The Wall Street Journal posted a letter from 16 scientists who are critical of climate science in general and anthropogenic warming in specific. There were numerous flaws in the letter (see Robert Cooper's Denialiasm 101 piece An Excellent Study On Denialism for the takedown) but it's an opinion piece so I took it for what it is worth; the New York Times lets Paul Krugman write on economics and that's also completely made up so opinion pieces are common and always have been.

As expected, the progressive witch hunt elsewhere began. This hypocrisy happens a lot and not just in journalism; an alarming number of left wing people, for example, say Ted Nugent stinks and they won't listen to him because he is a hunter or right-wing or whatever but if you mention the politics of some ill-informed, earnest musician on their side, they tell you it shouldn't matter and you should separate their politics from their 'art' and just enjoy the music. 

Who, exactly?  Well, it doesn't matter, does it?  That kind of vague, unsubstantiated paragraph can easily make it into The Guardian - and did - but how many people who happen to agree will bother to note how shoddy it is?  They sure note it about things that don't give them a lovely shot of dopamine due to confirmation bias.



Suzanne Greenberg takes the time to scold the Wall Street Journal for publishing the opinion piece but uses the fact that the Wall Street Journal published a counter-point to it and lovely 'appeal to authority' fallacies we've come to expect from science journalism to do it, which makes little sense.  That is what is what it is and the climate scientists were correct in noting the flaws of the other 16. Here is the real schlock, and why I am writing, that tells you all you need to know about why science journalism is on life support and why I wrote the paragraph above without guilt; it doesn't matter if I am vague and unsubstantiated or not - the mainstream media lives for that sort of innuendo:

The rejection was seen by some as further evidence that Rupert Murdoch is using his news organisations, such as the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, to further his own anti-regulatory agenda.

'seen by some'?  Like who? Rupert Murdoch is hand-picking opinion pieces to run in the Wall Street Journal?  He is hand-picking anti-climate-science editors for the opinion page?  Does that mean the Guardian is hand-picking journalists and editors who are shills for global warming press releases?  I don't get how it is okay to disparage the Wall Street Journal when the journalist doing the smearing knows next to nothing about actual climate science and is simply a 'correspondent' for environmental causes, according to her bio, but her experience is in the Middle East and half her articles are about U.S. politics.

In the 1990s, before science journalism lost the ability to ask the awkward questions and not simply be cheerleaders for their world views, an editor would have red lined half that article by Greenberg - instead, it falls on independent media to note that corporate media like Guardian News And Media Limited, which competes with Murdoch's company in England, is no better, it is simply opportunistic.  

This is further evidence why, as Ben Goldacre put it succinctly a few years ago, science journalism is not coming back any time soon: "You're in very big trouble when academics and other bloggers can do it better themselves. I think the mainstream has talked itself out of a role in popular science, except for wacky dumbed down stories about miracle vegetables. It won't be missed."