Dan Calabrese

There are two worlds. There is the one you and I live in, where information is plain for all to see, and we take the good with the bad – including the information we’re not that happy to see. That’s the real world.

Then there is the world where the Associated Press lives. In this world, when information circulates that doesn’t comport to your preconceived notions or your agenda, you simply pretend it doesn’t exist.

All propaganda.

This brings us to today’s report on the big Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen.

The AP urgently informs us of new information from the U.N.’s weather agency, which purportedly shows that the decade now ending was the “hottest on record” – except for the fact that the United States and Canada were cooler than normal. And since the United States is supposedly the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, which supposedly causes the warming . . . well, you figure it out.

Of course, the AP also ignores another tiny little item, which is the fact that the e-mails recently exposed from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia cast doubt on the integrity of all data coming from global warmist scientists. No one suggests the AP is obligated to endorse the notion that the CRU e-mails show fraud. But when you’re doing a story about global warming at this particular time, how can you not mention them?

This is the AP, after all. It is famous for statements like “the president’s statement comes at a time when . . . ” followed by some reference of arguable relevance to the story at hand, all for the purpose of establishing a context favored by the AP.

So it wouldn’t be appropriate to include a statement along the lines of: “The Summit comes at a time when e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have raised questions about the integrity of some climate scientists’ work.”? It would be par for the course from the AP, but in this case, it’s also contrary to the AP’s political agenda. So they report the story as if Climategate doesn’t even exist.

But even that is not as egregious as this passage:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson, whose agency just gave President Barack Obama a new way to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, takes to the podium at the U.N. climate conference later Wednesday, headlining a U.S.-sponsored meeting entitled “Taking Action at Home.”

The EPA determined Monday that scientific evidence clearly shows greenhouse gases are endangering Americans’ health and must be regulated. That gave Obama a new way to regulate those gases without needing the approval of the U.S. Congress.

What’s astounding about these two paragraphs is that they completely ignore the controversy surrounding this move. The Wall Street Journal points out in its editorial yesterday that this represents a blatant power grab, all designed to get around Congress in the event it doesn’t pass cap-and-trade legislation. Commentator Charles Krauthammer went so far as to say the EPA’s decision could spark a revolution.

Yet the AP simply presents it as a useful development in the fight against big bad global warming.

We’ve established previously in this feature that the AP’s vaunted practice of “accountability journalism” exited the scene with George W. Bush. Today, the AP not only carries water for the Obama Administration, but simply ignores storylines that present problems for the Obama agenda.

All propaganda.

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