Ditch journalism standards!

I'm having another "Stop the Presses!" moment.

This is what happens to me when I find news developments that I think were specifically orchestrated to call attention to my newest book of the same name, as well as to illustrate how badly my colleagues in the so-called "mainstream" press have blown their cover.

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Exhibit A is a column in Editor & Publisher, the newspaper trade journal. It is written by Steve Outing, who has been writing his feature – ironically called "Stop the Presses" – for 10 years.

And what does he have to say for himself in the latest issue? He suggests it's time for newspapers to abandon their "objectivity" over global warming and become advocates.

I'm not kidding.

And it's not a parody script for the Comedy Channel, either.

This guy is serious.

He begins by explaining he's been doing his part to save the planet – or, at least, "mulling it over." He's thinking about riding his bike to work. He bought a hybrid car. He's teaching his kids to be green little automatons.

"I've also been thinking about the newspaper industry and global warming," he writes. "And frankly, I don't think newspapers are doing enough. Indeed, newspapers' fabled commitment to 'objectivity' has been a detriment to efforts to combat global warming."

He continues: "The industry still has a lot of power to influence people. How about if newspapers abandon their old way of doing things, when it comes to the issue of global warming, and turn their influence to good? It just might be that through this issue alone, newspapers revive themselves to some extent. Editors are shirking their responsibility to improve our world, in my view, so let's change that."

You're still waiting for the punch line, aren't you? You're thinking he's going to explain why journalists can't be so morally relativistic and throw out the standards and practices when it suits them. Because then there are no standards any more. That's what I was expecting, too. But, no, he means exactly what he says.

He doesn't advocate newspapers take this approach on abortion, because, he suggests, that would be "journalistic suicide."

"But advocacy in terms of encouraging people to act to alleviate climate change is really a wholly different issue," he says. "There's clearly scientific consensus that humans are altering the planet's climate, and that the effect is accelerating. Strong hurricanes, melting glaciers and sea ice, worse wildfires and longer fire seasons, more severe droughts and flooding, and more frequent bizarre weather events overall." (I know that last fragment is not a sentence, but that's the way he wrote it and his editors left it.)

Outing says those who contest the hysteria over climate change are a small and shrinking group.

"They might as well be flat-earthers," he quips.

Outing believes the obstacle to combating global warming may well be the institution of the fair and balanced press. If only journalists would stop playing fair, we could lick this carbon dioxide menace in no time.

Now, to be honest with you, I've never believed objectivity was the highest standard of newsmen. I explain in my new book, "Stop the Presses!" that the highest calling of journalists should be to pursue the truth.

But the most striking thing about this proposition to me is that I thought newspapers and media types had long ago abandoned any pretense at neutrality or even-handedness when it came to global warming. I thought they had all long ago signed on as Al Gore scare-mongers.

Could somebody point to an American newspaper that is still reporting on climate change with a skeptical or even balanced perspective?

I explain in "Stop the Presses," that those covering this issue, most of them members of the Society for Environmental Journalism, had this professional debate a long time ago. It's over. They concluded. There's no point in quoting skeptics, who are often compared with Holocaust deniers.

Now it appears those activists masquerading as journalists are winning converts among their colleagues. It's no longer just being whispered in hushed tones at national journalism conferences. Now it is being published in newspaper trade journals.

Welcome to the age of open advocacy in the newsroom!

No more rules. Mo more standards. No more pretense.

Related special offers:

"Stop the Presses: The Inside Story of the New Media Revolution"

"POISON PRESS: How the big media's death throes are heralding a stunning information revolution"

"Journalistic Fraud: How the New York Times Distorts the News and Why it Can no Longer be Trusted"