"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations." -- version of quote of unknown originI'm very interested in climate and energy issues and have been commenting on them for over half a decade in various forums using the handle, Canman. On climate, I have a lukewarmer view, and on energy I advocate for nuclear power and express skepticism of so called renewables. I have a couple of tiny blogs. One is called Canman Climatology, where I explore offbeat ideas. The other is Canman Canned Comments, where I write about some of my misadventures with comment moderation.
In this day and age there is a lot of talk about fake news and fake facts. This has got me to thinking about something similar. A lot of things that appear to be pertinent, verifiable facts are often ignored or omitted. This happens not only in blog posts and news stories but also in official reports and investigations. The reason that a fact is omitted is that it does not fit the narrative that is being conveyed. There can be many motivations behind this. It can be deliberate deception, perhaps a half truth. A fact can be thought to be insignificant, irrelevant or simply not believed. Confirmation bias is something that probably all individuals are subject to. It should be obvious that it can become institutionalized and effect official reports. On the issue of climate, I have found a lot of these ignored facts in two subtopics: Michael Mann's hockey stick graph and Climategate.
