A Newsletter with an Eye on Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

'Both Sides' Journalism Versus the Truth on Climate Change

Why our leading newspapers still entertain dangerous nonsense on their
opinion pages

Mitch Daniels, identified as "a [Washington] Post contributing
columnist ... president of Purdue University and a former governor of
Indiana" on the Post op-ed page, is concerned about academic freedom.
He-or someone who works for him-apparently came across an article in
Scientific American

signed by 12 scientists objecting to the widely publicized views of
Steve Koonin. Its authors termed Koonin "a crank who's only taken
seriously by far-right disinformation peddlers hungry for anything they
can use to score political points," and "just another [climate
change] denier trying to sell a book," among other things.

In his Post op-ed, Daniels, who was also formerly director of the Office
of Management and Budget under George W. Bush, takes up Koonin's case.
Fortunately, he does not profess to be able to referee between the 12
scientists and Koonin, but he is concerned about the state of debate. He
allows for the possibility that the 12 scientists may "ultimately
prove right" (and therefore we are in terrible danger of making our
planet all but uninhabitable), but his real concern is with the
spectacle of "someone daring to challenge a prevailing orthodoxy
"
being confronted by an "anti-intellectual, burn-the-heretic attitude
that has infected too much of the academic and policy worlds."

It would be great if Daniels's concern indicated that we have
identified that rarest of contemporary phenomena: a living, breathing
principled conservative. Dream on, dear reader. That same fellow who is
so upset to see what he would like to believe to be "the year's most
important book" exposed as a dangerous fraud by 12 of Koonin's peers
in a publication known for its rigorous editorial standards is committed
to the very same precepts of conservative cancel culture that appear to
arise every time there's news of a faculty member teaching something
he or she doesn't like. For instance, back in January 2010, this same
Washington Post columnist-then governor of Indiana-took the occasion
of the death of the left-wing American historian Howard Zinn to demand
of his state's top educational official that he ensure that what
Daniels called Zinn's "truly execrable, anti-factual piece of
disinformation
[A People's
History of the United States] that misstates American history on every
page" not be "in use anywhere in Indiana." And if it were, he
asked, "how do we get rid of it ..." (And yes, sadly for its faculty
and students, this cancel-culture hypocrite is now president of Purdue
University, where his job is to protect the academic freedom of his
faculty.)

Climate deniers will latch on to any unavoidable uncertainty in the
science or its sources to try to discredit what we (by now) know to be
true: that our reliance on fossil fuels is making the Earth unlivable at
an ever-increasing pace. Though it makes no sense, given the global
nature of the threat and the need, therefore, of a global solution, one
right-wing response is xenophobia. Daniels complains, for instance, that
one reason he is sympathetic to this particular denier's case is that
"Researchers' deep financial ties to foreign funding sources

raise the specter of compromised security and integrity of results."

As the 12 scientists note, Koonin's case has also been advanced by yet
another Washington Post opinion writer, the infamous champion of the use
of torture, Marc Thiessen
.
His column
,
they note
,
"repeats several points Koonin makes. The first is citing the 2017
National Climate Assessment to downplay rising temperatures-but the
report's very first key finding
on the topic says
temperatures have risen, rapidly since 1979, and are the warmest in
1,500 years. The second is Thiessen quoting Koonin's use of an
outdated 2014 assessment on hurricanes to downplay climate concerns. But
the newer 2017 report finds that
human activity has
'contributed to the observed upward trend in North Atlantic hurricane
activity since the 1970s.'" What a shocker to learn that.

Thiessen is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Follow the
money, as the saying goes, and we learn from this recent study
that
"of all the conservative, climate-denying think tanks that get Koch
and other industry funding, AEI has gotten the most. It received some
$380 million to peddle industry-friendly denial like Koonin's, much of
it through dark money pass-throughs to conceal that it's coming from
conservative and dirty-energy donors."

It's not just the Post that is offering its precious space to those
who deny reputable science on behalf of conspiracy theories that serve
the needs of Republican party funders. Both Daniels's and Thiessen's
columns were of a piece with the sophisticated denialism that regularly
appears on the Times op-ed page under the byline of Bret Stephens. You
may recall that the paper's previous publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.,
chose to sully his more than two decades as publisher of the paper of
record in 2017 by lifting Stephens from the swamps of the editorial
pages of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal-where climate denial
is as intensely determined a diktat as collectivism was of Stalin's
Communist Party-and give him the most prestigious perch from which to
opine in all American journalism. There, in his first column (as I wrote
in The Nation

at the time), "ignoring the consensus opinion of virtually all
qualified climatologists, Stephens wondered about the 'ideological
intentions' of those who demand that we act before it's too late.
Offering no specific examples, he accused 'the climate-advocacy
community' of 'convey[ing] the impression' that the steps required
to avoid catastrophe are 'not just necessary, but relatively
straightforward and affordable.'" Typical of climate deniers,
Stephens was dishonest about the numbers. As I wrote back then, "In
fact, as a 2011 International Energy Agency report explained, 'for
every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the
power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent
after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.'"

(We note also that the enormous costs involved with even attempting to
address the costs of climate change are rarely considered by the denial
industry. For instance, the 12 Scientific American scientists note that
"a study published recently found that because climate change has
caused sea levels to rise, Superstorm Sandy flooded an additional 36,000
homes , impacting
71,000 people who would've been safe otherwise, and caused $8 billion
in additional damage. How many people are suffering, and paying in
health care costs
because of fossil fuels isn't the kind of thing Steve Koonin thinks
you should worry about, though.")

Some Times readers objected when Stephens's hiring was initially
announced. Sulzberger pooh-poohed their concerns, lecturing them that he
and then-editorial page editor James Bennet "believe that this kind
of debate, by challenging our assumptions and forcing us to think harder
about our positions, sharpens all our work and benefits our readers."
Well, yes, that would be great, but the problem, long before Donald
Trump arrived on the political scene, is that it has been almost
impossible for conservatives to make arguments that adhere both to the
truth and to the political precepts of the Republican Party, its base,
and its funders. The insistence on privileging a commitment to
presenting "both sides" over truth has led us to the precipice of
allowing a dangerous, deluded cult to destroy both our planet and our
democracy with the imprimatur of our most prestigious media properties.
(Bennet, hardly coincidentally, lost his job for allowing the page to
publish a flat-out call for fascist state violence.) In doing so, these
papers disservice their readers and shame themselves and their papers'
legacies.

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Speaking, yet again, of the horrors of conservative culture, I've not
seen any right-wing champions of free speech complain of the case of
Nikole Hannah-Jones . The most recent
chapter in this sad case appears to be a cancellation of her speech

by the Middlesex School, a private school in Concord, Massachusetts,
scheduled in celebration of Black History Month. The school's head
said he was "concerned" that "individuals from outside our
community might inadvertently distract from the insights and perspective
that she intended to share." Shorter version: We decided to cave to
purposeful intimidation.

If you want to know why this newsletter considers Bruce Springsteen to
be not merely the greatest performer in the history of rock 'n'
roll, but among the greatest performers of any task by anyone, ever-a
ridiculous assertion, I know, but I'll stand by it as it is not only
unprovable but also un-disprovable-here are
five minutes and ten seconds of evidence.
The performance took place at the 1979 "No Nukes" show. I was there
and I wrote about it (and its literally religious significance) a bit
here
.
Throw in this wonderful performance by
James Taylor and Carly Simon from what looks like the same set of shows,
and you might come away with the impression that the '70s did not
totally suck. Alas, they totally did, but we can at least thank
Altercation comrade Danny Goldberg for the No Nukes movie
that preserved these memories.
You can show Danny some love by buying his new book, out next week,
Bloody Crossroads 2020: Art, Entertainment, and Resistance to Trump
,
and also learn a great deal about said topic. (And whatever you do,
don't confuse it with this crazy thing
!)

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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