Heartland Institute Now Threatening To Sue Journalists, Bloggers Reporting On Denialgate

[hatrack]

The Heartland Institute, a conservative advocacy group, is threatening to sue journalists, bloggers, and activists who reported on internal documents that detail the group's fundraising efforts and lay out a new program to replace climate change education in schools with curriculum meant to instill doubt on climate science.

The threat was spelled out in an email sent to media outlets (including mongabay.com) by Jim Lakely, Communications Director at the Heartland Institute. The group said it will "pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation" from "individuals who have commented so far on these documents", prior to the Heartland Institute's official response. It also states that one of the documents is "a total fake."

Released yesterday by DeSmogBlog, the documents are causing a media firestorm that has already been dubbed 'Denial Gate'. Although the Heartland Institute has yet to fully confirm the authenticity of the documents, it only denies that one of several documents is not real, "Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy." The Heartland Institute has spent years trying to spread skepticism about climate change, although climatologists worldwide overwhelmingly agree that the world is warming and human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation, are playing a major role.

One of the most notable sections of the leaked documents is entitled "Global Warming Curriculum for K-12," which notes that the Heartland Institute has hired Dr. David Wojick to craft curriculum that would teach anthropogenic climate change as "a major scientific controversy." The Heartland Institute expected to pay Wojick $100,000 in 2012 for the curriculum.

EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0215-heartland_to_sue_journalists.html

[orwell]

1. In other words...

...hack into climate scientist's emails to "prove" Global Warming is a liberal conspiracy = awesome whistle-blowing.

Leak Heart(less)Land's internal documents = privacy invasion, lawsuits (from presumably "evil" trial lawyers), suits for damages.

Can you see the inherent logic?

[Viking12]

2. Wow, that's rich. They lie about & defame scientists a 1000 times before breakfast...

but the second they're exposed, they're going to initiate SLAPPs suits. I bet they oppose frivolous lawsuits, too.

[Javaman]

3. So was the email from a lawyer?

It doesn't appear to be, so this is just them panicking and freaking out.

They are using the Felix Unger approach, "I'll sue your head off!!!"

Might make for some funny over the top drama but rarely wins a case.