James Fallows contrasts WaPo’s and NYT’s coverage of CLIMATEGATE!:
In this case one big-time paper, the Post, sticks with “critics contend,” while the other (the Times) presents a contrast between “decades of peer-reviewed science” and politically-motivated opposition. Moreover, the NYT presents the controversy as something that might get in the way of deliberations in Copenhagen; while the Post presents it as a scandal in which “wonky” emails may not constitute “proof” that climate change is a “lie or a swindle” but still justify introducing “lie” and “swindle” as possibilities.
Not to overdramatize, but: in a way the papers are betting their reputations with these articles. The Times, that climate change is simply a matter of science versus ignorance; the Post, that this is best treated as another “-Gate” style flap where it’s hard to get to the bottom of the story. While I don’t claim to be a climate expert, the overwhelming balance of what I’ve read convinces me that the Times’s approach is right. For now, I’m mainly noting the stark contrast.
SpotWeld
I wonder which of those two papers actualy has employed a science writer to cover this…
Kryptik
Three guesses which of the two papers will be given more credence in the larger media as a whole, as far as coverage of this goes.
El Cid
Fred Hiatt and Jackson Diehl of the Post are full on right wing editorialists and will print anything to aid their crazy right wing foreign policy and economics preferences, up to and including making up quotes and claiming documents say things they don’t.
It’s a shame when the New York Times has to be your comparative standard of greater sanity.
soonergrunt
The Washington Post stopped being useful when Ben Bradlee left, and that was in 1991.
Waynski
Perhaps the Times has concluded that they should return to the actual journalism that kept them going for the last 150 years. I’ll believe it if the same approach is evident in their Village coverage.
Kryptik
@El Cid:
You forgot George Will, who’s ESPECIALLY relevant on this issue. Not to mention the Post circling the wagons around him after he was caught time and time again bullshitting his way through anti-Global Warming op-eds.
DougJ
Fred Hiatt and Jackson Diehl of the Post are full on right wing editorialists and will print anything to aid their crazy right wing foreign policy and economics preferences, up to and including making up quotes and claiming documents say things they don’t.
This is the news pages, though, not the editorial pages.
cmorenc
The “on the one hand” X says, “while on the other hand Y says differently” is a temptingly attractive news-reporting story tactic, because it both: a) appears to give “fair and balanced” treatment to both sides; b) avoids requiring the reporter to do all that much digging on his own to explore the substantive merits of each side (which risks seemingly steering the report more favorably to one side vs the other, potentially pissing off readers/viewers on the shorter-ended side).
Add in the desire of newspaper publishers for covering stories that come across as attractively volatile, and their distaste for the risk of turning off readers with serious exploration of complicated issues (the work and thought involved might just get tedious for both the reporter and the reader)…so stick with presenting a readily-comprehensible sizzling steak on the grill, skip explaining the background and implications of how the cow is raised and gets to the grill.
Sloegin
Scientists state the world is round. Critics Disagree.
Scientists state the world is millions of years old. Critics Disagree.
Scientists state climate change is real and worrisome. Critics Disagree.
Wacky Scientists.
Punchy
Take the “l” out of “flap”, and he’s nailed it.
PeakVT
The Moonies might as well let the Washington Times fold now that the Post is fulfilling the same role for free.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@soonergrunt:
As a DC native who’s been reading the WaPo since the 60s, it’s slide into mediocrity over the last two decades has been painful to watch.
The only old-timers left are (and were) mediocrities like Romano and Milbank. Now, they’ve brought in younger, and far cheaper, mediocrities like Kane, Murray, Cilizza, Hesse, Kornblut and a host of other new staff reporters brought up in the (com)Post’s corporate culture that everything they do is correct and any criticism can be chalked up to shrill, lefty bloggers who don’t know shit.
They’re not worth saving.
noncarborundum
@Punchy: . . . or replace the “l” with “ishwr”.
Notorious P.A.T.
Those scientists stand to make a fortune if the world buys their story, because. . . um. . . they invested in. . . low-wattage light bulbs?
dmsilev
@DougJ:
Media types love to talk about the wall between the two, but I’m not particularly convinced that there’s any real truth to that view. See, for a particularly egregious example, the “real news” segments on Fox which always seem to take story cues from the “opinion journalism” side of the operation.
-dms
Steerpike
“Critics Contend” is just a variation of Fox news’s tried and true “Some Say” formulation. This allows them to introduce a nonexistent element of doubt into otherwise airtight cases that have been decided in ways they don’t like.
“Some say the link between smoking and cancer has not been conclusively proven” (“Some” in this case being tobacco-industry paid spokesmen);
“Many (read: Birthers) still believe Obama may not be a natural born citizen);
“Some (oil company lobbyists) say that climate change is a myth.”
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@soonergrunt:
I should also add that it’s telling about the WaPo’s craptacularness over the last 20 years when you look at people who had high profile reporting positions at one time or another: Solomon and VandeifuckingHei come to mind.
Look at what they moved onto.
Morbo
The New Orleans Saints are now 12-0… or are they? Some say that Shawn Suisham’s 4th quarter field goal was good and that the Washington Redskins won that game 33-30, making the Saints 11-1. Who’s right? That’s not the job of the Washington Post to report.
noncarborundum
@Sloegin:
Not to mention “Scientists state humans evolved from earlier forms of life. A whole bunch of critics disagree.”
I say, it depends on what you mean by “evolved.”
Pasquinade
Palin Twitters:
http://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA
“leary”? As in Dennis?
Why oh why
What about that story the NY Times ran a few weeks ago, about Al Gore investing some of his money (scandal!) in clean energy companies?
Of course the Post sucks, but the Times isn’t that much better. Also see: Iraq War.
noncarborundum
@Pasquinade:
She’s just the perfect encapsulation of everything that’s wrong with the Republican party, isn’t she?
asiangrrlMN
I like this James Fallows fellow. Someone should get him a real job so that he can have a national following–oh, wait. Never mind.
@Pasquinade: Mrs. O. As in, cow.
Rock
They might be among the 15% of applicants that actually get NSF/NOAA or some other kind of funding to study the issue! Something like $100,000 or $200,000 a year! For 3 years! Of which half will go the organization they work for to pay for overhead and the rest will go to pay for students or equipment or some portion of their salary, but it’s not like they’ll get a raise because any additional money will be used to offset the increase in health insurance costs (or because there’s a freeze on salary if they happen to be at a public university).
Clearly, with rewards available like that it’s no wonder these bastards are lying through their teeth.
Napoleon
@dmsilev:
The WSJ for years has proven that you can do it (at least until recently, I haven’t got it the last few years).
In fact if they had a climate change story I would be interested to see Fallow’s take on it.
Elizabelle
It’s just stunning how fast and far the Washington Post has fallen.
Zifnab
@Morbo: That’s easy to joke about with football. But even a second grader can look at a score board and conclude that one score is higher than another. All the nuance about field goals and ref calls is just the blah, blah, blah in between “The right answer is…” and “[answer goes here]”.
The problem with climate science is that this shit isn’t easy. I can sit down and spell out how much CO2 a power plant emits and then I can detail the ability of CO2 to trap heat and then I can explain the measurement techniques I used to collect my data and the chemistry and physics behind radiation.
But by the time I’m done, you’ll be asleep. And when you wake up, FOX News Climate Scientist Wiggy Walters of the Very Serious Institute will point out that I missed a semi-colon on page 43 and forgot to carry a zero in my addition, and poof goes the argument because we’ve got a controversy again.
At a certain point, people need to be educated. And they’re not. Or, if they are, the education is diluted by a metric fuckton of disinformation. And then you toss politics into the mix, which means everyone has some secret hidden motive. And the science is so far on the back burner, it’s completely forgotten.
:-p That is, ultimately, what we’re up against.
Elizabelle
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
The Post does still have a few very good journalists. A very few.
Dana Priest, Anne Hull, Steven Pearlstein (business columnist); Rajiv Chandrasekaran is an editor (wrote “Imperial Life in the Emerald City”).
I have long thought of writing any of them a heartfelt letter about the Post’s decline, because I would bet each of them cares more than the moneygrubbers running it now.
Woodrowfan
Every 3 months I renew my home delivery to the Post and every three months I wonder just WHY I am renewing it.
They provide free copies of the Post to the students on the campus where I teach, they’re in boxes and on stands in the buildings, and I have in the past two year yet to see anyone who wasn’t a professor or staff reading one…
BFR
@DougJ:
Right, and if that’s where they’ve decided to go as a business, then it’s time to start treating them like the Weekly World News or whatever the paper is that publishes the bat-boy and Elvis-is-alive stories (ie ignore them). They aren’t a “news” publication anymore and it’s well past time to recognize that and move on.
In addition, this kind of crap should be sent to the Ezra Kleins of the world – they’re helping to prop up this garbage and they need to take responsibility for their actions.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Elizabelle:
Priest is a gem. I don’t know Hull’s work that well. I read Pearlstein but like all columnists who host a chat there now, he’s gotten defensive and obnoxious over the last couple of years. And I still don’t judge the Post’s slide to its columnists.
You’re right about not writing them since there’s one thing all Posties suffer from ,it’s: Thou Shalt Not Speak ill of a Fellow Postie. Paul Fahri did it a few year’s back when Tony Kornhole was still technically a fellow Postie and Fahri had the termerity to say the asshole sucked on MNF. Fahri apparently caught a lot of flak from inside the paper for it although he remains employed.
The best reporters there are on the sports pages. They also have one of the best sports columnists, Boswell. Wilbon’s a hypocritical windbag which again shows you what happens when previously good print media people get onto TV. It warps them badly.
Even as recently as 10 years ago, if the Post had come to me and said “we’re gonna charge you for online content” I would have gladly paid. Not anymore. The paper can rot all because of its political reporting, who it hires as political reporters and the editorial judgements (all shity) during the Cheney Administration. Fuck em.
Bubblegum Tate
@Pasquinade:
Well, she is an asshole (and proud of it).
SGEW
Say all you want about the Atlantic, but James Fallows and Ta-Nehisi Coates are just about the only bloggers that I completely trust nowadays, at least since hilzoy retired. Fallows’ criticism of the press, in particular, is incredibly savory.
[My favorite Fallows criticism of the WaPo here, for reference.]
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Woodrowfan:
That is telling. The Post has sooo desperately over the last 3 years tried to be hip, current. Hiring total incompetents like Monica Hesse to write fluff pieces aimed at presumably the 20-something hipster-doofus is a case in point. Or crud like the Celibritology section (and I like the woman who writes/manages that).
Of course a large chunk of that is online-only and presumably is reaching that target demographic. I know they sweat blood over the future of the dead tree version but they chalk all that up to people reading content online for free.
It never occurs to them that perhaps their shoddy work has something to do with it.
BFR
@Elizabelle:
Seriously, all these people need to take a hard look in the mirror when they see this stuff. As long as they continue to work at the Post, they’re part of the problem.
danimal
@Morbo: It’s too bad the only real reporting anymore occurs in the sports pages. The rest of the paper is just reworded press releases and pre-selected interviews designed to frame issues according to the whims of the editors.
Svensker
@Rock:
Some are in it for the money, but most are in it because they want to bring about the New World Order, which is so true it even has its own acronym, NWO!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Ezra has very astutely worked his career since before he had one, ie, back in the Pandagon days–it was clearly a tool for him to build a reputation/resume to gain him entre into places he wanted to work when he got out of college. In that sense, he’s no different than anybody else out there working for a buck. At some point, it comes down to is “what is good for Ezra”. Or Jane Hamsher, or Markos, etc.
Not saying that’s bad or good (okay, in Hamsher’s case, it’s appallingly bad and self-serving).
drillfork
Interesting related ongoing discussion at Digby’s. The basic question: What does the Right think the scientists have to gain by their “fraudulent” claims about climate change?
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/whats-beef-by-digby-via-left-coaster-i.html
There really is a myriad of answers to that question, but my first thought is that they’re just flat stupid enough to believe that Global Warming ain’t real. I mean, we’re about to get a shite-ton of snow in the Midwest the next couple of days. One big blizzard in December is all it takes for the Right to deny Global Warming…
Defending Yourself Against Fruit
Maybe we should all review this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piWCBOsJr-w
because this happened at The Mall of America:
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/262127/group/home/
Tea Party types are involved – You know they’re going to escalate!
Joel
What’s interesting is that Fallows’ usually sane but staunchy conservative colleague Clive Crook went full boat poutrage over “Climategate”.
Defending Yourself Against Fruit
Sorry – bad link
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/08/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5937358.shtml
Xecky Gilchrist
in a way the papers are betting their reputations with these articles.
The WaPo can bet its reputation like I can bet my umbilical cord.
ChrisS
And forget all about November.
The Grand Panjandrum
OT: I’ve just got Google Chrome for Mac and have been taking it for a test drive for about 30-40 minutes and it is pretty damn nice. Very quick and easy to navigate with and imported all my settings without a hitch. Sweet.
Elizabelle
Another odd thing about today’s Washington Post:
look at its headlines and what it spotlights online, vs. the dead tree.
I am often astonished by the takeaway line they’ll use to sum up a story. When you read further, if you do, you realize it’s not a fair summary at all.
And they’ll have all sorts of op ed headlines equating Obama with weakness, etc. in bold font.
WaPost online definitely tilts right. Not centrist or moderate.
Sad.
Doctor Science
Grand Panjandrum:
Chrome is indeed fast and sweet, but I only use for it a few sites (those where I have to see Java). Basically, I don’t trust Google not to collect Every. Single. Keystroke, “to serve you better”.
Palin/Beck 2012
Look’s like the dream team’s having a lot of media exposure today. “Violation of Fox News Policies.” I mean-I thought it was like “Calvin Ball” the rules are made up as you go along (to suit Rupert’s royal decrees of course)
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/08/beck-goldline-fo/#comments
Makewi
Serious question. How can you make the claim that AGW is settled science due to peer review when the emails reveal that the peer review process was being aggressively gamed?
Mark
The difference in coverage probably has more to do with geography than anything. Being based in Washington, the Post has to be careful about offending different political factions. The Times can be more forceful. If the issue were a financial or artistic controversy, the Post would probably be the more bold paper, while the Times would try to be more diplomatic.
Punchy
Why would you carry a zero in addition?
Lex
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
I’ve heard the rap on Ezra and on Markos; what’s your beef with Hamsher (whom, I admit, I haven’t read much lately)?
Bubblegum Tate
@drillfork:
Well, money, for starters–grants and the like. You know, the commie nazi scientists convince other commie nazi scientists that climate change is real, then they appeal to commie nazi governments for more money to continue studying the problem.
But more insidiously, it’s all just a back door into soshulist fascist commie totalitarianism. Really. I’ll let my favorite wingnut explain:
He’s not kidding in the slightest. That’s seriously what he thinks lies at the root of all this. So what do scientists have to gain from all this? Why, they get to “live in the lap of luxury” while everybody else is “forced to live short, impoverished, miserable lives.” It’s all so obvious!
thomas
Washington Post
New York Post
See any similarity?
Morbo
@drillfork: I’ve already heard my libertarian co-worker joke on the phone about how all the snow we’re about to get means there’s no global warming. I just rolled my eyes from behind the cubicle wall.
ChrisS
@Morbo:
Abstract only:
blahblahblah
Guess we know why the Washington Times was defunded. Who needs a right wing propaganda rag to compete against the Post after the Post has become a right wing propaganda rag?
lou
To be fair, the Post did run this story today about why people act so irrationally about climate change. Of course it’s in their health/science section and you really have to hunt for it on their website.
BFR
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
I’ll say it for you – it’s bad. If a scientist on Exxon’s payroll makes some great geology discovery that advances our understanding of the Earth, then we’d still conclude that on balance, that scientist was actively working to make the world a worse place.
When these folks provide rhetorical cover to WaPo, they’re making the world a worse place to live. If they don’t like it, they should find employment elsewhere.
Balconesfault
@Elizabelle: Add Barton Gellman.
Comrade Kevin
@Pasquinade:
Or Denis, for that matter.
soonergrunt
@fuckwit, 49:
Because it wasn’t “being aggressively gamed” you stupid paste-eating shit.
Most normal people realize that when small out of context snippets are selected out of massive, years-long sets of email conversations that anything can be proven by the snipper.
You know, it’s just like all that proof we have that you like to blow goats, which you’ve NEVER denied.
Original Lee
@soonergrunt: And another slam-dunk by our guy in fatigues!
Makewi
@soonergrunt:
Ha. Stick your head back in the sand. There was no out of context dodge on this one. The system was gamed, and you are an idiot for not asking more questions about why.
How about you go fuck yourself tough guy?