I went back and forth yesterday with NYTimes op-ed page staff over Swamp King Trent Lott’s failure to disclose his conflicts of interest in his NYTimes op-ed advocating for a carbon tax. What an experience.
Read yesterday’s post for background.
After I posted yesterday’s piece, I came across this PRNewswire media release about Lott’s new group, Americans for Carbon Dividends.
Here’s the disclosure of corporate funding that was offered in the media release:
None of this disclosure was made in yesterday’s NYTimes op-ed. None. Zero. Despite NYTimes policy (check out yesterday’s post for details).
So I alerted the NYTimes op-ed page. Basically, the NYTimes had a difficult time understanding that Lott being paid by the solar, wind and nuclear industries to lobby for a CO2 tax was a conflict of interest that should have been disclosed according to NYTimes policy. You can read the e-mail exchange here. It’s worth the click.
In the end, I won this correction:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Yes, that is a pretty lame correction. Not only does it fail to mention that Lott was hired by the wind, solar and nuclear industries, Lott and co-author John Breaux have not been hired as mere behind-the-scenes lobbyists, but they have been hired to be the public face of the group.
There was also a related NYTimes news article yesterday about Lott’s group.
Not only is there no mention of the group’s nuke/solar/wind funding, the article misled readers by implying funding support from Big Oil:
When I contacted NYTimes reporter and article author John Schwartz about the problem, his response was to attack me:
Ironically, the NYTimes saw fit to make this correction to Schwartz’s article:
So the NYTimes is careful about the sensitivities of the Nature Conservancy. But no so much about the reality of the rentseekers behind “Americans for Carbon Dividends.”
As I remarked to the NYTimes op-ed page:
Well… imagine that that op-ed opposed a CO2 tax and imagine the unlikely case that the NYTimes ran it… would you let them get away without mentioning that they were being paid by big corporations to advocate against a CO2 tax?