I have written a couple of times previously about the mainstream media’s outside-funded collaboration to promote climate alarm. For example, the Associated Press took millions of dollars from left-wing foundations specifically to cover climate change.

Journalistic creed and ethics be damned, media outlets collaborated to suppress voices of dissent, first about climate change, then about the Wuhan coronavirus and the government’s response to it, election integrity, and a variety of other left-leaning issues—through it all squashing free speech and the open discussion and debate of ideas and discoveries about climate change.

In 2013, the Los Angeles Times publicly announced it would no longer allow climate dissent on its pages. With that decision, the outlet shut down and shut out thousands of scientists and educated laypersons who, while accepting that the climate was changing (as it has repeatedly), questioned whether humans were the sole or primary cause and whether the change necessarily represented a crisis.

Almost simultaneously and in unison, mainstream media outlets stopped talking about global warming, proceeding to talk universally about climate change. More recently, at the behest of large environmental groups and activists within the federal government and the media itself, much of the media decided to shift from talking about climate change, which is too neutral—not necessarily conducive to generating fear and action—to asserting a “climate crisis” or “climate emergency.” So much for the pretense of objectively informing the public of the facts. What readers/listeners/viewers are supposed to think about climate is now baked into how it is described: an apocalyptic horror show; humans are killing the Earth with greenhouse gases. You know it’s true because the honest press says it’s so!

Then there is the payola: pay-for-publish coverage pushed by billionaires like Jeff Bezos and George Soros who buy off media outlets to promote the government/activist/leftist elite’s party line on climate change (and election integrity, or lack thereof), flooding their pages and programs with tales of climate woe. In the past, radio execs were paid to promote particular songs on the radio, to boost sales. When this was discovered, the payola scandal erupted. It was more than a scandal, however: it was a crime, banned by the Communications Act of 1934. But when billionaires and large foundations pay to promote very profitable climate scare stories, stories which we at Climate Realism have used real-world data to debunk in hundreds of posts, showing them to be flat-out false, there is a collective yawn and seeming acceptance of the media’s corruption and the climate disaster narrative they are spinning.

Popular social media outlets—supposedly neutral communication platforms, given a government grant of immunity from suits for libel and most other wrongdoing because they supposedly play no editorial role—have been shown to be putting their finger on the scales on a number of issues, working hand in hand with the government to deplatform, demonetize, and suppress, block, or “contextualize” people’s dissenting speech on climate change and other topics. Social media owned by elites push the elite party line, on which, working with government, they all profit: humans are causing a climate crisis, and no dissent is allowed.

With all of this as background, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn there are funded projects afoot to train journalists on how to cover climate change “the right way,” but I was. Thomas Gallatin describes the situation:

With the dire predictions of the climate change alarmists repeatedly failing to materialize, one would think that the media outlets would stop reporting such claims as if they were “scientific fact.”

One would think. Yet, as with so much of the climate alarmist industry, it’s all about the money. And since many of the leading climate cultists are also among the wealthiest folks on the planet, much of the mainstream media continues to pump out the propaganda.

Folks still aren’t buying the narrative, though, so these billionaire activists are doubling down. Last year, two of the leading climate cult groups, Solutions Journalism Network and Covering Climate Now, sponsored the creation of the Climate Blueprint for Media Transformation.

The Solutions Journalism Network is funded by the likes of the for-profit Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation. These organizations are pumping their vast wealth to promote their climate change alarmism.

So, what is the Climate Blueprint? In a nutshell, it’s a 14-part guide that aims to turn journalists into climate activists by coaching them on how to cover climate change. The opening section, “The Everything Story,” calls on journalists to inject the climate alarmist narrative into everything they cover. From sports to economics to crime, climate change must be a front-and-center component. Maybe you’re thinking, It’s not already?

The guide also calls on reporters to demonize the fossil fuel industry—you know, the industry that allows their stories to be delivered to the public and keeps their lights and computers on and their delivery vehicles rolling. Also, reporters are told to criticize schools that don’t divest from fossil fuels, ignoring the fact that laws establishing fiduciary duties often prevent them from doing so.

In addition, the guide “guides” reporters concerning how to describe climate activists and the often disruptive and damaging actions they take. When it’s for the climate, “activists” aren’t rioters or terrorists or breaking the law; they are nonviolent protestors, and their actions, no matter how destructive, are “demonstrations.”

“Notice that none of this actually deals with scientific accuracy and truth-seeking,” says Gallatin, accurately. And since it has nothing to do with accuracy, truth-seeking, or producing an informed public, it also has nothing to do with legitimate journalism.

“Ultimately, for these billionaire activists, it’s about exerting greater control over society,” concludes Gallatin, a sentiment I couldn’t agree with more. It is always about power.

This piece originally appeared at Heartland.org and has been republished here with permission.