Comments on: Burned by the Press http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/07/25/burned-by-the-press/ Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:09:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Anna Haynes http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/07/25/burned-by-the-press/#comment-80195 Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:53:22 +0000 http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/?p=12112#comment-80195 Along similar lines, last week I sent this email to NYTimes public editor Clark Hoyt:

Four times in the last year, the Times has run a story on the western
forests’ bark beetle devastation that fails to tell the casual reader
that climate change is the most likely cause. The last three of the
four appear to have involved end-runs by the National Desk around
Erica Goode’s Environment pod – i.e. National finds an excuse to write
about the beetles, they apply a headline that doesn’t mention climate
change (or – with Jim Robbins’s July 7 article – is actively
misleading), and, if climate is mentioned at all in the story, it’s
down around paragraph 15.

Please, for the sake of future Times readers and of the paper’s
long-term reputation, consider addressing how these dual issues (“beat
hijacking” and “reader duping” (or consummate carelessness; you be the
judge)) have turned the New York Times news pages into a locus of
agnogenesis regarding what’s likely to become the most important
problem facing our civilization this century.

And if you’re _not_ going to address it, could you please say so?
Clarity is good.

The four stories I’m aware of are:
* Jim Robbins, “Some See Beetle Attacks on Western Forests as a Natural
Event” – July 7, 2009
* Jim Robbins, “A House in the Woods, After the Woods Are Gone” – July 2, 2009
* Kirk Johnson, “Beetles Add New Dynamic to Forest Fire Control
Efforts”, June 28, 2009
* Jim Robbins, “Bark Beetles Kill Millions of Acres of Trees in West” -
Nov. 17,2008

Thank you.

]]> By: Kyle http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/07/25/burned-by-the-press/#comment-80194 Sun, 26 Jul 2009 05:35:58 +0000 http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/?p=12112#comment-80194 And they systematically get it wrong on the energy economics debate:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/05/07/media-coverage-climate-economics-pooley/

I almost wonder if the climate movement would have more success if stopped campaigning for clean energy and instead spent just as much effort campaigning for more independent media and public campaign financing.

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