Two Hacks, Beat as One
Andrew Revkin is getting defensive over the backlash against his hack job on Peter Gleick leaking the Heartland documents. Revkin has pulled out the big guns to make us stop–the notoriously ethical Megan McArdle!!!
[7:37 p.m. | Updated | I've been remiss in not pointing out the important reporting of Megan McArdle of The Atlantic on the origins of the Heartland files and some of Gleick's statements. Her latest piece is a must-read that asks more probing questions and clarifies what is, and is not, responsible investigative journalism.]
Yes, the full-on conspiracy theorist McArdle clearly gives us all lessons in responsible investigative journalism. Moreover, her long-demonstrated objectivity on climate change should give anyone defending Glecik pause. Pause to think whether Revkin or McArdle is the greatest hack.
I used to like Revkin on the relative scale in that Keith Kloor made him look better than Keith Kloor. Funny thing about that update is that it reads like an Andrew Sullivan nugget of blinkered incompetence. If there’s anything the world needs like a hole in the head, it is a probing from McMegan. Thanks for the nutpunch, universe.
I’ve got plenty more McMegan where that came from, too. And I wish I didn’t.
My nuts, they are eternally punched through the infinite almost void of sparse particles and ill defined dark matter. The glass is not half full, it is empty in several dimensions. Touché, Megan, touché.
thanks sooooooooooo much for this disturbing mental image:
and yet, mr. revkin continues his (probably very well compensated) employment with the nyt’s.
DougJ @ Balloon Juice points out several more examples of McMegan’s ethics, these having to do with the Koch brothers, who happen to be former employers of her husband. Not that she tells readers that until pushed.
Good god. I knew that the villagers were loathe to criticize McArdle out of fear they wouldn’t get invited to her parties, but this is insane.
How is it possible to let someone criticize an actual scientist for ethical lapses, but completely ignore that alleged journalist when she (a) completely botches common-place facts to make political points and (b) continually writes to further obvious conflicts of interest and (c) has the gall to MOCK those conflicts as if they don’t matter?
It’s one thing for the conservative press to give people like Breitbart a pass. He’s one of them. But why do people like Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein let her off the hook? It’s appalling.
They love McArdle because she pisses-off the Liberals.
That’s all you need as bona fides for Conservatives.
Their entire political platform is to piss-off the Liberals – and can be adjusted daily, or whenever necessary.
And consistency be damned!
Who needs it when “The Base” has the attention span of a may-fly, but can remember to run to wherever they’re pointed?
That is true; the more she is attacked, the more popular she becomes with her base.
McArdle’s biggest vulnerability is that she lies to support her arguments, and it can be proven that she lies. Her biggest advantage is that everyone is afraid to point out her lies, probably out of fear that the right’s attack machine turn on them. Klein did start to criticize her a lilttle after he moved to the Post.
From a Normblog interview with Kevin Drum: “What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > That it’s not OK to treat people with fear and derision just because they don’t happen to belong to the ethnic/religious/ gender/etc. group that you grew up with.”
Drum seems to pride himself on fairness, to the point of ignoring dishonesty.
For Drum, this is new? He’s been doing this “let’s be fair” to those who wish to destroy much of what America was shtick since I first read his blog nearly a decade ago. I don’t think he ever could take a stand that he wouldn’t backpedal from if it appeared “intolerant”. “Not as bad as two-sides Somerby” is not something to be proud of.
It is not even clear that what Gleick did was actually unethical. He evidently holds to a pretty high standard of personal conduct, but what he did is really no different than using pseudonyms in comments sections. He used a false name, but did not otherwise lie about his identity. The fact that the Heartland Institute does not check on the people it sends this stuff to is their lapse, not his. Once he received the information, freely given and not hacked or stolen, he fairly and honestly reported what he received, unlike pretty much every conservative to write about this topic.
Doesn’t matter. The standard for anyone on the other side of any Fox-type claim is simple: anything they did is at least morally suspect if not ethically outrageous. No specifics are needed, partly because specifics weaken the open-and-shut case, and partly because your political position determines your moral and ethical rightness. No justification for anyone left of Atilla is adequate, and no justification for anyone of the Right Sort is necessary. This is your liberal media at work.
The real dark history of these times as regards climate is being written by John Mashey and by Deep Climate.
When McAddlePate is your best defense, you are in deep shit.
What did Gleik do that was unethical? Isn’t the truth the issue?
It is misdirection and tu quoque. It is all they have.
Nothing that isn’t standard for restaurant reviews.
My thought, why did he apologize at all? Why not just say so what?
He doesn’t know how to play hardball and blinked.
I was following McArdle’s deliberations over the disputed Heartland Institute document, the Strategy Memo. Evidently she accepts the Heartland Institute definition of ‘forgery’, i.e. ‘written by a HI insider but not in his or her official capacity’.
In a way, Revkin’s credit is fair, because McArdle is putting in long hours moonlighting as Heartland’s PR. Calling it ‘reporting’, on the other hand…
Another noteworthy issue here:
In the past, when events have proved McArdle to be spectacularly wrong, she has explained that her thought processes were nevertheless correct, in that she was correct to ignore some sources of data. For instance, McArdle justified her support for the invasion of Iraq — once it proved to involve fewer smiling grateful Iraqis than expected, and no signs of Saddam’s WMD — with the explanation that the people arguing against the invasion (and against the likelihood of WMD) were dirty hippies, with no grounding in reality, who would have argued against the invasion anyway. Therefore their protestations carried no weight and she was correct to listen only to the pro-invasion side of the argument.
In this situation, it is entirely predictable that the Heartland Institute would deny the authenticity of the most damaging of the leaked documents. They would say so whether or not it was forged. Their statements have no evidential value, and the McArdle Criteria she has espoused in the past should lead her to ignore them. Yet somehow she doesn’t.
It is an enigma.
But you haven’t said anything about Steven Hayward’s take in the latest Weekly Standard! After all, third time’s the charm, presumably.
Somebody dared use “reporting” and “McArdle” in the same paragraph, even worse, the same sentence?!? His unfortunate children, should the poor creatures exist, will have to go to school wearing Groucho glasses from now on.
As to Blenderella (H/T TBogg commenter) she continues her reptilian climb into the nation’s consciousness. We are so screwed.