Covering the news

Editing out justification for the agreement

Last Thursday, President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement. On Friday morning, the Wheeling Intelligencer's coverage edited the Associated Press' report and removed the AP's explanation for why we had joined the Paris accord. The following are the first three paragraphs of the AP report. The third, in bold, was edited out of Friday morning's paper:

President Trump declared Thursday he was pulling the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, striking a major blow to worldwide efforts to combat global warming and distancing the country from its closest allies abroad. Framing his decision as “a reassertion of America’s sovereignty,” Trump said he was “elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

He said the U.S. could try to re-enter the deal under more favorable terms or work to establish “an entirely new transaction.” But he indicated that was hardly a priority. “If we can, great. If we can’t, that’s fine,” he said.

Scientists say Earth is likely to reach more dangerous levels of warming sooner as a result of the president’s decision because America’s pollution contributes so much to rising temperatures. Calculations suggest withdrawal could result in emissions of up to 3 billion tons of additional carbon dioxide a year — enough to melt ice sheets faster, raise seas higher and trigger more extreme weather.

Editing out opposition to Trump's action

Additionally, here are the final two paragraphs in the original AP report which were not included in the Intelligencer's coverage:

So was opposition from environmental groups.

“Generations from now, Americans will look back at Donald Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement as one of the most ignorant and dangerous actions ever taken by any president,” Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said in a statement.

As they have done in the past, the Intelligencer has edited an AP news report to meet its anti-climate change objectives.

Later coverage

From there we learned on Saturday:

Pittsburgh Mayor: Trump Doesn't Speak For Us

That's it for news coverage even though readers would have no idea of how Americans or, for that matter, foreign governments or their citizens have reacted. For example, here's what a Washington Post poll found:

Most Americans oppose President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, with a majority saying the move will damage the United States’ global leadership, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Opposition to Trump’s decision outpaces support for it by a roughly 2-to-1 margin, with 59 percent opposing the move and 28 percent in support.

Also missing since Trump's Thursday announcement -- any fact checking of the claims made in Trump's speech. The obvious fact checker for the Wheeling papers is the Associated Press which examined

Holes in Trump's Reasoning on Climate Pullout

Additionally, the Washington Post, concluded that he was "wrong on Paris accord, China and coal plants," and FactCheck.org documented that the president "made more than a few false and misleading claims."

Editorial coverage

We did get editorials, however. Saturday, we were told to "Try for Better Deal on Climate" because China and India will take advantage of us. Monday brought us two: Only 'Pact' Was One with Obama which argued that Obama called it a "pact" and it's really a treaty that the Senate never ratified (it's not - it's non-binding) and "Paris Agreement Was Bad for the Nation" which claims, without a shred of evidence, that the agreement "could have cost millions of American jobs."

The editorials, like Trump, purposely miss the point of what the Paris agreement was trying to accomplish: voluntary compliance by the nations of the world to do something about climate change. Like Trump, the locals' editorials twist this to argue that the United States will be forced to comply and others will not. Here's Trump:

As of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the nonbinding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country.

Perhaps a future editorial will explain to us how something can be simultaneously "nonbinding" and "draconian." I won't hold my breath.

As in the past on the subject of climate change, local readers cannot expect fairness and balance on the front page or logic and evidence on the editorial page.

Fairness? Balance? Logic? Evidence?

Forget it, Jake, it's a Wheeling "newspaper."