Seeing behind the media

Blogs are a tool that can help us to see whether and how mainstream media are distorting the news. Anyone who has ever been interviewed by a journalist knows that what’s reported is rarely quite what was intended, with gross distortions through selective quoting commonplace. These misrepresentations are usually not malicious, often simply attempts by the journalist to make comments more “newsworthy”. However now interviewees have a right to reply. Prof. Roger Pielke Sr., a leading climatologist who resigned from the Bush administration’s advisory team on climate change had problems with how this was reported in the New York Times. He posted a blog on how he felt he’d been misrepresented, resulting in an exchange with the journalist. The end result was Pielke’s viewpoint came through as he wished. Our world is still far from transparent, but today, far more than ever before, mainstream media’s distortions – deliberate or otherwise – are becoming more visible.