Clark Hoyt: Nothing to See Here

Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The New York Times, has a column up about the global-warming hoaxers and his paper’s coverage of them.

[AGW skeptics] say the e-mail messages show a conspiracy among scientists to overstate human influence on the climate — and some accuse The Times of mishandling the story.

Some say Andrew Revkin, the veteran environmental reporter who is covering what skeptics have dubbed “Climategate,” has a conflict of interest because he wrote or is mentioned in some of the e-mail messages that the University of East Anglia says were stolen.

Yes, Mr. Hoyt, it’s because he wrote or is mentioned in some of the e-mails.  Specifically, though, it’s because of what he wrote in an e-mail to Michael Mann:

I’m going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.

Here, Revkin is co-ordinating his coverage of a controversy with one of the participants in that controversy, in order to keep the debate on a subject with which Dr. Mann feels more comfortable.

More from Mr. Hoyt:

Erica Goode, the environment editor, said that as soon as she learned that Revkin was mentioned in the scientists’ e-mail, she consulted with Philip Corbett, the standards editor. She said she read the roughly one dozen messages containing Revkin’s name and decided they showed a reporter asking for information for news articles, with “no particular close relationship with the scientists other than the fact that he knew them.” Goode and Corbett said they agreed that Revkin did not have a significant conflict and was good to go, with an acknowledgment in the article that he and other journalists were named in the e-mail.

I read all the messages involving Revkin, and I did not see anything to keep him off the story. If anything, there was an indication that the scientists whom some readers accused Revkin of being too cozy with were wary of his independence. One, Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, warned a colleague, Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia, to be careful what he shared with “Andy” because, “He’s not as predictable as we’d like.”

Funny he quotes that particular e-mail, and not the one that demonstrates collusion.

(By the way, could that be the point of the e-mail that was “accidentally” copied to an AGW skeptic?  To show how that the AGW lock-steppers disapprove of what Revkin writes sometimes?  If it is, it’s telling that all they could find was an off-handed humorous comment to object to.)

How about the fact that the Times (or as they say, The Times) wouldn’t publish any of the leaked e-mails, given the fact that they had no problem with publishing the Pentagon Papers?

[New York Times' attorney] George Freeman, told me that there is a large legal distinction between government documents like the Pentagon Papers, which The Times published over the objections of the Nixon administration, and e-mail between private individuals, even if they may receive some government money for their work. He said the Constitution protects the publication of leaked government information, as long as it is newsworthy and the media did not obtain it illegally. But the purloined e-mail, he said, was covered by copyright law in the United States and Britain.

It seems clear that this is an opinion that was arrived at by an attorney who was asked to come up with a rationale for not publishing the e-mails, and not a lawyer who came to a decision on his own after studying the facts and the law.  Copyright law?  Seriously?

The public editor’s conclusion is unsurprising:

So far, I think The Times has handled Climategate appropriately — a story, not a three-alarm story.

Well, it certainly isn’t a three-alarm story when you ignore an entire side of it, Mr. Hoyt.  But it seems that’s the way both you and the decline-hiders like to play the game.

Keep hemorrhaging money and hiding behind the tatters of your reputation, New York Times.  I’m really enjoying the show.

Share on Facebook