Bloomberg reporter outed as tool of climate PR/cancelation campaign, Hill hearings:
‘Urgently’ pressing story for House “climate disinformation” hearings this week, which emails also show had been pitched since at least February just prior to a previous, scrubbed House ‘disinformation’ hearing
Defending Facebook’s “Climate Feedback” cancelation campaign of intimidating and harassing climate realists into silence, reporter assails FOIAing the public employees involved as the real ‘intimidation, ‘harassment’
The Emails showing media’s role affirm the coordinated Hill, media, activist climate PR effort to cancel opposition
Early last week a Bloomberg ‘cyber reporter’ named Margi Murphy began furiously emailing and calling two groups (Energy Policy Advocates and Government Accountability & Oversight), and seemingly anyone else for whom she could identify some association with the groups, expressing the ritual media complaint of “harassing climate scientists” — by which she of course meant seeking public records in the sincerest form of flattering Greenpeace, which pioneered such uses of open records laws. It was clumsy but, again, not unfamiliar as these stories get spun out every few years during moments of climate-complex desperation.
Then new emails released Friday evening made things much more interesting.
This reporter’s specific grievance was the apparent tyranny of using public records laws to obtain public release of public records showing how public servants use their publicly financed positions and resources to help out Facebook’s cancelation campaign, “Climate Feedback”. That operation is styled as an ‘independent fact checker’ but (like some media outlets, it seems) on call to try and cancel those who effectively question climate dogma — specifically to date Steve Koonin, Richard Lindzen/PragerU, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenberger, and John Stossel.
While this cancelation campaign — like Greenpeace’s FOIAs — is of course virtuous, asking about public employees’ role in it is “intimidation” and “harassment”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As the week came to a close the reporter became increasingly frantic in her (her word) urgency. Once the rumored House “climate disinformation” hearings were officially noticed — including, amusingly, on “the role of public relations firms” — it became clear the scribbler was hurrying to crank out something usable in those fora. Witnesses will feature not only our Greenpeace heroes but another (publicly employed) academic who participates through her public position in an operation called the “Climate Social Science Network”, created by Tom Steyer-backed interests it seems to generate oppo research in the guise of academic chin-stroking at up to $60,000 per paper.
That is to say, there’s a coordinated media/Hill/activist PR campaign aggressively using government office and other public resources to decry opposition to their agenda as a coordinated PR campaign and therefore improper, and that asking for records about how public institutions are used in intimidating, harassing campaigns to cancel opponents is the real intimidation and harassment. (Putting aside that this practice was rolled out by greens, uses a tool created by the political left (now we learn: only for the left), and is a condition of public employment these public servants agreed to.)
The Bloomberg reporter largely reflected the self-unaware, par-for-the-course. But then the Fates conspired to release more, deliciously timed emails Friday evening, and they confirmed: this ‘urgent’ Bloomberg item had also been pitched (our guess: yes, by a public relations firm! Which one(s)?) to others, since at least late January or February. Each time coincided with House hearings that were in need of such props.
Those Friday evening emails came from a climate industry boiler room, UCLA Law School, and included at the tail end “Ronan Farrow’s investigative researcher,” seeking comment for a story about the same two groups for the very same expressed reason (poor Climate Feedback thugs were getting FOIA requests). This, too, came just before a House “disinformation” hearing that also needed something to breathlessly wave around, though that event was scrubbed after it was obvious the first hearing flopped.
Oops
This embarrassing reveal is delightfully affirming of what the day-to-day evidence suggested about our institutions, and the importance of the public’s right to know about it.
LINKS:
FACEBOOK “FACT-CHECKER’S” MEDIA PITCH TO CANCEL CRITICS
EMails: Facebook Sics its “Independent Fact Checker” on Disfavored Speech