Double standard
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A double standard is a rule or principle which ought to be applied equally (or in all cases), but which is used selectively to advance a hidden purpose.
The history of politics is full of examples of this sort of hypocrisy.
- Cambodia and Chile: In the 1970s, the New York Times published hundreds of articles about the 3,000 "disappearances" of Augusto Pinochet's political opponents after the 1973 Chile coup. They only published two articles about the 2,000,000 people murdered by the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.[Citation Needed]
- Global warming: Supporters of the Kyoto Protocol (an emissions reduction treaty) say that "correlation is not causation" when scientists point out the dozens of natural climate cycles linking changes in sunspots to changes in Earth's air temperature. But their argument for a runaway greenhouse effect is based on a single period from 1850 to present in which carbon dioxide levels and air temperatures have risen together.