I'm not hating on the US. I know the UK libel laws are different. I'm just pointing out that, even the US, there are exceptions to freedom of speech. Every country does it differently, but the most important thing is that the government can't persecute you for what you say. e.g. critising it.
I don't know how they do things in the UK, but in the US many people in the film industry went to jail for being a member of the Communist Party, or for refusing to testify about it, or refusing to testify about the political activities of their friends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Recently, a kerfuffle erupted over the Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel's appointed school board member, Deborah Quazzo. First the Sun Times detailed how several companies she invests in profit from business with CPS. Then, in a separate piece the Sun Times editorial board suggested she should step down because she invested in companies that do millions of dollars of business with the Board and with individual schools. Quazzo insists she has done nothing wrong and followed all ethical guidelines, and the Sun Times editorial board agrees, but nonetheless suggests she should step down.
For me, the real story is with the types of companies Quazzo invests in, along with the types of companies attracted to the educational investment conference she hosts in Arizona every year. Nearly every company presenting at the conference sells software or digital platforms. "Edtech" has been the rage for years now, and it's only getting hotter.
On a surface level this makes sense. We live in a digital age, and most people in education have heard the claims of our students being "digital natives", having grown up submerged and surrounded in technology. The claim is that because today's children have access to technology they learn differently. I have yet to find any scientific evidence proving this, and I've read enough to throw cold water on the claim.
teachers have "so much to do" and "not enough time to teach", which is why they should put our students on their digital platform, where they can get assistance from a live teacher online.
I was perplexed: What's wrong with the flesh-and-blood teacher in front of them? And who is this person that will communicate directly with our children? What are their credentials? Are they working in a call-center in a "right-to-work" state?
The real problem with all of these companies is that they claim they are revolutionizing education. They're not. Many sell nothing more than test-prep software. Their products show "gains" on the ACT and NWEA MAP because their product mimics the test format. The learning gains don't necessarily transfer to the real world, or last much longer than the end of the school year. Parents might wonder why teachers agree to use the test-prep software, but the fact so much is riding on high-stakes tests, even the most ethical and dedicated educator will make compromises.
I lived during the Vietnam war, I opposed the war, I had friends who were in the armed forces, and I didn't hate them.
Maybe not, but the notion of Vietnam veterans being spit on, harassed, etc when they came home was certainly a popular tale when I was growing up,
I heard a story about that on NPR's "On the Media." I thought it was bullshit. They looked up newspaper stories in Nexis. They never got a first-hand account. They never identified anybody with names and dates. It was all second-hand or vague third-hand accounts. It's a very attractive right-wing propaganda line to say that left-wing hippies were spitting on troops. But there was no evidence it ever happened. It's like a Rush Limbaugh story.
Think about it. A trained solder comes back from Vietnam, and you spit on him. What do you think is going to happen to you? He's going to kick your ass.
enough that people were very vocal during the early 90s Gulf War that, even if they opposed the war itself, that they still supported the troops and wanted to note that the anti-war crowd wouldn't make the mistakes of the Vietnam era. Many a news station ran reports that soldiers from engagements in the 90s and 00s were better treated than those from the 70s, enough that "support our troops" has become a very popular battlecry on both sides of the aisle.
That was a marketing decision. One of the effective right-wing attacks on the anti-war movement was the false claim that they "hate our troops," or that "if you oppose the war you don't support our troops." So this time the anti-war movement pre-empted that attack with the position, "support the troops, not the war." So for example Al Franken went to Iraq with the USO.
I think they overdid it. There were no WMDs, so the justification for the Iraq war was a lie. Those of us who opposed the war saw that from the beginning. It was obvious. The Iraqi troops had a responsibility to think before they signed up, and they failed. How could you be so stupid as to fall for a propaganda line like that? How could you follow a draft-dodger like George W. Bush into war? Before you pick up a gun and start killing people, don't you have a responsibility to know what's going on?
We killed about 500,000 Iraqis, most of them civilians, we became torturers, we destroyed one of the most stable, successful, secular economies in the region, we left it in ruins, we turned it over to al Qaeda, we gave al Qaeda propaganda cause and a stepping stone to Syria, and now they're attacking us in Europe. Really, how could you be so stupid?
Apparently you didn't read the article either. What did you think of his analysis of the "Serengeti" strategy?
I don't know where you got the idea that I didn't read the article, since I did.
I used to read the "other side" in the Wall Street Journal editorial page, STATS, and a few other places, and Mann's description sounds correct. It was an ad hominem attack, and they were piling on to a few individuals with harassing lawsuits.
They had conservatives with no training in atmospheric science. Sometimes these conservative think tanks or publications would assign an intern who had just graduated with an economics or political science degree to write an article as one of his first assignments.
They were going through thousands of pages selecting quotes out of context, as Mann described, and misinterpreting terms. It's a lot easier to pick out "gotcha" quotes than it is to go through thousands of articles and understand the merits of the issues.
Too bad you wasted your efforts in a foolish cause. The Vietnam war was another war that was based on a lie. LBJ told us that if Vietnam fell, the rest of SE Asia would fall like dominoes. We lost, and the dominoes didn't fall. Now the Vietnamese are making our sneakers. (And publishing articles in our medical journals.) We killed at least 1 million (maybe 3 million) Vietnamese in the process. I don't think that's anything to be proud of.
It's not my memory that's selective, it's my respect for the troops that's selective. I knew troops from Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I got along with them great. I would serve with them if I could -- in an enterprise with a better purpose.
Of course there were always some right wingers who didn't think we had a right to speak out against the war. I wonder what they thought they were fighting for. I didn't love them, but I wouldn't say I hated them. My Quaker friends taught me not to hate anybody.
What's your point? That's he's working as a political strategist, but not getting paid? It's pretty clear that the article is about political strategy not science, and it's pretty clear the article is by Michael Mann.
The point is that part of a scientist's job is political strategy, always has been, and there's nothing wrong or nefarious about it.
Political strategist? His "strategy" is to communicate with the public about science. It's not like he is planning out press releases and talking points and media buys. This is not some Karl Rove or David Plouff.
Apparently you didn't read the article? It's essentially discussing a certain political strategy, and then suggesting ways to counter-act it. That is Mann working as a political strategist.
Yes, Mann's political strategy is to counter lies by telling the truth.
First, it's to tell the truth in his scientific papers; second, it's to tell the truth again in a more accessible form in the public debate.
That's what scientists have been doing since at least Galileo's time.
So are you saying U.S. soldiers did nothing wrong when they raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, and poisoned food stocks?
Or are you saying it's wrong, but we shouldn't talk about it?
Why does opposition to war automatically mean you're anti-military and vilifying soldiers?
Nobody ever said that it does, and there are many people today who oppose our nation's current overseas adventures but support the troops. However, back during 'Nam, that wasn't true, and those who opposed the war (mostly because they didn't want to be drafted) constantly showed their hatred of anybody in the US Armed Forces.
I call bullshit. Prove it.
I lived during the Vietnam war, I opposed the war, I had friends who were in the armed forces, and I didn't hate them.
Our opposition to the war had nothing to do with not wanting to be drafted. We didn't want to serve in a military that was oppressing other people.
You may be confusing us with Dick Cheney.
Incidentally, since you're judging others from such a high horse, when did you serve and what battle ribbons did you earn? Or perhaps you didn't serve at all.
Police deal mostly with the bad guys, who _are_ the enemy.
Cameras should be on any time the officer is on duty.
Actually, when a cop walks down the street, most of the people he passes by are innocent citizens.
If you look at the stop and frisk statistics that came out in the lawsuits in New York City, something like 95% of the people who were stopped and frisked turned out to be innocent, and most of the remaining 5% were small time pot busts.
Of course, most of the cops were treating innocent civilians as if they were the bad guys, slamming them up against the wall, barking orders and insults at them, etc.
- To adopt a law for this is too strong. But I think the ethical rules of the press must be defined in a better manner, where one agrees some ethical and moral values so that no one feels offended. It would be better for society, says Chilwan.
He's asking the press to do what the New York Times decided to do itself. They didn't print any offensive cartoons either. What's the problem with that?
I agree this is probably true. But it's not a bad idea, it's a good idea. Specifically, it's called capitalism.
Good channels survive.
Capitalism isn't so great. It meets the wishes of the people with the most money to spend. If you have a lot of money to spend, OK. If you don't they could care less. This tends to squeeze out minorities.
On commercial TV, for example, the children's shows had to be tailored to the needs of advertisers, That meant pushing a lot of toys, sugared breakfast cereal, etc. They tended to be violent because that caught the kids' attention. They showed upscale suburban kids because that was the audience that bought the most of what they were selling.
The government had to come in by paying for Children's Television Workshop to get non-commercial programs like Sesame Street that were designed by teachers rather than marketing departments.
For the 30 years that I was reading the WSJ, the editorial page had a lot of stupid opinion pieces. They regularly printed a good letter in response. I got the impression that they didn't do it as regularly in the last few years, but I can't be sure. I don't know whether they published a letter in response to Metaxas' editorial. I think they should print a response. I don't think you can argue that they should print a specific guy's letter. They get thousands of letters a day. They can't print them all.
Actually, there is a right of reply. It's not a law, but it's a standard journalistic practice, and it's in every newspaper style book I've ever seen (including the New York Times style book).
The practice has to do with a specific person (or, maybe, formal organization) that has been criticized or accused of something. Claiming it applies to every opinion or idea printed in the newspaper is moronic.
There is a stronger right of response to a specific attack, but in the 30 years that I was reading the WSJ, before Murdoch took over, whenever they quoted somebody on one side of an argument, they would quote someone on the other side of the argument. If they quoted somebody saying welfare mothers were lazy, they would quote a welfare mother defending herself from the charge. If they quoted somebody saying FDA drug regulations were too strict, they would quote somebody else saying that they weren't too strict.
That's a common practice in journalism. That's the way I tell good journalism from bad. Science magazine, or the New Scientist, for example, do the same thing. DemocracyNow does the same thing.
The point is, it is very doubtful that the WaPo or any other similar papers, who have vowed to not publish material contrary to Global Warming Consensus, will print opinions that clearly contradict the prevailing AGW narrative despite the author's impeccable credentials.
I don't believe it's happened yet even though both are rather prolific authors.
Here's a lesson in scientific method. You form a hypothesis that the Washington Post won't print opinions by Judith Curry or Roy Spencer. You can test that hypothesis by searching for their names in the Washington Post. In fact, they do. Here's the first of a large number:
Good information doesn't necessarily sell unfortunatley. I'm willing to bet the WSJ editors have a much better understanding of what sells, and are activley using on that information. People looking for good, accurate information will probably get access to it for free.
At least up to the 1980s, the WSJ used to target the American elite -- every congressional office subscribed, corporate executives and top lawyers read it, and anyone else (like leftist revolutionaries) who wanted a free ride into what was going on in the halls of power and on the street. I could be wrong, but I think their circulation was 100,000, and they could get premium advertising dollar. They were run by the Bankroft (sp?) family, who according to insiders just hired the best editors they could get and told them to publish the best paper they could. The family was wealthy and the paper was very profitable. So they were free to do whatever they wanted. Who cared what sells? They were turning out the best journalism they could. And it was very good. You can read their old stories on the Pulitzer Prize web site.
Good, accurate information did sell. I bought it.
Then the phenomenal profitability tapered off, and the next generation of Bankrofts wanted to increase their profits and didn't have that dedication to great journalism.
First, they increased the circulation to something over 1 million. So instead of hard-hitting stories on coal mine fatalities or welfare, they started filling up additional sections with fluff on how to buy handbags. They weren't writing for that 100,000 elite any more, but for the 1 million broader circulation.
Then, Rupert Murdoch made his offer. He was the most unscrupulous scumbag in journalism, and he wanted the WSJ for its respectability. (Of course nothing could damage the WSJ's credibility more than having Murdoch own it.)
So now you can't trust the WSJ any more, because everything goes through Murdoch's right-wing partisan editors, like the Supreme Court.
One of the WSJ's best stories was a series they did during the Murdoch takeover on Murdoch's sordid history, and about the Bankroft family. I guess the editors and reporters figured they weren't going to be around much longer, so this was their moment to tell it all. For example, they pointed out that Murdoch agreed to have his newspapers ignore human rights abuses in China, in order to get an entry into China for his cable system.
You can't get that kind of stuff free on the Internet. The WSJ used to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees to get freedom of information requests from government agencies. They would send a reporter to Peru for an interview. They would spend 100 hours or more on one of those stories. They would interview dozens of people. They would hire people with good salaries who didn't have to worry about anything except doing their job.
Now, the people who write stuff on the rare paying blogs, like Scientific American's, or articles in Slate, get about $200-250 a story. You can't do any significant research for that kind of money.
So we can look forward to the Washington Post publishing stuff from Judith Curry or Roy Spencer?
Judith Curry and Roy Spencer are real scientists who studied physics and chemistry and all that hard stuff and publish papers in legitimate peer-reviewed journals. Maybe they're wrong but when we have to make decisions as important as this we need to consider every possibility. And at least they know what they're talking about.
Eric Metaxas made a good career for himself telling evangelical Christians what they want to hear. He seems to have gotten in over his head when he writes about science.
His WSJ piece argues the argument for the existence of God that I heard in my History 101-102 class when we studied the 19th century debates between science and religion. There's a name for it -- I think it's called "argument from design" or "argument from coincidence." (Can some philosophy major help me out here?) It's a nice argument because when you think about it, it's easy for anyone who took Physics 101-102 (or anyone who read the chapter on Darwin) to refute.
The argument is that the earth must obviously have been designed for humans, because if it was slightly different, a little closer to or farther away from the sun, humans couldn't survive. The answer to that is that there are billions and billions of galaxies, with trillions and trillions of planets, so even if only one in a million planets has the conditions for life, you'll still have life created all over the universe.
So because it is labeled as "opinion" it has the right to be blatantly false to the point of being an obvious lie and yet never be questionned ?
The WSJ editorial page was full of articles that were blatantly false to the point of being an obvious lie. That was their stock in trade. They're conservatives, after all.
The convention in journalism, which is what the WSJ used to practice before Murdoch, is to print a rebuttal. It shows that you're trying to be fair, and you want the people who disagree with you to keep buying your paper.
There is no right of reply or requirement for any journalistic body in the US to print any opposing view point for anything, so why is this newsworthy?
Actually, there is a right of reply. It's not a law, but it's a standard journalistic practice, and it's in every newspaper style book I've ever seen (including the New York Times style book). The WSJ used to apply that rule religiously, until Murdoch took over. If they had a news story attacking socialism, they would get a response from a socialist.
The reason is, good information is valuable (and sells). A news story that gets both sides is more informative and useful than a news story that gets only one side.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not hating on the US. I know the UK libel laws are different. I'm just pointing out that, even the US, there are exceptions to freedom of speech. Every country does it differently, but the most important thing is that the government can't persecute you for what you say. e.g. critising it.
I don't know how they do things in the UK, but in the US many people in the film industry went to jail for being a member of the Communist Party, or for refusing to testify about it, or refusing to testify about the political activities of their friends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So in a country where criticism of religion is illegal, there is freedom of speech, because religion != the government?
And art. In a country where the government censors art, music or theater that it doesn't like, there is still freedom of speech.
Speech that is abusive or incites hatred is one of the things things that is limited.
Who decides when speech is abusive or incites hatred?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Better Learning Through Expensive Software
Michael Beyer
12/29/2014
Recently, a kerfuffle erupted over the Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel's appointed school board member, Deborah Quazzo. First the Sun Times detailed how several companies she invests in profit from business with CPS. Then, in a separate piece the Sun Times editorial board suggested she should step down because she invested in companies that do millions of dollars of business with the Board and with individual schools. Quazzo insists she has done nothing wrong and followed all ethical guidelines, and the Sun Times editorial board agrees, but nonetheless suggests she should step down.
For me, the real story is with the types of companies Quazzo invests in, along with the types of companies attracted to the educational investment conference she hosts in Arizona every year. Nearly every company presenting at the conference sells software or digital platforms. "Edtech" has been the rage for years now, and it's only getting hotter.
On a surface level this makes sense. We live in a digital age, and most people in education have heard the claims of our students being "digital natives", having grown up submerged and surrounded in technology. The claim is that because today's children have access to technology they learn differently. I have yet to find any scientific evidence proving this, and I've read enough to throw cold water on the claim.
teachers have "so much to do" and "not enough time to teach", which is why they should put our students on their digital platform, where they can get assistance from a live teacher online.
I was perplexed: What's wrong with the flesh-and-blood teacher in front of them? And who is this person that will communicate directly with our children? What are their credentials? Are they working in a call-center in a "right-to-work" state?
The real problem with all of these companies is that they claim they are revolutionizing education. They're not. Many sell nothing more than test-prep software. Their products show "gains" on the ACT and NWEA MAP because their product mimics the test format. The learning gains don't necessarily transfer to the real world, or last much longer than the end of the school year. Parents might wonder why teachers agree to use the test-prep software, but the fact so much is riding on high-stakes tests, even the most ethical and dedicated educator will make compromises.
We have plenty of evidence that it happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I lived during the Vietnam war, I opposed the war, I had friends who were in the armed forces, and I didn't hate them.
Maybe not, but the notion of Vietnam veterans being spit on, harassed, etc when they came home was certainly a popular tale when I was growing up,
I heard a story about that on NPR's "On the Media." I thought it was bullshit. They looked up newspaper stories in Nexis. They never got a first-hand account. They never identified anybody with names and dates. It was all second-hand or vague third-hand accounts. It's a very attractive right-wing propaganda line to say that left-wing hippies were spitting on troops. But there was no evidence it ever happened. It's like a Rush Limbaugh story.
Think about it. A trained solder comes back from Vietnam, and you spit on him. What do you think is going to happen to you? He's going to kick your ass.
enough that people were very vocal during the early 90s Gulf War that, even if they opposed the war itself, that they still supported the troops and wanted to note that the anti-war crowd wouldn't make the mistakes of the Vietnam era. Many a news station ran reports that soldiers from engagements in the 90s and 00s were better treated than those from the 70s, enough that "support our troops" has become a very popular battlecry on both sides of the aisle.
That was a marketing decision. One of the effective right-wing attacks on the anti-war movement was the false claim that they "hate our troops," or that "if you oppose the war you don't support our troops." So this time the anti-war movement pre-empted that attack with the position, "support the troops, not the war." So for example Al Franken went to Iraq with the USO.
I think they overdid it. There were no WMDs, so the justification for the Iraq war was a lie. Those of us who opposed the war saw that from the beginning. It was obvious. The Iraqi troops had a responsibility to think before they signed up, and they failed. How could you be so stupid as to fall for a propaganda line like that? How could you follow a draft-dodger like George W. Bush into war? Before you pick up a gun and start killing people, don't you have a responsibility to know what's going on?
We killed about 500,000 Iraqis, most of them civilians, we became torturers, we destroyed one of the most stable, successful, secular economies in the region, we left it in ruins, we turned it over to al Qaeda, we gave al Qaeda propaganda cause and a stepping stone to Syria, and now they're attacking us in Europe. Really, how could you be so stupid?
Apparently you didn't read the article either. What did you think of his analysis of the "Serengeti" strategy?
I don't know where you got the idea that I didn't read the article, since I did.
I used to read the "other side" in the Wall Street Journal editorial page, STATS, and a few other places, and Mann's description sounds correct. It was an ad hominem attack, and they were piling on to a few individuals with harassing lawsuits.
They had conservatives with no training in atmospheric science. Sometimes these conservative think tanks or publications would assign an intern who had just graduated with an economics or political science degree to write an article as one of his first assignments.
They were going through thousands of pages selecting quotes out of context, as Mann described, and misinterpreting terms. It's a lot easier to pick out "gotcha" quotes than it is to go through thousands of articles and understand the merits of the issues.
Too bad you wasted your efforts in a foolish cause. The Vietnam war was another war that was based on a lie. LBJ told us that if Vietnam fell, the rest of SE Asia would fall like dominoes. We lost, and the dominoes didn't fall. Now the Vietnamese are making our sneakers. (And publishing articles in our medical journals.) We killed at least 1 million (maybe 3 million) Vietnamese in the process. I don't think that's anything to be proud of.
It's not my memory that's selective, it's my respect for the troops that's selective. I knew troops from Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I got along with them great. I would serve with them if I could -- in an enterprise with a better purpose.
Of course there were always some right wingers who didn't think we had a right to speak out against the war. I wonder what they thought they were fighting for. I didn't love them, but I wouldn't say I hated them. My Quaker friends taught me not to hate anybody.
What's your point? That's he's working as a political strategist, but not getting paid? It's pretty clear that the article is about political strategy not science, and it's pretty clear the article is by Michael Mann.
The point is that part of a scientist's job is political strategy, always has been, and there's nothing wrong or nefarious about it.
Political strategist? His "strategy" is to communicate with the public about science. It's not like he is planning out press releases and talking points and media buys. This is not some Karl Rove or David Plouff.
Apparently you didn't read the article? It's essentially discussing a certain political strategy, and then suggesting ways to counter-act it. That is Mann working as a political strategist.
Yes, Mann's political strategy is to counter lies by telling the truth.
First, it's to tell the truth in his scientific papers; second, it's to tell the truth again in a more accessible form in the public debate.
That's what scientists have been doing since at least Galileo's time.
So are you saying U.S. soldiers did nothing wrong when they raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, and poisoned food stocks?
Or are you saying it's wrong, but we shouldn't talk about it?
Why does opposition to war automatically mean you're anti-military and vilifying soldiers?
Nobody ever said that it does, and there are many people today who oppose our nation's current overseas adventures but support the troops. However, back during 'Nam, that wasn't true, and those who opposed the war (mostly because they didn't want to be drafted) constantly showed their hatred of anybody in the US Armed Forces.
I call bullshit. Prove it.
I lived during the Vietnam war, I opposed the war, I had friends who were in the armed forces, and I didn't hate them.
Our opposition to the war had nothing to do with not wanting to be drafted. We didn't want to serve in a military that was oppressing other people.
You may be confusing us with Dick Cheney.
Incidentally, since you're judging others from such a high horse, when did you serve and what battle ribbons did you earn? Or perhaps you didn't serve at all.
Police deal mostly with the bad guys, who _are_ the enemy.
Cameras should be on any time the officer is on duty.
Actually, when a cop walks down the street, most of the people he passes by are innocent citizens.
If you look at the stop and frisk statistics that came out in the lawsuits in New York City, something like 95% of the people who were stopped and frisked turned out to be innocent, and most of the remaining 5% were small time pot busts.
Of course, most of the cops were treating innocent civilians as if they were the bad guys, slamming them up against the wall, barking orders and insults at them, etc.
Apparently LAPD regards LA as a wartime battlefield, with the public as the enemy by default.
It's like a turkey shoot, with us as the turkeys.
- To adopt a law for this is too strong. But I think the ethical rules of the press must be defined in a better manner, where one agrees some ethical and moral values so that no one feels offended. It would be better for society, says Chilwan.
He's asking the press to do what the New York Times decided to do itself. They didn't print any offensive cartoons either. What's the problem with that?
I agree this is probably true. But it's not a bad idea, it's a good idea. Specifically, it's called capitalism.
Good channels survive.
Capitalism isn't so great. It meets the wishes of the people with the most money to spend. If you have a lot of money to spend, OK. If you don't they could care less. This tends to squeeze out minorities.
On commercial TV, for example, the children's shows had to be tailored to the needs of advertisers, That meant pushing a lot of toys, sugared breakfast cereal, etc. They tended to be violent because that caught the kids' attention. They showed upscale suburban kids because that was the audience that bought the most of what they were selling.
The government had to come in by paying for Children's Television Workshop to get non-commercial programs like Sesame Street that were designed by teachers rather than marketing departments.
For the 30 years that I was reading the WSJ, the editorial page had a lot of stupid opinion pieces. They regularly printed a good letter in response. I got the impression that they didn't do it as regularly in the last few years, but I can't be sure. I don't know whether they published a letter in response to Metaxas' editorial. I think they should print a response. I don't think you can argue that they should print a specific guy's letter. They get thousands of letters a day. They can't print them all.
That's only a good practice for stories which have two sides. It's an extremely bad practice otherwise.
You don't know whether it has two sides until you've talked to the people on the other side.
Actually, there is a right of reply. It's not a law, but it's a standard journalistic practice, and it's in every newspaper style book I've ever seen (including the New York Times style book).
The practice has to do with a specific person (or, maybe, formal organization) that has been criticized or accused of something. Claiming it applies to every opinion or idea printed in the newspaper is moronic.
There is a stronger right of response to a specific attack, but in the 30 years that I was reading the WSJ, before Murdoch took over, whenever they quoted somebody on one side of an argument, they would quote someone on the other side of the argument. If they quoted somebody saying welfare mothers were lazy, they would quote a welfare mother defending herself from the charge. If they quoted somebody saying FDA drug regulations were too strict, they would quote somebody else saying that they weren't too strict.
That's a common practice in journalism. That's the way I tell good journalism from bad. Science magazine, or the New Scientist, for example, do the same thing. DemocracyNow does the same thing.
The point is, it is very doubtful that the WaPo or any other similar papers, who have vowed to not publish material contrary to Global Warming Consensus, will print opinions that clearly contradict the prevailing AGW narrative despite the author's impeccable credentials.
I don't believe it's happened yet even though both are rather prolific authors.
Here's a lesson in scientific method. You form a hypothesis that the Washington Post won't print opinions by Judith Curry or Roy Spencer. You can test that hypothesis by searching for their names in the Washington Post. In fact, they do. Here's the first of a large number:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Good information doesn't necessarily sell unfortunatley. I'm willing to bet the WSJ editors have a much better understanding of what sells, and are activley using on that information. People looking for good, accurate information will probably get access to it for free.
At least up to the 1980s, the WSJ used to target the American elite -- every congressional office subscribed, corporate executives and top lawyers read it, and anyone else (like leftist revolutionaries) who wanted a free ride into what was going on in the halls of power and on the street. I could be wrong, but I think their circulation was 100,000, and they could get premium advertising dollar. They were run by the Bankroft (sp?) family, who according to insiders just hired the best editors they could get and told them to publish the best paper they could. The family was wealthy and the paper was very profitable. So they were free to do whatever they wanted. Who cared what sells? They were turning out the best journalism they could. And it was very good. You can read their old stories on the Pulitzer Prize web site.
Good, accurate information did sell. I bought it.
Then the phenomenal profitability tapered off, and the next generation of Bankrofts wanted to increase their profits and didn't have that dedication to great journalism.
First, they increased the circulation to something over 1 million. So instead of hard-hitting stories on coal mine fatalities or welfare, they started filling up additional sections with fluff on how to buy handbags. They weren't writing for that 100,000 elite any more, but for the 1 million broader circulation.
Then, Rupert Murdoch made his offer. He was the most unscrupulous scumbag in journalism, and he wanted the WSJ for its respectability. (Of course nothing could damage the WSJ's credibility more than having Murdoch own it.)
So now you can't trust the WSJ any more, because everything goes through Murdoch's right-wing partisan editors, like the Supreme Court.
One of the WSJ's best stories was a series they did during the Murdoch takeover on Murdoch's sordid history, and about the Bankroft family. I guess the editors and reporters figured they weren't going to be around much longer, so this was their moment to tell it all. For example, they pointed out that Murdoch agreed to have his newspapers ignore human rights abuses in China, in order to get an entry into China for his cable system.
You can't get that kind of stuff free on the Internet. The WSJ used to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees to get freedom of information requests from government agencies. They would send a reporter to Peru for an interview. They would spend 100 hours or more on one of those stories. They would interview dozens of people. They would hire people with good salaries who didn't have to worry about anything except doing their job.
Now, the people who write stuff on the rare paying blogs, like Scientific American's, or articles in Slate, get about $200-250 a story. You can't do any significant research for that kind of money.
And yet you are blind to the crashing and burning of the NY times.
I never said anything about that.
So we can look forward to the Washington Post publishing stuff from Judith Curry or Roy Spencer?
Judith Curry and Roy Spencer are real scientists who studied physics and chemistry and all that hard stuff and publish papers in legitimate peer-reviewed journals. Maybe they're wrong but when we have to make decisions as important as this we need to consider every possibility. And at least they know what they're talking about.
Eric Metaxas made a good career for himself telling evangelical Christians what they want to hear. He seems to have gotten in over his head when he writes about science.
His WSJ piece argues the argument for the existence of God that I heard in my History 101-102 class when we studied the 19th century debates between science and religion. There's a name for it -- I think it's called "argument from design" or "argument from coincidence." (Can some philosophy major help me out here?) It's a nice argument because when you think about it, it's easy for anyone who took Physics 101-102 (or anyone who read the chapter on Darwin) to refute.
The argument is that the earth must obviously have been designed for humans, because if it was slightly different, a little closer to or farther away from the sun, humans couldn't survive. The answer to that is that there are billions and billions of galaxies, with trillions and trillions of planets, so even if only one in a million planets has the conditions for life, you'll still have life created all over the universe.
So because it is labeled as "opinion" it has the right to be blatantly false to the point of being an obvious lie and yet never be questionned ?
The WSJ editorial page was full of articles that were blatantly false to the point of being an obvious lie. That was their stock in trade. They're conservatives, after all.
The convention in journalism, which is what the WSJ used to practice before Murdoch, is to print a rebuttal. It shows that you're trying to be fair, and you want the people who disagree with you to keep buying your paper.
There is no right of reply or requirement for any journalistic body in the US to print any opposing view point for anything, so why is this newsworthy?
Actually, there is a right of reply. It's not a law, but it's a standard journalistic practice, and it's in every newspaper style book I've ever seen (including the New York Times style book). The WSJ used to apply that rule religiously, until Murdoch took over. If they had a news story attacking socialism, they would get a response from a socialist.
The reason is, good information is valuable (and sells). A news story that gets both sides is more informative and useful than a news story that gets only one side.