New York Times: Commerce secretary threatened to fire top NOAA employees if they didn't disavow Alabama tweet

[Jeff Duda]

Remember, this story comes from the New York Times, one of the most inaccurate sources for news in America.

You might want to chill with that overblown rhetoric. Yeah, NYT has some reasonably questionable opinion pieces and occasionally gets things wrong, but overstating their errors like that conflates NYT (which many people would argue is still a reliable source most of the time even if they occasionally have high profile blunders) with sources like InfoWars, TYT, Breitbart etc., which are pretty clearly among the most inaccurate news sources in America.

Furthermore, subsequent stories on this issue have come from other sources such as the Washington Post. But really, all one needs to do is check in with the happenings at the annual NWA meeting. Louis Uccellini and Neil Jacobs himself have spoken there and corroborated the reporting from the NYT, so this is not an example of a mistaken news story.

 

[rdale]

Not sure what happened - here's a better try at the Horowitz article...

Trump Signs Executive Order Giving Him Control of Weather

After signing the order, a beaming Trump pronounced “total victory” over the weather, which he called “the enemy of the people.”

www.newyorker.com

 

[rdale]

President Trump told his staff that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration needed to correct a tweet that seemed to contradict his statement that Hurricane Dorian posed a significant threat to Alabama as of Sept. 1, in contrast to what the agency’s forecasters were predicting at the time. This led chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to call Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to tell him to fix the issue, senior administration officials said.

Trump had complained for several days about the issue, according to senior officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the matter.

Mulvaney then called Ross but did not instruct him to threaten any firings or offer any punitive threats, officials said. He simply told Ross that the agency needed to fix it immediately, leading to a new statement that was issued on Sept. 6.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/09/11/lawmakers-commerce-department-launch-investigations-into-noaas-decision-back-presidents-trump-over-forecasters/

 

[Joshua Nall]

News is speculation and somebody said something these days. There's no reason to form an opinion early on. Where did NYT get that threat of firings bit? Today NYT said "planes" targeted the towers. That's why people hate the NYT. It's not that they make a habit of blatantly delivering lies.

Obviously Trump was wrong. I believe he was just ignorant of the updated forecast and ego driven after that. That is my opinion. He has been criticized from all sides such that I'm sure you become numb to it or have to block it all out at some point. People would have never known he was so bad at weather if he wasn't such a tweeter, haha.

I noticed at the end of the Washington Post article linked above they say, "Meanwhile, a new tropical weather system is brewing, and this one may actually hit Alabama."
NHC has it at 60% and there is no official forecast. Yes I know they link an article explaining details but I thought it was unusual to risk making a forecast mistake.

 

[NancyM]

"News is speculation and somebody said something these days."

That's why respected news sites like the NYT and WaPo usually require 3 independent, reliable sources before printing a story. Without that, yeah, news reportage is unreliable and always has been.

"Where did NYT get that threat of firings bit? "
I don't subscribe to the NYT and can't read the article. I presume they were anonymous sources who were "in a position to know". The Commerce Department simply denied it. It's being investigated by the NOAA Inspector General and the House Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Rep.

“I am extremely disturbed by the directive that NOAA leadership sent on September 6, which threatens the integrity and public trust of weather forecasts at the peak of Hurricane season,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “The Committee will pursue this issue and we expect full cooperation from the Department of Commerce in our efforts."

NOAA inspector general opens probe into agency statement backing Trump, firing threats

Reported firing threats, along with an unsigned statement on Hurricane Dorian backing President Trump, are now “matters under review by NOAA's inspector general.

abcnews.go.com

Here's a summary of the incident from a reasonably unbiased magazine:

Wilbur Ross reportedly threatened to fire NOAA employees over tweet contradicting Trump

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