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Go Home "fair And Balanced" Runs Amok

THE VINE MAY 6, 2008

"fair And Balanced" Runs Amok

BY AUTHOR INFO NEEDED

I can't say for certain what role The Wall Street Journal's in-house conservatives played in this incident, recounted by one of the paper's news editors, but there are at least a couple important insights here:

The other night, the phrase "global warming" drew our attention. Its use as a "stated fact" in a commentary piece seemed loaded, and we decided to edit it out and work around the possibly debatable usage. It was a quick solution during the heat of deadline, but it got me thinking: Global warming is a theory? Well, yes, I understand that there's a fraction of people who out and out challenge whether global warming is real, but as a layman and (hopefully) concientious editor I thought that scientists who doubted or were skeptical of the specifics of what causes it at least agreed that the globe is indeed warming.

So, I decided to do a little research.... [Here he lists a bunch of research confirming the global warming consensus.]

Do we always need to nod to the other side of the equation, that global warming doesn't exist or that the specifics aren't entirely settled? Or can readers and editors accept that the planet is warming and that humans are contributing to it — and save the semantical debate for another story?

On the one hand, this is a pretty plain example of the hoops that mainstream reporters and editors feel they have to jump through in order to feel like they're being objective. After all, if some crank in Montana or on Mars thinks manmade global warming is a fraud (or, to take an issue near to Jon Chait's heart, if a partisan can point to an "economist" or "consultant" who still holds that that Laffer guy was really on to something) then a journalist is betraying bias by taking sides. Right?

As an enviro, though, it's interesting to see an editor—particularly at a conservative newspaper—grapple with reality. In some sense, it offers hope that people might just come to the obvious conclusion about global warming if they simply evaluated the facts; and that those who still deny global warming, or the threat it poses to the planet, are either refusing to evaluate the facts or lying.

--Brian Beutler

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13 comments

Hey Brian, I hear there are  still some flat earthers out there. Equal time, please. And I always believe anything written on a napkin.

- liberal reformer

May 6, 2008 at 2:24pm

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While journalists debate their debating rules, the rest of us have to try to get our hands on some goats.

It's another dry year out here in California (Gomer: "Surprise, surprise!") and my little 5-acre ranchero is surrounded by stuff that looked pretty a couple weeks ago and looks like fuel today. A crispy critter I could easily become. I'm planning to borrow a couple dozen of my neighbor's goats to eat a nice break around my house and the rest of the important stuff.

I'm hoping the goats will also eat the purple star thistle that's crowding out all the indigenous plants as well as our modest garden and landscaping plantings. According to the literature I had until the end of May to worry about the thistle going to seed, but it turns out I've waited too long: spring was nearly a month ahead of schedule, and the little white tuffs have already started to appear and are at this moment lodging in nooks and crannies, where they can hang out for a couple years before the time's right to piss me off again.

So I have learned to tell the onset of spring not from the books but from the land. Certainly not from the Wall Street Journal.

- williamyard

May 6, 2008 at 2:27pm

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Hell will freeze before the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal admit to global warming. Of course, If Rupert Murdoch thinks he'll make money by freezing hell he'll make it happen.

- ndmackenzie

May 6, 2008 at 3:00pm

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Oddly enough, Murdoch has seen the light on climate change:

www.terradaily.com/.../Rupert_Murdoch_Changes_Mind_On_Global_Warming_999.html

 

- Brad Plumer

May 6, 2008 at 3:09pm

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Yes, Brad, he has and as I understand it, his current, much younger wife is a major reason why.

- liberal reformer

May 6, 2008 at 4:52pm

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This is dumb, but the chain of association from WSJ to to weather to Murdoch made me think of the following entry from a sort of half-serious book called (I think) Talking Strine:  A Guide to Australian English:

scona - n.; a meteorological term, as in "Scona rain!"

- ironyroad

May 6, 2008 at 7:36pm

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www.spaceweather.com

How about you grapple with some astronomical reality?

- cthulhu2008

May 6, 2008 at 9:28pm

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One more thing, was the IPCC lying or unable to grasp the facts when they made the blatantly false prediction concerning the current cooling?l

- cthulhu2008

May 6, 2008 at 9:30pm

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Specifically, what prediction are you claiming is blatantly false, Cthulhu?

The IPCC has to back up all of its claims (the detailed claims in the technical documents) with citations from the peer-reviewed literature, and can only use articles that appeared before an agreed-upon cutoff date. So please go further and enlighten us about which peer reviewed articles were based on lies? Peer review is no guarantee of perfection by any means, and sometimes past work is shown to be wrong, or to be correct within some limited range but wrong when extrapolated, but the fraction of legitimate peer-reviewed science that is based on lies or willful misinterpretation of data is small. As a reviewer and editor I have reviewed many, many journal papers, and while some of them have turned out to be incorrect, in my opinion zero percent of the ones that I recommended publishing were based on lies or obvious inability to grasp facts. And no, I am not in climate science or involved with the IPCC, so you are not insulting me personally, just my professional colleagues.

- JEFF FREY

May 6, 2008 at 9:53pm

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As I've said before, it's time to get a Project Steve going for global climate change theory.

- dhauck

May 6, 2008 at 10:22pm

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Here's some real Australian English for y'all to rack your brains over.  The following phrase is part of a national or at least statewide ad campaign and appears on billboards entering and exiting Melbourne on the Westgate freeway:

"Dob in a hoon."

I challenge you to figure that one out WITHOUT resorting to a Google search.

- aeromonas

May 7, 2008 at 9:27am

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cthulhu -- Don't know if you're talking about Keenlyside et al.'s recent Nature paper or not, but here's a pretty good discussion:

climateprogress.org/.../nature-article-on-cooling-confuses-revkin-media-deniers-next-decade-may-see-rapid-warming

- Brad Plumer

May 7, 2008 at 10:43am

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aero - *After* I Googled it, it still took me three articles to understand.

- dhauck

May 7, 2008 at 1:08pm

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