This is a post about people who tell lies to fabricate a narrative, and the journalists who lazily cite them.

But it’s not just about the climate science deniers and their enablers. It’s also about NPR’s This American Life, which retracted a powerful episode about Apple workers in China after learning their key source, Mike Daisey, fabricated key details in the interest of a better narrative and what he saw as a good cause.

I’m a big fan of the show, but even if you aren’t, I’d urge you to listen to the retraction show (audio here, transcript here).

The whole episode is a cautionary tale for all journalists, including those in the climate arena — at least for those who don’t draw the exactly backwards lesson from it, such as NY Times blogger Andy Revkin.

The point of the story is that some sources consistently make up crap in the interest of a larger narrative. That was Mike Daisey. It is also what most climate science deniers do, which is why I prefer to call them disinformers.

The lesson is for journalists is to avoid those folks like the plague since you can’t trust anything they say, quoting ...

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