US Press Deserves its Darwin Award -UPDATED

Ed Morrissey is wondering, as I have in the past, when or if the American press will begin to beat its breast over failing to learn from “the lessons of Iraq” when it comes to the Climate Change boondoggle. He wonders if they will ever kick into an grown-up journalistic mode and actually report on the collapse of the Global Warming movement they helped to build and sustain through their unquestioning support of the narrative.

In the years after the the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent failure to find WMD, the American media flagellated itself publicly over its lack of skepticism of Bush administration cassus belli claims . . . To this day, the American media still considers their self-described blind acceptance of claims about intelligence without sufficient investigation as an indictment on their industry — and a consequence of the Internet-driven changes to the media market.

After wearing sackcloth and ashes for so long, one might believe that the American national media would leap at the chance to show its newfound mission of skepticism and challenge to authority. Unfortunately, US journalists have missed a grand opportunity to demonstrate that it learned a lesson about swallowing a story from the government without question, if indeed that is what happened in 2002 on Iraq. We know this because their colleagues across the pond in the United Kingdom have not missed the chance to speak a little truth to power, both in their own government and to multilateral organizations that issued faulty analyses, false data, bad research, and hysterical demands for action. . . . The Australian and British press have eaten the American media’s lunch on the collapse of credibility at the IPCC and in the anthropogenic global-warming (AGW) movement.

I’m sure we all know the answer to Ed’s wondering, but let’s just say it outloud: The press has only learned its lesson about “swallowing stories whole” when they concern Republican administrations or candidates. I asked Ed’s same question back in the heady days of the 2008 campaign, wondering at what point in the Obama administration the press would start beating its collective breasts and saying, “we should have asked him more questions; we should have vetted him more thoroughly.”

The self-recrimination of the press on its failures to ask questions or do investigative work only applies in one direction. And if we ever see another GOP president, the press will go full-jackal on him or her, using both Iraq AND the Obama presidency as justification for their their fervent displays of doubt and skepticism.

However, even then, they will never accuse themselves regarding Global Warming; they will never say “we failed to ask questions,” because on that issue, it is personal for them, much in the same way that passing something called Health Care Reform has become “personal” for Obama and for Speaker Pelosi.

The press went “all in” on Global Warming hysteria specifically to give Al Gore an international platform that would act as both a “consolation prize” for his “stolen” presidency and a means of constant rebuke to President George W. Bush. Global Warming was a surfboard of hate the “global left community” could all ride together, and if the wave broke in favor of the accumulation of entrenched and far-reaching powers, internationally, all the better.

If the Great Big US Election Debacle of 2000 had not happened, the Great Anthropomorphic Global Warming Boondoggle would never have taken hold with the dramatic intensity it did, with the unquestioning international media support it enjoyed. And for the American press, admitting in any way that the thing was a hoax will cast doubt on every word they have written since at least 1999.

Over the last decade, the press’ credibility has taken a very palpable hit, due to their own excesses, and their collective inability to disenthrall themselves of their passionate, mostly adolescent emoting. Admitting, finally, that AGW was nothing more than program of sustained ego support for a mediocre and deranged toothache of a man, and a vehicle of boundless, and unfocused ambition, would be for the press to announce its demise from a self-inflicted mortal wound that was so stupidly wrought as to qualify the entire news industry for a Darwin Award.

UPDATE: Deacon Greg gives it to you straight up, if you can take the prophecy!

More about Paddy Chayefsky’s Prescient Genius.

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