State of Fear

State of Fear characterizes the media as a mechanism spreading misinformation and outright lies about global warming, climate science, and environmentalism. Media, in this case, includes everything from the news, to scientific publications, to propaganda posters, to public events. As the book presents it, media is deceptive and ruled by an agenda, just like the energy industry and the university research machine.

At times, media messages are a sham. A good example is the B-reel shot at the headquarters of the Vanutu litigation team. Media spokespeople—the talking heads of newscasts—are essentially presented as inept. Watching the news report of the flash flood in McKinley State Park, in which an anchor attributes it to global warming, Evans asks, “So he’s just full of shit?”, and Sanjong concurs “Right. And so is the press release” (362). At other times, media players overtly massage information to fit it to their ends. Research findings are consistently presented as malleable: The truth is what the media declares it to be, rather than incontrovertible fact. An early example of this is the argument between the Icelandic scientist Einarsson, who calls Drake’s request to alter the wording of his scientific paper something that “twists truth,” while Drake says it is “[m]erely a suggestion” (43).