Slanting media coverage toward promoting the “fight global warming” cause wasn’t enough for Newsweek editor Sharon Begley. Now she has brazenly dismissed global warming skeptics as unreasonable lunatics.
Begley, a senior editor for the magazine, recently defended its August 13 issue [1]that focused on the climate change “denial machine.” On the new The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media Web site, Begley compared global-warming skepticism to moon-landing denial.
When asked if journalists should be more interpretive or analytical in their climate change reporting Begley said, [2]“It depends …When you cover the history of the space program, you don't quote the percentage of Americans who think the moon landings took place on a stage in Arizona.”
The August 13 report written by Begley described global-warming skepticism as a “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry [that] has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.”
Begley reiterated her blatant bias in an online chat hosted by Newsweek. She dismissed skepticism in a question that asked how [3]“responsible media [can] best meet their ‘fairness/accuracy/'balance’ responsibilities in dealing with climate change deniers.”
“[M]e, I don't do he said/she said, but delve into the arguments and see which has empirical merit,” Begley wrote. “It's not that hard.”
The idea of using outlandish analogies to defend biased global-warming reporting is not an original concept. CBS’s [4]Scott Pelley compared global-warming skepticism to Holocaust denial on March 23 when he posed the question: “If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?”