Nova's conflict of interest was highlighted out by Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm (9/7/10), who had previously caught the Smithsonian promoting strange climate science after getting a grant from oil billionaire David Koch (Climate Progress, 4/1/10). Koch, who's a major funder of propaganda rejecting the science of climate change, is also one of the main underwriters of the popular PBS science program Nova--which is in itself a case of strange bedfellows.  (Another major sponsor of Nova is ExxonMobil, the other top funder of science-denial in support of  oil industry profits.)

With the New Yorker's Jane Mayer (8/30/10) calling attention to the Koch family's political donations--and mentioning the fear that David Koch's contributions are affecting the Smithsonian's exhibits--people naturally paid more attention to the donor credit for David Koch on a recent Nova rerun (8/31/10) called "Becoming Human." What raised more than a few eyebrows was the program's enthusiasm for climate change as a  driver of human evolution--with a not-so-subtle suggestion that we should bear this in mind in our current era of rapidly shifting weather:

Narrator: It is a simple but revolutionary idea: Human evolution is nature's experiment with versatility. We're not adapted to any one environment or climate, but to many; we are creatures of climate change.

Geographer Mark Maslin: I think we should actually look to our proud ancestry and how we evolved in East Africa and say: "That's how we survived that. We can survive the future, because we are that creature, because we are that smart."

Note that Maslin is not actually a climate-change denier--he's really a strong advocate for immediate action to restrict carbon emissions--but Nova quotes him as though he takes the don't-worry-be-happy stance adopted by...well, people like David Koch. Why is that?

As usual, PBS insiders take the position that where you get your money from is absolutely irrelevant, once again rejecting the entire rationale for public broadcasting: "Nova, like all WGBH programs, maintains complete, independent editorial control of its content," Nova executive producer Paula Apsell told PBS ombud Michael Getler. Getler, for his part, declares that "one rarely knows when or how, if at all, influence works its way," and that "as a viewer of what strikes me and a lot of others as a consistently first-rate program, I trust Nova"--a hands-off stance that would seem to reject the entire rationale for having an ombud.

PBS's position echoes the Smithsonian's--David Koch is "very interested in the content, but completely hands off," museum director Cristián Samper told the New Yorker. And that's Koch's position as well; asked by Archeology magazine (2/17/09) if he was involved in the editorial content of Nova's evolutionary programming, he replied:  "No, I am not. I've been following the Nova series ever since it first came on the air. I'm a great admirer."

In that same interview, though, Koch describes a visit to Olduvai Gorge to inspect the Leakey digs, which he also bankrolls: "When I got there they had discovered a Hominin's bones. They left them in the earth, waiting for me to arrive. And then when I arrived, they let me pull them out of the ground, which was kind of fun."

Presumably the Leakeys let him extract those bones not because of his paleontological expertise, but because they knew it would make a major donor happy. Nova also knows that downplaying the dangers of climate change would make its major donors happy--and it aired a program that presented climate change as a positive force for good. If you want to believe that that's a coincidence--well, all you have to do is trust Nova.

That's not the way corporate media handled the illegally taped cell phone call between Newt Gingrich, John Boehner and other Republican congressmembers in which Gingrich violated the terms of a ethics sanction by strategizing about how to minimize the charges against him. In that case, they focused on the illegality of the taping--and the unauthorized leaking of the tape by Rep. Jim McDermott (D.-Wash.).

That's also not how the press handled the case of  Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Michael Gallagher, who illegally listened to voicemails at the Chiquita corporation in pursuit of a series of stories that charged the company with involvement in bribery, fraud and the abuse of workers. Again, the wrongdoing that was considered newsworthy was the reporter's, not the target of his investigation.

It's hard to imagine what ethical code would tell journalists to ignore information about corporate skullduggery or congressional ethics violations if it was obtained through illicit means, but if it concerns the academic politics of climate scientists--dig in!

Say you're a harried cable news producer with 24 gaping hours to fill with finished material every day of the week. Say you're constantly in need of articulate guests to offer a diversity of viewpoints. How do you do it?

One way is to take up offers like this one from the PR folks representing Marc Morano. Refresher: Morano was formerly an aid to climate-change-denier-in-chief James Inhofe (GOP senator from Oklahoma), now heads misinformation clearinghouse ClimateDepot.com, and is still the chief supplier of talking points to the climate-denial camp.

Hiskes' quotes from the PR release are enlightening for how skillfully they play into the false balance so key to corporate reportage:

Here’s your anti-Gore Global Warming Expert who offers the science to counteract partisan and ideologically driven Environmental entities and issues....

If you believe most, or all, of the global warming dogma, you may use Marc as your "counter guest" to offer a lively, fair and balanced discussion to your audience. If you are a skeptic of the current doctrine, Marc can aid your program by clearing up the deception with the facts.

The really troubling part comes in the release's list of news organizations that have fallen for this nonsense, boasting that Morano "has made international news" on "CNN, Fox News Channel's the O'Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes, BBC TV, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post."

See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias: Creating Controversy Where Science Finds Consensus" (11-12/04) by Jules Boykoff and Maxwell Boykoff