Denial or seeking to deny man-made global warming

[izabsmiling]

Aptly enough imo Prince Charles refered to climate change deniers as the headless chicken brigade .

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Should Australian newspapers publish climate change denialist opinion pieces?

Should Australian newspapers, like Fairfax, publish opinion pieces that deny or seek to cast doubt on man-made global warming

Should Fairfax — or other media publishers — give a platform for climate change denialist opinion pieces?

The most recent example is Fairfax publishing a piece by John McLean, a member of the International Climate Science Coalition.

In the opinion piece, McLean repeats various lines designed to create uncertainty about the recent report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and to impute a sinister motive on IPCC members of political and scientific deception.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/southern-crossroads/2014/jan/04/climate-change-climate-change...

When Fairfax saw mining billionaire Gina Rinehart buy a large stake in the company, the chairman Roger Corbett upheld the board's support for the charter of editorial independence. This was opposed at the time by Rinehart, although Rinehart board appointee Jack Cowin signed it.

Coincidentally, Rinehart is a big supporter of ICSC policy advisor Christopher Monckton and in a 2011 interview expressed her disbeliefthat "a small amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere" could lead to global warming.

The Rinehart shareholding controversy even saw Fairfax mastheadslaunch a new slogan "Independent. Always."

A part of the charter is that editors behave according to the Australian Journalist Association's code of ethics, the first standard being that journalists:

Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts.  Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis.

At the same time that Reddit /r/science decided to ban climate denialism, the L.A. Times also decided to introduce an editorial policy for its letters pages. Editor Paul Thornton wrote:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/southern-crossroads/2014/jan/04/climate-change-climate-change...

How does publication of  such fit with Australian Journalists Code of Ethics ?

Should we follow the lead of other Countries ?

nb please feel free to expand on this title and opening post in the manner which is the norm with general discussions.

[cherry*135]

Note the subject is referred to as climate change not global warming.

[izabsmiling]

To me it's like them publishing content which denies or seeks to deny that smoking can't be harmful to a person health...

we know that science has established facts and that to publish publish the above would be factuallly incorrect and a possible danger to the public...It would be negligent 

[izabsmiling]

Please feel free to expand as suggested in the OP

and ref first line under the article heading .

[cherry*135]

I did make a valid comment. Perhaps the person who wrote the opinion piece quoted could be consistent as well and choose either global warming or climate change and not switch between the two.

[boris1gary]

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@izabsmiling wrote:

Please feel free to expand as suggested in the OP

and ref first line under the article heading .

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izabs, the only Royal I've ever had any respect for - Charles.  Please don't take my shortening of you ID as a belittling tactic, (apparently some feel that's what it is ) am just lazy. 

[boris1gary]

rather long c & p there am 3, not complaining as i wouldn't bother reading it - foxnews for reliable information is not my first, second, third or even 100th choice.  

[izabsmiling]

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@boris1gary wrote:

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@izabsmiling wrote:

Please feel free to expand as suggested in the OP

and ref first line under the article heading .

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izabs, the only Royal I've ever had any respect for - Charles.  Please don't take my shortening of you ID as a belittling tactic, (apparently some feel that's what it is ) am just lazy. 

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Hi Boris,.Get lazier and make it ever shorted and leave the bs off...and just type  Iza  without the bs lol

[cherry*135]

Critics blast Reddit over climate-change skeptic ban

...Finally, Allen [Reddit moderator, science forum] called for other news outlets to follow his example, asking “if a half-dozen volunteers can keep a page with more than 4 million users from being a microphone for the antiscientific, is it too much to ask for newspapers to police their own editorial pages as proficiently?”

The move has drawn accusations of hypocrisy, as Reddit claims to be a haven for free speech and debate. The site describes itself as a place “friendly to thought, relationships, arguments, and to those that wish to challenge those genres.”

Brendan O’Neill, in a blog post for the UK Daily Telegraph, said Reddit has “ripped its own reputation to shreds,” and described the move as “political censorship, designed to silence the expression of dissent about climate-change alarmism on one of the Internet’s most popular user-generated forums.

The move follows an October decision by Paul Thornton -- the letters section editor for the Los Angeles Times -- who said he wouldn’t publish some letters from those skeptical of man’s role in the planet’s warming climate, saying that denying climate-change “is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.”

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/12/19/critics-blast-reddit-over-climate-change-skeptic-ban/

[izabsmiling]

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@am*3 wrote:
I did make a valid comment. Perhaps the person who wrote the opinion piece quoted could be consistent as well and choose either global warming or climate change and not switch between the two.

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It gets confusing.

From  a link in the article in the OP

This past week, the Los Angeles Times took a little-noticed step that could have a profound impact on your children’s and grandchildren’s future: it decided to ban climate change deniers from its pages.  If this step catches on and spreads to other media outlets, it could finally lead us away from the distraction of the phony, manufactured “debate” over the existence and causes of the global climate disruption and actually get down to the real work of confronting this challenge.  

Editor Paul Thorton was admirably simple and direct on this point: