Your weekend hate read is this ridiculously dumb New York Times op-ed
It didn't take long for the controversial new editorial writer a the New York Times to deliver the goods — the goods in this case being tired and weak excuses for why mainstream media publications should give credence to climate change deniers.
On Friday afternoon, the Times published the first column from Bret Stephens, in which he argues "ordinary citizens also have a right to be skeptical of an overweening scientism" in relation to climate change.
While the Times doesn't seem to have any writers extolling the flat earth theory or delving into the issues around chemtrails, it saw fit to recently hire Stephens, a noted conservative writer, best known in the science community for his climate change denial.
He didn't waste any time. And the Times clearly saw an opportunity, finding it necessary not just to publish the column but also send a push alert about it.
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The column extolls the virtues of skepticism in the face of certainty, leading off by pointing out that a lot of people were sure that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump.
Yes, the new conservative writer started off by trolling his audience while also constructing a laughable straw man argument. In Stephens's world, "data" is all the same and anyone who can add together numbers is a scientist who should be taken with a grain of salt.
The push alert in particular rubbed people the wrong way.
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The column comes just as the Times builds up a climate reporting team.
"As the earth’s temperature continues to break records, climate and environmental reporting is taking on new urgency," the company wrote on a very pretty page touting the open jobs on its team.
The column also comes one week after March for Science and one day before the People's March for Climate.
Stephens was theoretically hired to bring "balance" to the NYT's pages, with some feeling the publication had skewed too far to the "left."
Others have pointed out that this kind of "balance" tends to be a fool's errand, particularly as other kinds of "balance" are ignored.
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We can only feel sympathetic for the science editors at the Times, one of whom decided the best defense is a good offense.
It is, admittedly, a good burn.
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Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
