A New York Times reporter says it's "a lie" for journalists to include "climate deniers" in print and televised stories on global warming,
The Federalist reports.
"It is a lie to say that global warming poses no danger," Times reporter Justin Gillis told Columbia University journalism students, The Federalist reports.
"Journalists care about the truth — that’s my only care in life, to find the truth. To act as if the evidence is half and half is to tell a lie. I refuse to perpetuate that lie."
The declaration came after a screening of "Merchants of Doubt," a documentary that suggests a parallel between the relationship of those opposed to climate science and the fossil fuel industry — and tobacco industry-hired scientists in the 1950s who cast doubt on the consensus that smoking is unhealthy, The Federalist reports.
"The film’s implication, insinuated rather than demonstrated, is that global warming doubters are likewise mercenary," The Federalist writes.
The Federalist, writing that "skeptics are not exactly popular in the media," charged that Gillis acknowledged "a tacit pact among print journalists to stop giving credence to climate skeptics."
"He called this an 'enlightenment' that began ten or 15 years ago," The Federalist reports. "American television, he noted, still lets a few skeptics onto the air; broadcasters have yet to come out of the Dark Ages."
The Federalist reports Gillis advocates using the term "climate change deniers" for "people who oppose climate science," and they they shouldn't be called "skeptics."
"This is much like the abortion wars: what term you use signals what side you are on," he said, The Federalist reports.
Gillis recently made headlines for his scathing report on funding that Harvard-Smithsonian scientist Willie Soon got from the utility Southern Company.
Gillis wrote that Soon didn't disclose the funding came from an energy company that used coal, arguing the failure constituted a conflict of interest.
Other news outlets, including
Science Insider, later reported the non-disclosure wasn't so clear, the Daily Caller reports.
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