{"id":14980,"date":"2015-12-02T07:20:54","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T12:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14980"},"modified":"2015-12-02T07:20:54","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T12:20:54","slug":"exxon-targets-journalists-who-exposed-massive-climate-cover-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14980","title":{"rendered":"Exxon Targets Journalists Who Exposed Massive Climate Cover Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"node__title managed-node-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2015\/12\/01\/exxon-targets-journalists-who-exposed-massive-climate-cover\" target=\"_blank\">Exxon Targets Journalists Who Exposed Massive Climate Cover Up<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"field field--name-field-subtitle field--type-text-long field--label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field__items\">\n<div class=\"field__item even\">\n<p>&#8216;We\u2019ve often wondered if Exxon actually hates our children because they so consistently stand in the way of safeguarding their future,&#8217; campaigner said, &#8216;it turns out they apparently hate good journalism as well.&#8217;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"field-wrapper-authors\" class=\"field-wrapper content-container clearfix inline-fields\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"field field--name-field-article-img field--type-image field--label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field__items\">\n<div class=\"field__item even\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"caption-processed\" src=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/cd_large\/public\/headlines\/exxon_sign.jpg?itok=fi-_HyCb\" alt=\"U.S. Senator and White House hopeful Bernie Sanders on Tuesday slammed Exxon on social media, writing: &quot;It's absurd that massive corporations can legally intimidate journalists who dare question them.&quot; (Photo: Minale Tattersfield\/cc\/flickr)\" width=\"955\" height=\"500\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field--name-field-main-caption field--type-text-long field--label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field__items\">\n<div class=\"field__item even\">\n<p>U.S. Senator and White House hopeful Bernie Sanders on Tuesday slammed Exxon on social media, writing: &#8220;It&#8217;s absurd that massive corporations can legally intimidate journalists who dare question them.&#8221; (Photo:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/minaletattersfield\/8427589448\">Minale Tattersfield<\/a>\/cc\/flickr)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field__items\">\n<div class=\"field__item even\">\n<p>ExxonMobil has launched a full-throttled &#8220;bully&#8221; campaign against the graduate students who recently unmasked its scandalous\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/2015\/10\/14\/exxons-climate-lie-no-corporation-has-ever-done-anything-big-or-bad\">climate change cover-up\u00a0<\/a>threatening to pull funds from the university that helped bring to light its dangerous and &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/2015\/10\/14\/exxons-climate-lie-no-corporation-has-ever-done-anything-big-or-bad\">most consequential<\/a>&#8221; lies.<\/p>\n<p>In a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/f\/?id=00000151-5a8a-d6a2-a155-dbca213c0000\">letter<\/a>\u00a0(pdf) addressed to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/blogs\/on-media\/2015\/11\/exxonmobil-climate-change-ethics-allegations-columbia-university-216287\">obtained<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0<em>Politico<\/em>, the oil giant&#8217;s vice president of Public and Government Affairs accuses a team of investigative journalism students of violating the school&#8217;s research policy by &#8220;suppressing&#8221; or &#8220;manipulating&#8221; information to produce &#8220;deliberately misleading reports&#8221; about ExxonMobil&#8217;s climate change research.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The reports, produced by a team headed by Susanne Rust, an instructor at the Columbia Journalism School, cherry-picked\u2014and distorted\u2014statements attributed to various company employees to wrongly suggest definitive conclusions about the risk of climate change were reached decades ago by company researchers,&#8221; wrote Exxon&#8217;s Kenneth Cohen in the letter, dated November 20.<\/p>\n<p>The lengthy letter then proceeds to dissect the allegedly &#8220;false narrative&#8221; that &#8220;ExxonMobil &#8216;knew&#8217; the risks of climate change in the 1980s, chose to ignore or suppress that knowledge, stopped or curtailed ongoing climate research and shifted to a policy of funding climate change denial.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Those findings\u2014which were published early October in the\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/graphics.latimes.com\/exxon-arctic\/\">Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/em>, mirroring a separate but similar investigation by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/insideclimatenews.org\/news\/15092015\/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming\"><em>Inside Climate News<\/em><\/a>\u2014have set off a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2015\/11\/19\/heat-building-exxon-multiple-probes-explore-climate-cover\">storm<\/a>\u00a0of outrage over what &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/exxonknew?f=tweets&amp;vertical=news&amp;src=hash\">Exxon knew<\/a>.&#8221; The New York Attorney General has even\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2015\/11\/05\/exxonknew-escalates-ny-attorney-general-subpoenas-oil-giant-over-climate-crimes\">launched<\/a>\u00a0a formal inquiry as a result of the allegations.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exxon Targets Journalists Who Exposed Massive Climate Cover Up &#8216;We\u2019ve often wondered if Exxon actually hates our children because they so consistently stand in the way of safeguarding their future,&#8217; campaigner said, &#8216;it turns out they apparently hate good journalism as well.&#8217; U.S. Senator and White House hopeful Bernie Sanders on Tuesday slammed Exxon on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[141,7669,1041,462,10366],"class_list":["post-14980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-climate-change","tag-common-dreams","tag-exxonmobil","tag-journalism","tag-los-angeles-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14981,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14980\/revisions\/14981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}