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Wall Street Journal Runs Ad Trashing WSJ’s Climate Science Denial

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK
CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

Editors at Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal (WSJ) are about as anti-science they come, but they aren’t anti-money. So for a few extra Hamiltons more than their usual ad rate, the climate science deniers at the WSJ are running an ad calling them out for their denial.

CREDIT: The Partnership for Responsible Growth.
CREDIT: The Partnership for Responsible Growth.

The Partnership for Responsible Growth (PRG), a bipartisan D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes a price on carbon, says that when they originally approached the Journal to run a 12-part ad series, the paper rejected this first ad criticizing the Journal itself. The Washington Post reports, “Journal spokesperson Colleen Schwartz denied that the paper initially rejected the first ad.”

In any case, the Journal ultimately agreed to run all the ads, but charged PRG $36,528 for this first ad, and only $27,309 apiece for the next eight ads. The Journal threw in the last three ads for free. Because.

The ad points out, “If the CEO of the world’s largest oil company accepts the basic physics that humans are heating the climate with excess CO2, why won’t the editorial board of this newspaper? Isn’t it about time?”

CREDIT: Climate Nexus
CREDIT: Climate Nexus

The source for the WSJ critique is a new study by Climate Nexus, “How The Wall Street Journal Opinion Section Presents Climate Change,” which concludes:

An analysis of 20 years of the Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages on climate shows a consistent pattern that overwhelmingly ignores the science, champions doubt and denial of both the science and effectiveness of action, and leaves readers misinformed about the consensus of science and of the risks of the threat.

The study examined the 201 editorials on the subject of climate change over the past two decades and found “none explicitly acknowledge that fossil fuels cause climate change” and that they generally “echo industry talking points and rhetoric that minimize climate risk and cast doubt on climate science.”

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The WSJ opinion pages are so willfully anti-scientific that they not only discredit every single piece published on those pages, they raise questions about the credibility of pretty much everything the journal publishes on any page. If the editors can’t be bothered to fact-check their own work, why would anyone think they are fact-checking anyone else’s?

Indeed a 2015 study of the WSJ’s “news” reporting on climate found “the Journal was less likely than the other newspapers to discuss the threats or impacts of climate change and more likely to frame climate action as ineffective or even harmful.”

The new analysis notes: “Of the 279 op-eds published since 1995, 40 reflect mainstream climate science. That is 14 percent.” In general, the WSJ features writers who have been widely debunked on climate science, such as Bjorn Lomborg.

CREDIT: Climate Nexus
CREDIT: Climate Nexus

Finally: “Of 122 columns published since 1997, four accept as fact that fossil fuels cause climate change, or endorse a policy to reduce emissions. That is three percent.” Again, what can you expect of a newspaper whose idea of an objective columnist on climate is coal baron Matt Ridley, one of the most debunked and anti-scientific writers on the subject in recent memory.

Since the Journal apparently won’t pay its editors or columnists or even most of its reporters to cover climate change accurately, it’s good to see a group like The Partnership for Responsible Growth willing to spend its money to bring the science to the Journal’s affluent and influential audience.