Murdoch’s WSJ Eschews Logic on Trump’s Lies
Apparently, Wall Street Editor-in-Chief Gerard Baker said on Meet the Press that his paper would not call Trump’s lies “lies”. Apparently, they will just be called “questionable” or “challengeable”. So, the only thing a reader can do to find the truth, is to subscribe to another newspaper, which is more factual. So why pay a dollar a day to get the Wall Street Journal, if they won’t tell you the truth about the same un-vetted Trump statements that you could get for free on any internet site, or on Trump’s twitter site? That is the illogic of their policy.
This is nothing new for the WSJ. For decades, they lied about climate change, which I realize that by my using the word “lied” here, I might be seen as making a value judgement about their “intent”. When you ignore the agreement of 97% of climate scientists about manmade climate change, I would say there had to be some “intent” involved. This has misled investors from investing in forefront clean energy sources.
In the enormous fossil fuel industries, the WSJ may not have told investors that much of the coal resources would have to be left in the ground, since they are too polluting of warming CO2. It turned out that the cheaper, new fracking natural gas sources, are replacing coal, just by market competitiveness. Denying global warming has also misinformed WSJ reliers that cars would have to become more fuel efficient, and that petroleum use would decline, eventually lowering its price. Since fracking has opened more oil resources in the US to make us more energy independent, we have less reliance on Middle East oil, and less need to get involved there.
A more important question is where will President Trump get his information about climate science, or any science, greenhouse gases, energy sources, and air and water pollution and their effects? Since Trump has appointed professional climate science deniers to all key cabinet and White House posts, he will NEVER hear any real science, and guarantees that anything that he says about the above subjects will indeed be lies, by the best liars on these subjects. There is also the already indicated listing of climate science supporters in these agencies, and possibly their silencing, defunding, and lack of promotion. Certainly, the abolition of all of their work on useful and even cost effective regulation will encourage them to move on to other jobs where their expertise will be useful.
We also are fearful that President Trump will also not get real information from his other agencies, such as the Dept. of Labor being run by a fast food company owner who opposes a minimum wage, the Dept. of Education being run by a supporter of private schools, and his economics advisor being a writer of books on China’s economic threat. Will the WSJ point out these truthless sources of information that the President has set up to rely upon?
Even though Trump will remove government regulations favoring clean energy, the blue states will continue their clean energy programs. So will many businesses responsible to the public. Solar cells will get more efficient, and cheaper. Wind power will increase in Republican Midwestern states, and gain from economies of scale, and increase in turbine size. Public understanding and belief in climate science will increase. Global warming will continue, and worldwide climate sciences will continue and improve research on the subject. Countries hurt by global warming may well impose penalties on US goods, if we back out of the Paris agreements.
One should remember that the WSJ’s owner Rupert Murdoch has Fox News as his other outlet. Fox has, during the campaign, labeled some of its anchors as opinion shows, not responsible for factual news. Its conservative Republican and now Trump dedication cannot be denied. There also is the Murdoch’s News of the World hacking of a thousand phones British scandal from 2005 to 2011, which forced that paper to close.
As the nation’s or world’s leading financial publication, one wonders whether their economic editors and analyses are chosen to represent only conservative view points. One also wonders whether their political alignment with Trumpism will hamper them in weighing in on Trump’s trampling of Democracy, the Constitution, and the Courts.
