A British leftist group calling itself the Center for Countering Digital Hate has issued a report on what it calls the "Toxic Ten," which are so-called fringe websites spreading "climate change denial." The ten include our group, the Media Research Center, as well as Breitbart, The Daily Wire, Townhall Media, Newsmax, The Washington Times and The Western Journal.
So, any challenge to Greenpeace climate-crackdown orthodoxy is now classified as "toxic" and "digital hate."
Their solution? To press Facebook and Google to "stop monetizing" these conservative sites, stop allowing them to buy ads and to "comprehensively label" their climate reporting as misinformation. You don't have to prove conservatives wrong. Just "comprehensively label" them as false.
Once again, the left wants to win debates by stopping any debate from happening. The founder of this "Digital Hate" squad is a man named Imran Ahmed, who previously co-authored the book "The New Serfdom: The Triumph of Conservative Ideas and How to Defeat Them," with Angela Eagle, a Labour Party member of Parliament.
Ahmed can already count on jihad from the "objective media." Their British socialist friends at The Guardian awarded their report with the headline "'Super polluters': the top 10 publishers denying the climate crisis on Facebook."
Offering any criticism of climate panic (and climate policy) is "super polluting." Does this sound like science, or does it sound like political hyperbole? Naturally, Ahmed told The Guardian, "big tech is once again on the wrong side of science, truth and human progress."
The Washington Post also provided a pliant piece headlined "Breitbart has outsized influence over climate change denial on Facebook, report says." Tech reporter Cat Zakrzewski warned, "The far-right news and commentary site is one of just 10 publishers responsible for nearly 70 percent of interactions with climate change denial content on Facebook."
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On Twitter, Zakrzewski gushed, "The nonprofit has been effective in drawing policymakers' attention to falsehoods on social media, as it did with its 'disinformation dozen' report earlier this year."
The Post reporter avoided any evidence of "falsehoods" by engaging with conservative articles. She blithely wrote that, "For years, Facebook has faced pressure to issue a broad ban on climate misinformation," and that somehow doesn't strike her as distasteful censorship.
My column on ClimateDepot founder Marc Morano's book "Green Fraud" was pictured under the Daily Wire section of the report. The MRC section is illustrated with a Joseph Vazquez article on NewsBusters about ... Marc Morano. He's apparently Digital Hater No. 1.
In my Morano column, I noted that the climate panic lobby is never held accountable for failed predictions of doom from decades ago. In one PBS series called "Race to Save the Planet," Meryl Streep claimed, "By the year 2000 -- that's less than 10 years away -- the earth's climate will be warmer than it's been in over 100,000 years. If we don't do something, there'll be enormous calamities in a very short time."
In 2021, that can be defined as climate misinformation.
But panic helps Democrats sell a crackdown. The Post story quoted Sen. Sheldon "Whites Only" Whitehouse complaining, "Facebook and other social media companies make money when they send users down rabbit holes of climate change denial. That's a very dangerous business model for the future of the planet."
Apparently, the "business model" is this: Only the leftists get to talk on climate policy; everyone else should be suppressed. No one is allowed to question the failed predictions and overwrought "solutions" of climate experts like Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The Washington Post should embrace their business model with the slogan "Climate Democracy Dies in Darkness."
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
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