And Journalistic Objectivity is Idiotic.

Via Vic Reppert, a couple weeks ago the AP put out a report on the hacked global warming e-mails. What it boils down to is this: the scientists weren’t committing fraud, but in spite of this they were getting accused of fraud, and in one case, a critic threatened to have a climate researcher arrested, and scientists were very unhappy about this. There was a quote from an AAAS big-wig who made a comment about “generous interpretations” (which I wish had been explained in more detail) but that was the only thing genuinely damaging in the long report. Otherwise, the AP report supports the conclusion that, in this whole “scandal,” there was a big lot of nothing.

Except… the writers of the linked article for some reason felt they had to make it sound really bad. The headline is “Science not faked, but not pretty”–a vague negative description that could be applied no matter the facts. They label as “One of the most disturbing elements” the fact that scientists didn’t want to share data with the people calling them frauds. If you read the report carefully, you can figure out that these descriptions shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but this is more than we can expect of the average reader. Why present it in such a misleading way? Because so many journalists think that “journalistic objectivity” requires making both sides look equally good, even when the facts don’t lend themselves to such an interpretation. Even when doing so requires saying things that would be deemed “editorializing” by any sane standard, like calling the behavior of harassed scientists “disturbing.” Is there any doubt that this approach to “objectivity” is idiotic?

In related news, Brian Leiter has highlighted a nice takedown of the NYT’s “objectivity” on torture.