'Climate' Propaganda Masquerading as 'Journalism'

There is a good chance you have been made aware of this recent story from The Independent, which sounds like a parody but isn’t: "How Climate Change Is Hitting Vulnerable Indonesian Trans Sex Workers."

Trans women like Patiha are among the most affected by extreme weather linked to climate change, as well as suffering disproportionately when disasters strike. Indonesia is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and trans women, who tend to face more stigma and marginalisation than trans men or other LGBTQ+ Indonesians, are also among those hardest hit by extreme weather.

This is exactly the coverage of the “climate crisis” that is being promoted by a media-affiliated climate organization, Covering Climate Now (“CCNow”), which has partnered with hundreds of media outlets to influence and advocate for the net-zero elimination of reliable, carbon-based energy. A deeper dive into CCNow reveals that it is a radical group whose media training and resources are focused entirely on promoting regime propaganda while suppressing dissenting voices. In other words, its purpose is to prevent actual journalism that might engage in critical inquiry of the ruling class’ communist eco-agenda.

You get the idea.

Just what is Covering Climate Now and who are its media partners?

Covering Climate Now helps journalists and newsrooms improve the caliber and prominence of their reporting through training, networking, collaboration, and more. Over 500 journalism outlets from around the world have joined CCNow, including some of the biggest names in journalism…

It is noteworthy that ABC, NBC, CBS, and Reuters, which still present themselves as “objective,” have formally aligned with this organization whose mission is to train journalists in political advocacy. Naturally, tax-payer funded PBS is also a partner of CCNow, as is The Independent, which has clearly embraced the incorporation of “climate” into its social justice stories. Let’s first take a quick look at CCNow’s guiding principles.

• COMMUNITY: “Collaborate with hundreds of newsroom partners to share best practices, develop reporting projects, and gain insights from diverse perspectives.”

Translation: Engage in JournoList-style collusion to politically frame how climate is reported.

• SUPPORT: “Build climate reporting confidence by participating in webinars and newsroom training programs throughout the year.”

Translation: Attend indoctrination sessions and learn to confidently repeat the approved talking points.

• LEADERSHIP: “Show industry leadership by highlighting your newsroom’s commitment to climate reporting excellence.”

Translation: Become a “leader” by policing your peers and by compelling their obedience to the official globalist position.

• VISIBILITY: “Gain recognition for your climate coverage and strengthen the impact of your reporting.”

Translation: Awards, syndication of articles, and career progression all depend on hewing to the approved climate narrative.

We're all in this together!

Covering Climate Now has thirteen "Best Practices" for journalists. None of these is surprising to anyone reading the agenda-driven bilge that the legacy media now produces, but it is still a little jarring to see in print the commitment to engage in propaganda rather than in reporting. I won’t address every one of the “Best Practices” but here is a sampling.

• REMEMBER, CLIMATE IS A STORY FOR EVERY BEAT: “No matter what your specialty is — politics, business, health, housing, education, food, national security, entertainment, sports, you name it — there are strong climate connections to highlight.”

Actually, there are not “strong climate connections” in every beat, but if reporters feel incentivized or compelled to do so as part of their job, they will find a “climate connection,” no matter how comical it may be.

• HUMANIZE AND LOCALIZE THE STORY: “Climate change is… a story about ordinary people and their daily lives. But climate change manifests differently in different places, so it’s vital that reporting illuminates the specific ways climate change unfolds locally.”

All bad weather that happens locally is now “climate,” as is any adverse event that can be made in to a news story, all caused by carbon sinners among us. There is a term for people who think this way – “cultists.”

• CENTER CLIMATE JUSTICE: “Marginalized groups generally suffer first and worst from heat waves, floods, and other climate impacts, yet their voices and stories are often omitted from news coverage. Good climate reporting highlights their travails and recognizes that sometimes they are innovators in the climate fight.”

So not only are Indonesian trans-sex workers first to suffer from the climate panic, but they are also innovators in the fight against it. This may be the purest distillation of cultural Marxism thus penned: heads we win, tails, you lose. Even if climate change were not a communist hoax, I‘d still choose man-made global warming before I’d emulate any “innovations” that are undertaken by Indonesian trans-sex workers.

• DO NOT PLATFORM CLIMATE DENIALISTS: “Platforming climate deniers in an effort to ‘balance’ our coverage not only misleads the public, it is inaccurate. In the year 2023, there is simply no good-faith argument against climate science.”

There is really no way to mock the magnitude of that statement. Journalists are now actively engaged in censorship; there are no longer two sides to every story.

• PICK VISUALS CAREFULLY: “Stories about extreme heat, for example, are better illustrated by images of frazzled people at a cooling center than by ‘fun in the sun’ photos of beachgoers splashing in the waves.”

There is a reason that 25° C (a comfy 77° F) is now shown on weather maps as if a blanket of molten lava is covering the land.

• TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF: “Bearing witness to unjust climate injuries, dismal scientific projections, and inadequate government action can lead to burnout and worse. So, seriously, take care of yourself. When you need a break, take it, and when you need help, get it.”

Never forget that those selfless journalists covering the climate beat are the modern-day equivalents of Ernie Pyle covering World War II.

Whatever it is, we're against it.

So who is behind CCNow? Its executive director and co-founder is Mark Hertsgaard, a man who has devoted his entire career to prophesying environmental doom. He wrote a widely unread book published in 1999 titled Earth Odyssey. Smithsonian magazine’s review of the book discusses Hertsgaard’s focus on the “crises” of acid rain and the population bomb, both of which turned out to have been panics without basis.

In Grist's review of Earth Odyssey it notes that “Hertsgaard determined that the gravest environmental problem facing humanity is poverty. At times, his book comes across as a jumble of tales about far-flung locales, ordered neither chronologically nor geographically nor topically, but in the end, Hertsgaard manages to convey a cohesive message — that of an Earth in dire need of attention and a global society in dire need of top-to-bottom change."

Clearly Hertsgaard has grown in his elite environmentalism, for while he once feared that environmental harm would consign the world to poverty, he now embraces the gentry belief that the developing world must be permanently consigned to energy poverty in order to save the Earth from our angry climate god. Armed with his degree from Johns Hopkins University in International Studies, he seeks to censor actual scientists with Ph.D.s who challenge the leftist "climate" orthodoxy.

The practices and principles of Covering Climate Now would simply be humorous if not for the awful anti-civilizational future they seek to bring about. In a follow-up piece I will take a closer look at how corrupted the corporate media has become in its propaganda that it produces in alliance with Covering Climate Now.