I was hoping (naively) the glow-in-the dark "green" bias at the American Chemical Society's Chemical & Engineering News was limited to Madeleine Jacobs (chief editor) and Bette Hileman (senior editor).
But, alas, it also extends to Rudy Baum (managing editor). And Rudy is unapologetic. In his editorial titled "Overrated Objectivity," Rudy writes "the quest for perfect objectivity actually damages contemporary journalism." Huh?
He goes on to say "A critic might respond that a reporter should simply present both sides of a story and let the reader (or viewer) come to his or her own conclusions...But this leads to problems..."
And the problem Rudy cites is absurd.
Rudy recalls "the first big story" of his career covering the challenge in federal court to the Arkansas' law requiring creationism to be taught in public school science. Rudy was dismayed when a reporter, after interviewing both one of the world's preeminent paleontologists and a scientist defending creationism, turned to the camera and said in effect "Eminent scientists disagree."
According to Rudy, the right thing for the reporter to do would have been, somehow, to promote the credibility of the paleontologist at the expense of the scientist defending creationism. After all, obviously the paleontologist was right.
While I do not subscribe to creationist views, it was not the journalist's job to decide who was right and who was wrong, and then shape the story accordingly. That's opinion, not news. And if I want opinion, I'll turn to the editorial pages or watch commentary. But I expect the news to be--well--the news. Nothing more, nothing less.
But up to this point, Rudy's editorial was harmless blather.
Rudy's story was really the setup for Chemical & Engineering News' excuse for its grossly biased coverage of the global warming controversy. Rudy wrote,
...In the case of the global climate, critics of our coverage maintain we don't present the views of the handful of scientists who publicly disagree that humans are affecting Earth's climate. But we have reported that critics exist, and we've reported their views when their criticism has been published in peer-reviewed journals or presented at scientific meetings.
No we do not give critics of global climate change the same amount of ink we give the far larger number of scientists who think global climate change is real. Quite bluntly, they don't deserve it. They are a tiny minority whose analysis of the available data is rejected by the vast majority of the scientists who have reviewed that data. As good journalists, we acknowledge the critics existence, and then move on to cover the dramatic story that is unfolding around us.
So now we know why Chemical & Engineering News is so biased on the climate change issue--objectivity is overrated!
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