NYT: One one Side of the Argument: Skeptics.
On the Other Side: Experts.

Headline: the eternal struggle between skeptics and people you should listen to, experts.

In Face of Skeptics, Experts Affirm Climate Peril

This is one of the oldest, cheapest media tricks there is, and one such that, if they were truly unbiased, they would simply change their stylebook to forbid evermore.

We've seen this trick a million times. Sketching the battle-lines in a debate, the liberal media will call the advocates from, say, the Brookings Institute experts or note their subject-matter of expertise -- economic forecasters, for example -- and their critics at Heritage conservatives.

Get that? You can either go with this presumably-apolitical unbiased expertise in the field being discussed, or you can go with this conservative.

All the time. All. The. Time.

Nevermind that the Brookings Institute guy's credentials might only be a JD and ten years of political advocacy. He's an "expert" by simple dint of his political persuasion. And nevermind the critic from AEI or Heritage might be a Ph.D. in economics (or whatever subject matter is under discussion), he's the "conservative" politico with an axe to grind but no understanding of the subject at all.

You know who wrote that headline, by the way? Well, I don't know either. Might have been an editor. But the article its attached to was penned with none other than Andrew "Andy" Revkin, he who was recently threatened with "The Big Cutoff" of his sources by eco-cultist Schlesinger. (Well, he co-wrote it with some other twink.)

Thanks to... Hmmm, forget who pointed this out. Sharkman?

posted by Ace at 09:08 PM

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