Ken Green, the conservative AEI scholar who has been sparring with liberal science writer Chris Mooney over which political party is more anti-science, keeps digging himself a bigger hole. Yesterday, I called attention to the loaded language Green used to describe his political opponents. I also wasn’t very impressed with his sourcing. Via Twitter, Green…Continue Reading…
A media scholar surveys an emerging science journalism trend: The dominant way of thinking about the role of science journalists historically was to view them as translators, or transmitters, of information. Now, however, a powerful metaphor for understanding their work as science critics is to see them as cartographers and guides, mapping scientific knowledge for readers, showing…Continue Reading…
Over at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, I ask how reporters and bloggers can most responsibly handle the climate/weather connections while the evidence is still being gathered and interpreted. Check it out and offer your suggestions over there.
In yesterday’s NYT magazine, Bill Keller papers over a dark chapter for journalism and the NYT: the WMD craze, which was the Bush Administration’s pretext for the Iraq war: The remedy for bad journalism is more and better journalism. Reporters at The Times made amends for the credulous prewar stories with investigations of the bad intelligence…Continue Reading…
My latest post at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media is on the bipartisan press bashing habit. Have a look and flog me over there.
Several weeks ago, I pointed out how several popular climate skeptic blogs had disingenuously parroted the headline from that skewed Rasmussen poll: 69% Say It’s Likely Scientists Have Falsified Global Warming Research Shortly afterwards, I noticed a similar copy and paste job by Ronald Bailey at his libertarian outlet. Like the climate skeptics I cited (Anthony Watts…Continue Reading…
In his recent widely publicized Rolling Stone essay, former Vice President Al Gore harshly criticized media coverage of global warming. He compared journalists to referees of “professional” wrestling. Some mainstream reporters who regularly write about climate change objected. But climate scientists nodded approvingly, as did Joe Romm, who called Gore’s essay a “devastating critique” and piled on: I…Continue Reading…
It’s from yesterday, but what the hell: How the perception of media bias by biased people has grown even more biased Brilliant!
They’re a little late to the game, but the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media finally gets around to reviewing Matthew Nisbet’s Climate Shift report released in April, which triggered an unhinged response from a handful of popular climate bloggers . (I wrote about that here and here.) The myth of the media…Continue Reading…
Another day, another revelation about the news gathering methods of a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper in the UK–methods that some are referring to as “institutional criminality.” No doubt the curtain on Murchoch’s News International operations will be pulled back further in the coming days and weeks, revealing much more ugliness. The questions is, will it spur…Continue Reading…