Critically Thinking About an NPR Hit Piece

NPR attacks me for speaking truthfully regarding solar energy

On February 18th, NPR published an extensive attack on me and other parties who believe that: a) U.S. citizens have civil rights, b) to defend these civil rights, citizens need to speak up about them, and c) our technical policies should be based on real Science, not political science.

That NPR partnered with Floodlight (no link until readers waded through to the end), is a clear give-away that this is not journalism, but agenda-promoting activism. Floodlight proudly boasts: “Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.” So much for Science-based objectivity.

I guess I should also appreciate the back-handed compliment of being labelled as a “powerful interest.”

The two authors did have a relatively long zoom meeting with me, where I politely, thoroughly and accurately answered every question they posed (solar or otherwise). They also sent some followup email questions, where I did the same.

The problem is that they ignored or distorted most of the information I provided them that would undermine their alarmist agenda. Here are some examples…

Example: I talked extensively about my history as a scientist (physicist), and about the fact that one of my two most important interests over the last four decades has been to defend my profession (Science) from continuous attacks on it. However, in their diatribe they failed to mention that I am a physicist, or even a scientist.

Example: I repeatedly stated that one of our largest societal challenges today is that self-serving parties are trying to replace real Science with “political science.” For some reason that extremely important point ended up on the cutting room floor.

Example: I pointed them to my extensive Solar webpage — which has significant information not in the mainstream media. I went over some of it in our zoom meeting, and they had no objections. Their article provided no link to my solar webpage.

Example: I gave them a copy of my extensive Report on concerns with industrial solar facilities. I even went through a lot of it on our zoom interview — and asked them if they had any problem with any of the numerous issues identified. One of them said that one line-item might be “over-stated,” but he didn’t want to get into it. Fine. Again, that extremely pertinent (and unique) Report was not linked in their article.

Example: I made clear to the authors that my position was not that solar development should be killed, but rather that local communities who are hosting an industrial solar facility have adequate rules and regulations. Such a local ordinance would give careful consideration to the material in my Report — like having an annual test to verify that any toxic materials in the solar panels had not migrated into the soil or groundwater. None of that made it into their article!

I could go on and on here, but you get the idea. All of these things were deleted as they would have given me more credence than the authors wanted me to have.

IMO there are three major problems that this type of article brings to the forefront.

First, for many mainstream media sources (e.g., NPR), journalism is not about objectively and thoroughly reporting on societal issues. Instead their writers are promoting often undeclared agendas. Their end product is an enormous distortion of the “news event” they are supposedly “reporting” on, as the information they are given is bludgeoned into the activist narrative that they are determined to convey.

Second, the media is sometimes called the Fourth Estate. One of their major roles was to protect citizens from government over-reach and industry greed. Here we see how this has completely flipped, as citizens who are defending their rights are attacked, while government over-reach and industry greed are effectively defended.

Third, these inaccurate articles can only be successful, if the reading public does not have the education to be able to critically think about the story they are being told. If you have followed our substack series on Education, you will understand the extraordinary importance of our immediately fixing the K-12 Science curriculum. For those arriving late, please read this.

It’s also noteworthy that after multiple omissions and distortions, that the NPR article has no provisions for comments! In other words, corrections are not welcome…

The bottom line is that this hit-piece is a classic example of churnalism: agenda advocacy thinly disguised as a news report. Don’t be fooled.

PS - FYI, this is an earlier substack piece I posted about industrial solar.

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Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not, on issues from: COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2022 Archives. Send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name, and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?)

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