Balanced Reporting on Climategate

In the most predictable news item of the week, distinguished climate scientist Michael Mann, creator of the "hockey stick graph" showing the immense effects of global warming in the last century, and who was subjected to an endless smear campaign by the right, as part of their "climategate" fraud, was totally exonerated of all charges today by an impartial scientific committee.

The Washington Post, in a perfect example of its journalistic bankruptcy, included in its story on this finding, the following:

"Myron Ebell, a global warming skeptic who directs Energy and Global Warming Policy for the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted that the Penn State ethics review only interviewed one of Mann's critics, MIT climate scientist Richard Lindzen.

"It has been designed as a whitewash," said Ebell, whose group accepts contributions from the energy industry. "To admit that Dr. Mann is a conman now would be extremely embarrassing for Penn State. But the scandal will not be contained no matter how many whitewash reports are issued. The evidence of manipulation of data is too obvious and too strong."

Although the Post doesn't think it worth mentioning, I would like to remind you of a couple of things. First of all, Myron Ebell is a right wing hack with absolutely no background in science of any kind, but a long history of being paid to support various conservative causes. Second, the Competitive Enterprise Institute is not a libertarian organization. It is a propaganda factory largely funded by oil and car companies, and has absolutely no credibility of any kind to pontificate on this issue. Ebell is, to put it simply, taking money from oil companies to say what they want.

This is the sort of "balanced" journalism we have come to expect from our mainstream press- left leaning truth versus blatant right wing lies. I will believe they really care about balance when they include in every story about Sarah Palin a liberal pointing out that she is a lying, corrupt demagogue. Until then, as far as I am concerned, they are nothing but tools of the rich.