““Not Grounded In Facts”: Environmental Journalism Veterans Slam Wall Street Journal Editorial Board“
As if environment journalists could recognize a fact even if it leapt up and bit them on the buttocks, especially when it comes to “glowbull warming”.
The head of North America’s leading association of environmental journalists and several environmental journalism professors with years of experience in the field are criticizing The Wall Street Journal editorial page’s decades-long history of undermining scientific facts and consensus to dismiss environmental threats.
Using phrases like “disingenuous,” “misleading,” and “dangerous,” some of the nation’s top scientific news instructors and veteran reporters weighed in with harsh comments on the Journal’s practices.
The science journalism veterans reacted to a lengthy report on the Journal editorial page’s poor record with regard to environmental issues posted today by Media Matters. The report shows a history of the Journal editorial board distorting facts to downplay concerns about issues ranging from the ozone layer to acid rain.
Notably, the Journal continues to cast doubt on the fact that human activities are contributing to climate change in the face of a strong scientific consensus driven by abundant evidence. Following the pattern they used in responding to previous environmental threats, the paper has downplayed this consensus, claimed that fixing any potential problem is too expensive, and attacked those seeking to fix the problem as motivated by politics, not science.
