On 03/08/2019 14:49, Graham P Davis wrote:
On 03/08/2019 11:03, Spike wrote:

This is the full version, HTH:

https://www.apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0

Ah, a media story.

I say much the same about the BBC TV news and its relentless, one-sided
portrayal of 'climate change', but at least they were brave enough to
hold a secret meeting (the secrecy was later denied, when the matter
became public knowledge) with climate change supporters that agreed to
put forward only one side of the climate change debate. So much for
'impartiality', I suppose, but one wonders why such a betrayal of the
public was thought necessary.

My personal experience with these is that they often
bear little relationship to what the interviewee actually said. Fifty
years ago I was incensed on seeing an article in the Daily Fail about an
impending "Little Ice Age" which was a load of ******** from beginning
to end. I'd worked with the interviewees and could not believe what
they'd said. When I got to work I was going to ring them but,
considering they were a few grades above me, I delayed a bit. However,
one rang me first to apologise about the article, saying it was
nonsense, and that none of the quotes attributed to them were what
they'd said.

I've been fortunate enough to have been involved in what later became
'news stories', and can agree that what appears in public can be only
part of the whole story. That's the media for you.

A few years ago, I was speaking to someone who'd also fallen foul of
such misreporting and so, on his next interview, asked the interviewers
whether they minded whether he recorded it. They agreed. Of course, when
the story appeared, he'd been totally misquoted. He got another meeting
with them and went over the recording.They found all the words on the
recording that had appeared in the quotes but none of the phrases or
sentences. They had resorted, in effect, to the Eric Morecambe defence
where they'd used the right words but not necessarily in the right order!

The interesting thing about the AP article is that much of what was said
was in the form of quotes rather than words that had been jiggled about.
Unfortunately reports such as that on which the article was based have a
tendency to disappear from view, especially having been written before
the days of the internet and even more so when the predictions they made
do not come to pass. A search of the UNEP web site failed to turn up the
report, or even any mention of its author, so this is now the best that
can be done, and it shouldn't be discarded because of that.


--
Spike