2007-08-05 Newsweek's Climate Editorial Screed Violates Basic Standards of Journalism

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Newsweek Magazine's cover story of August 13, 2007 entitled, "The Truth About Denial" contains very little that could actually be considered balanced, objective or fair by journalistic standards. (LINK)

The one-sided editorial, masquerading as a "news article," was written by Sharon Begley with Eve Conant, Sam Stein and Eleanor Clift and Matthew Philips and purports to examine the "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change."

The only problem is -- Newsweek knew better. Reporter Eve Conant, who interviewed Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee, was given all the latest data proving conclusively that it is the proponents of man-made global warming fears that enjoy a monumental funding advantage over the skeptics. (A whopping $50 BILLION to a paltry $19 MILLION and some change for skeptics – Yes, that is BILLION to MILLION - see below)

This week's "news article" in Newsweek follows the Magazine's October 23, 2006 article which admitted the error of their ways in the 1970's when they predicted dire global cooling. (See: Senator Inhofe Credited For Prompting Newsweek Admission of Error on 70's Predictions of Coming Ice Age – LINK)

  • To investigate:
    • Where did they get those dollar figures from? (How much do you want to bet they're trying to claim the entire budget of the UN as "global warming advocacy"?) The only backup for this claim seems to be an article by noted Australian denialist Bob Carter, which makes the claim without any backup, and a $30 billion figure from an article on the Fox News web site which cites that amount for "climate- and alternative energy-related research" – as if all such research is automatically advocacy of global warming (are they admitting their awareness that true research does in fact show the validity of GW, so any scientific research is essentially advocacy?) and as if research on any topic could be equated to advocacy of that research's findings.




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