline from CBS News. The actual number is less than 1 in 20 Americans defaulted – and this was narrowly during the period of The Great Recession, the worst economic collapse since The Great Depression. They have worded the headline to use the method of “anchoring” – when we see this, we immediately think “1 in 4 Americans” have defaulted, which is not true. This appears to be propaganda in support of wiping out student debts.

Climate communications and Journalism’ish: Crisis, Emergency, Deniers and the language of propaganda in The Guardian

October 17, 2019 Edward MS

The Guardian announces that it requires their staff to use pejorative propaganda terminology rather than the facts of atmospheric CO2 levels rising, sea level ice and temperature changes, ice mass changes and so on. Anyone who does not 100% adopt The Guardian’s perspective is to be labeled a “denier” (name calling, transference from “Holocaust denier”, get on the bandwagon). The word “climate” should be associated with “crisis”, “emergency” or “heating” (transference, fear). Shrill terminology designed to inflame and create emotional outrage is a turn off and causes readers to tune out from the issues.

Journalism: Every attribute in this story is reported as a negative even though most are positives

October 11, 2019 Edward MS

We live among the best of times in world history yet even positive economic news, as in this article, are all translated into negatives. Journalism focuses on negativity, causing anxiety and a culture of outrage where everyone is upset all the time. The linked article is an amazing example showing how the news was deliberately spun into negatives; each item listed is then rewritten in the positive, dramatically improving the emotions of the reader.

Climate Communications: Repeated falsehoods cause us to tune out and turn off

September 23, 2019 Edward MS

If you want to get people to tune out and turn off news and information about climate, keep doing this. Per the peer reviewed literature, the claim highlighted above is bull shit. People see that – and not the facts – and just turn it all off. This is not how to present concerns about climate.

Great example of 100% false news (an oldie)

September 16, 2019 Edward MS

The illustration graphic is false, although you might believe it is true because most of the news media reported this topic, as illustrated in the graphic.

The reported information, however, is 100% false and is readily shown as false by a simple example (click through to read why its false). This incorrect information was widely reported and established as a fact. This occurred either because reporters had no understanding of what they report on (far too often to be the case) or because they deliberately misled their readers and viewers.

Climate communications: The Amazon fires pseudo news panic illustrates how easy it is to throw an election via social media

August 28, 2019 Edward MS

Social media is a frictionless platform for the dissemination of propaganda messaging. Seeing what just took place in the past few days, can you imagine the firepower about to be unleashed during the next national election in the U.S.? The brutal propaganda messaging on social media threatens to take down democracy.

Climate communications: Social media has gone insane over fires in the Amazon area of Brazil, with most posts being wrong

August 23, 2019 Edward MS

Social media has gone utterly insane about fires in the Amazon region of Brazil-virtually all of them contain false information. NASA points out that over their 15 year satellite-based observing history, the fire situation in the Amazon is average. But the falsehoods have blown up to the point that internationally known politicians are calling for action!

Social media is a bonfire of idiocy.

Social Panic

Opinion: Practicing Factfulness on Propaganda, social media, censorship, media and privacy

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