The one fact about climate in Bret Stephens’ first New York Times column required a correction.
This week on CounterSpin: The New York Times is having trouble squaring its hire of climate change denialist Bret Stephens for a regular column with its current PR campaign branding the paper a bastion of rationality in a dangerously “alt-fact” moment. Stephens, a white man, like nine of the 12 current columnists, is also known for columns he wrote at the Wall Street Journal like “Haiti, Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire: Who Cares?”—which argued that colonialism was “the best thing to happen” for some people. Is that what Times editorial page editor James Bennet meant when he said Stephens is a “beautiful writer” with a “deep sense of moral purpose”? FAIR editor Jim Naureckas will join us to talk about the sad sort of sense the Times‘ decision makes.
Transcript: ‘The New York Times Wants to Have a Very Circumscribed Discussion’
Big Oil’s legacy in Ecuador (cc photo: Julien Gomba)
Also on the show: It’s easier to reduce climate disruption to a parlor game if you’re accustomed to ignoring the real people affected by the fact that decisions of vast, irreversible impact are left to profit-driven extractive industry. Chevron’s actions in Ecuador show how hard a company will work to pollute the conversation, along with the land and water—and what the stakes are for anyone who dares to stand up to them. We’ll hear the latest on that from Paul Paz y Miño, associate director of Amazon Watch.
Transcript: ‘Chevron Was Just Fabricating a Lie to Get Out of Paying for a Cleanup’
We also take a look back at recent press–specifically, at the New York Times‘ misleading healthcare “factcheck.”
SOURCE LINKS:
- “Three Reasons Bret Stephens Should Not Be a NYT Columnist–and the Real Reason He Is One,” by Jim Naureckas (FAIR.org, 5/2/17)
- “Civil Society Groups Ask U.S. Supreme Court To Reject Chevron’s Attempts to Suppress Free Speech and Undermine Historic Amazon Pollution Case” (Amazon Watch, 5/1/17)
Anytime I hear some capitalism booster compare western environmental progress with that of the USSR and Eastern Europe, I’m always reminded of disasters like this one in Ecuador which is just one example. Not all countries were/are “lucky” enough (or powerful and unscrupulous enough) to export their environmental disasters.
What US companies have done in Ecuador is absolutely shameful.
Boycott the NYT.