CBS Vincidated? Media Giant Stupid, Not Dishonest In Chalko Affair

My last word on the Tom Chalko's Global Warming = More Earthquake's story (unless he responds to my email requesting further clarification of his ideas), which I am writing up only because it looks to be a slow news day.

One question that goes beyond the obvious "How could CBS (and other news outlets) have been so stupid as to publish this nonsense?" is "How did the original news release come to be tagged as coming from Associated Press?". There has been some speculation that CBS has been trying to pass the buck for their screwup.

Contrary to what I wrote yesterday, CBS does format material from from the news wires, including Associated Press, in a unique fashion. For example, byline and other location information at the beginning of an AP piece is cut from the story and replaced with the "(AP)" symbol. Furthermore, at the end of the article CBS inserts a slightly non-standard bit of boilerplate about not reproducing, rebroadcasting AP material. They use roman numerals for example (MMVIII), where AP does not . Nor do other news sources, as far as I have been able to determine, reformat material from AP in this way.

Now, perhaps because Marketwire is a Canadian-based service, you don't find too many releases from it appearing on the CBS website. In fact, I have been unable to find any. I suspect their origonal release re Chalko was incorrectly reformatted by CBS as being from AP and later incorrectly attributed to AP on that basis. No perfidy, just stupidity, in other words.

In a sense, of all the media entities associated with the Chalko story, CBS has behaved in the most professional manner. They at least have pulled the story; it is still out there, masquerading as news, on the MSNBC and G&M websites.

So there you go. I obviously need to get a life as bad as this guy.

Who Pranked CBS?

The Tom Chalko Global Warming = More Earthquakes story grows ever weirder. I am now beginning to suspect that a deliberate attempt to prank CBS was involved. But first some background:

On June 18, CBS.com posted a story claiming that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago because of global warming. The story had no byline, but was attributed to the Associated Press. The story was identical to a June 17 Market Wire press release attributed to Tom Chalko, the scientist that made the claim of the earthquake/global warming link.

Of course, the science behind Chalko's study turned out to be, well, highly questionable, and soon Internet scorn was raining down on CBS and MSNBC (where a link can still be found). Eventually, CBS pulled the story and, as noted above, blamed everything on AP. However, AP has denied all responsibility and, indeed, searches of its online database reveal no reference to Chalko.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. Below is how the story appears on Marketwire (which is, incidentally, a commercial news release service that does not seem to practice much in the way of quality control):

"MT BEST, AUSTRALIA--(Marketwire - June 17, 2008) - New research compiled by Australian scientist Dr Tom Chalko shows that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago."

The MSNBC version looks the same, as do versions appearing in most other news outlets. But here's how it looks (or looked before it was pulled) on the CBS news site:

(AP) New research compiled by Australian scientist Dr. Tom Chalko shows that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago.

Note that an standard (AP) story will usally assign authorship to one of their writers. Furthermore, a .pdf of CBS's printable version shows what looks to be standard AP boilerplate

© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

...but is really somewhat different from the stuff at the bottom of an actual AP release*:

2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

So, maybe I've been hanging with Buckets for two long, but it seems unlikely that staff at CBS would have altered a Marketwire release to look like something from (AP). I would therefore wager that somebody outside of the company copped Chalko's Marketwire press release and reformatted it to look like an AP piece to give it enhanced credibility, then fired it off to CBS.

Not that this excuses CBS or anyone else (including G&M's website) who ran the story. In fact, next time you read something about the lack of journalistic standards in the blogosphere, think of the Tom Chalko story, and smile.

* Whoopsie. CBS (and it alone) DOES seem to use this alternative wording when they grab a story from (AP). First point (about the change of the opening paragraph) still holds, though.

Update: Given this, it appears that CBS does indeed re-format material from AP. So perhaps no prank, just stupidity--they mis-labelled a MarketWire release, perhaps because it doesn't seem they take to many stories from a mostly Canadian service.

CRAP! Immensely CRAP!!

It is this kind of wretched, in fact beyond craptacular reporting by Associated Press (AP) and others that is liable to make ordinary people doubt any scientific claims, let alone controversial scientific claims about life-and-death topics such as Global Warming.

(AP) New research compiled by Australian scientist Dr. Tom Chalko shows that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago.

The research proves that destructive ability of earthquakes on Earth increases alarmingly fast and that this trend is set to continue, unless the problem of "global warming" is comprehensively and urgently addressed.

Oh my! And even barely plausible since, for totally different reasons, connections between global warming and increased earthquake activity have been postulated.

Except: who is Tom Chalko? Lets employ teh Googles.

Well, one result is his paper: No second chance?Can Earth explode as a result of Global Warming?

I doubt it, but it sounds like it might be cool to watch. And if you follow the footnotes, you'll see that the T.J. Chalko's references lead to this, Dr. Chalkos' book "The Freedom of Choice", about which it has been written that:

For the first time in the history of humanity on Earth The Purpose of existence of the entire Universe has been expressed and proven explicitly in writing for everyone to understand. Incidentally, it coincides with the purpose of your OWN existence... Are you ready?

So far, CBS and MSNBC, plus many lesser news sites, have been conned. And, frankly, this is such a horrid display of newsmanship--publishing obvious bullshit because you were unwilling to do two minutes of research--that it deserves an official and hearty BigCityLib denunciation.

OH MSM!!! YOU FUCKING SUCK!!!