Like every­one else I know in the tribe of work­ing jour­nal­ists, I think being scep­ti­cal is a use­ful, if not indis­pens­able tool of the trade, and tend to dis­pute being a cyn­ic. But I’m begin­ning to think both jour­nal­ists and news con­sumers have rea­son and need to embrace the two philosophies.

A scep­tic is  defined as some­one who will not eas­i­ly be convinced.
That’s a use­ful char­ac­ter­is­tic when your job entails try­ing to be, as  Mark Twain once said of God and the Asso­ci­at­ed Press: “forces that can car­ry light to all cor­ners of the globe.”
A cyn­ic believes the worst in peo­ple, and is “dis­trust­ful of human sin­cer­i­ty or integri­ty”.
That’s a phi­los­o­phy any­one who has report­ed on suf­fer­ing and trav­es­ties, both nat­ur­al and human-made, can under­stand, but not adopt in full.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are cas­es in point.
The vision and indeed genius that made them the two rich­est men in a world with an over-abun­dance of peo­ple with more mon­ey than any­one needs or is con­scionable, have brought use­ful innovations.
That their rival­ry and greed have become dis­turb­ing fac­tors in the U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is grounds for cynicism.
Bezos claims that in his tenure as own­er of the Wash­ing­ton Post, no one will find “one instance in those 11 years where I have pre­vailed upon any­one at The Post in favor of my own inter­ests. It hasn’t happened.”
It’s not sup­posed to hap­pen, Mr Bezos.
Putting forth non-inter­fer­ence in the edi­to­r­i­al process of a news­pa­per you own as a self-acco­lade is akin to claim­ing praise­wor­thi­ness because you nev­er com­mit­ted a felony, abused your spouse or neglect­ed your kids.
A scep­tic might (grudg­ing­ly) afford Bezos’ claim  that “no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here” in his veto of the Post’s endorse­ment of Kamala Har­ris.
A cyn­ic look­ing for the sub rosa in both Bezos’ edi­to­r­i­al inter­fer­ence and Musk’s leap­ing about with TV game show con­tes­tant enthu­si­asm for Don­ald Trump doesn’t have to do more than scratch the surface.
For exam­ple: Bezos’ space com­pa­ny Blue Ori­gin is engaged in a fierce bat­tle with Musk’s Space X for lucra­tive future gov­ern­ment and Defence Depart­ment con­tracts poten­tial­ly worth tril­lions of dollars.
Along with Google, Microsoft and Ora­cle, Ama­zon will also be vying for as much as eight bil­lion dol­lars worth of mil­i­tary serv­er mod­erni­sa­tion over the next two years.
You don’t have to be a scep­tic or a cyn­ic, just a per­son of nor­mal intel­li­gence, to see mon­ey and pol­i­tics as  con­joined twins.

            THE REAL “DEEP STATE”

The con­spir­a­cy faith­ful take cyn­i­cism to the edge of para­noid fan­ta­sy, but going some­what beyond the lev­el of scep­ti­cism is more than jus­ti­fied when it comes to the claims and aims of the fos­sil fuel industry.
In 2022 the UK Adver­tis­ing Stan­dards Author­i­ty banned Shell oil adverts that  incor­rect­ly gave the impres­sion low-car­bon ener­gy prod­ucts made up a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of the company’s ener­gy products.
In March this year, Shell dilut­ed its car­bon emis­sions tar­gets, and con­firmed it planned to cut hun­dreds of jobs in its low-car­bon solu­tions division,
Add that to the find­ing by the green think tank New Weath­er Insti­tute that “in an attempt to divert atten­tion from their role in fuelling the cli­mate cri­sis and harm­ing human health”, fos­sil  fuel com­pa­nies have invest­ed near­ly five bil­lion dol­lars in sports spon­sor­ships, and cyn­i­cism seems to be in order.

        A LESSON FROM ANOTHER OIL INDUSTRY

Iron­i­cal­ly, oil actu­al­ly trig­gered what might be called one of the great­est “green” events ever.
Whales  were being hunt­ed towards extinc­tion when the dis­cov­ery of petro­le­um in 1859 meant their oil was no lon­er need­ed for lamps.The intro­duc­tion of veg­etable oil, gas and even­tu­al­ly elec­tric lights also A knock-on effect was the Antarc­tic Treaty, which ensured that “one place on earth has nev­er seen war, the envi­ron­ment is ful­ly pro­tect­ed and sci­en­tif­ic research has pri­or­i­ty. It is arguably the most suc­cess­ful agree­ment of its kind.”
No more.
Chi­na has built a new research sta­tion with­out sub­mit­ting the nec­es­sary envi­ron­men­tal evaluations.
Russ­ian fish­ing ves­sels spoofed their loca­tion to hide ille­gal fish­ing activ­i­ties in pro­tect­ed Antarc­tic waters.
The Iran­ian mil­i­tary claims Tehran has “prop­er­ty rights” at the South Pole,

It’s a fair assump­tion none of them have preser­va­tion of the continent’s unique beau­ty and the future of its inhab­i­tants in mind.
Put the ambi­tions of those three nations, their roles and posi­tions in glob­al rival­ries and ten­sions, and the avarice that is dri­ving green­house gas­es, over-fish­ing and the race to scour min­er­als from the deep sea bed, dam­age be damned, and the rela­tion­ship between polar ice cap melt­ing on ocean tem­per­a­tures, and cyn­i­cism may be the only rea­son­able reaction.

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