Fun fact for a Tuesday: There is no professional standard low enough, none, that Stuff cannot plunge beneath. They are positively subterranean news-disseminators, Media dung-beetles.
Saturday’s offering “As fires rage in the Amazon, international pressure mounts on Brazil to take action” is a perfect exhibit of their mendacious outlook to all things climatey and begs the question; if the world is truly facing imminent climate cataclysm, why do they lie about it and exaggerate so much?
Stuff, August 24, 2019:
“The Amazon rainforest is one of the world’s best defenses against climate change and it’s burning at an alarming rate.”
Otago Daily Times, December 5, 1912:
“Forest fires destroy thousands of trees every year in Amazonas.”
Yes; it’s over a century since New Zealanders were informed about the yearly fires in the Amazon. But it’s all ‘new’ and ‘alarming’ to Stuff.
In an attempt to highlight the gravitas of the fires Stuff reproduces a NASA-supplied satellite image but neglects to include the NASA-supplied caption stating “fire activity was slightly below average in the Amazon Basin”. Perhaps the omission was an honest [cough] mistake but; methinks not:
Trained and skilled journalists might have fact-checked the screed, it’s easy enough to do because there’s a lot of publicly available data accessible, available almost instantly, at the click of a button:
But that’s not Stuff’s style. Tis far easier to wallow in a permanent state of ‘alarm’ than to seek the truth, even if the truth means as little as lifting a finger.
