What has the Columbia Journalism Review learned from the campaign it waged with Chris Mooney (see immediately previous post) to disallow scientific evidence against massive man-caused global warming? What have "media experts" at Harvard and MIT learned from the efforts to disallow the critics from being heard?
Why, at a seminar last week on "Scientists, Skeptics and the Media" they learned that media must be even more ardent in support of the alarmist viewpoint. No one seems to have considered the possibility that the skeptics might have a case deserving of coverage.
Mooney is a sometime Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Philip J. Hilts, professor of "science journalism" and the current head of the Knight program (presumably funded with money from the Knight newspaper chain's charitable arm), covers the seminar for the CJR.
"Like doctors gathered around the operating table in mid-surgery, a group of media experts at Harvard yesterday offered their diagnoses of the ailing body of journalism. The symptom: a surprising decline in public belief that climate change is real or important."
The journalist-doctors go on to offer one idea after another on how to convince the public that its growing skepticism is a mistake. Only a small group in the population are true skeptics, after all. And the way to restore a proper sense of alarm among the others might be to tie climate change to people's personal health concerns....Etc.
A comment on the CJR blog by "JLD" makes the pertinent response:
"I have to say it takes a great deal of chutzpah -- or perhaps cluelessness -- to examine the drop in public trust in climate science without once mentioning Climategate or the very real scandals that are now plaguing this 'settled science.'
"Let's make a short tally: Phil Jones dismissed from office, and facing possible legal action; Michael 'hockey puck' Mann under investigation; the IPCC reports riddled with falsehoods. And now Rajendra Pachaur (the IPCC head with numerous conflicts of interest) is suggesting that critics (including Greenpeace) should go rub their faces with asbestos. What a great guy to have as your representative. Good thing he can't be voted out of office.
"But being a recent graduate of the Kennedy School I would expect nothing less than a complete whitewash of anything that offends liberal sensibilities. By all means keep 'fighting back' against the 'denialists' -- it might feel good, but it won't convince anyone outside of Harvard Square."
