Yesterday I noted that Reddit.com had decided to follow the lead of the Los Angeles Times, which ostentatiously announced recently that it would no longer print letters to the editor expressing skepticism of climate change orthodoxy. Such is the confidence in their position that all dissent has to be suppressed. Today a moderator of the Reddit.com science forum takes to the Puffington Host to recommend that all media outlets ban climate “deniers”:
Like our commenters, professional climate change deniers have an outsized influence in the media and the public. And like our commenters, their rejection of climate science is not based on an accurate understanding of the science but on political preferences and personality. As moderators responsible for what millions of people see, we felt that to allow a handful of commenters to so purposefully mislead our audience was simply immoral.
So 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?
Okay, fine—if departure from “scientific orthodoxy” is going to be the standard for the media to start censoring dissenting views, how soon can we expect the LA Times, Reddit.com and other media outlets to ban opponents of genetically modified foods and childhood vaccinations? Goodbye media attention for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jenny McCarthy. How about the opponents of fluoridated water while we’re at it?
Speaking of the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Henry Waxman, the Grand Inquisitor of House Democrats, has summoned the management of Tribune Media, owner of the Los Angeles Times, for a meeting, and that the Tribune management agreed. The Tribune Company wants to spin off the money-losing Times, but quite sensibly keep the Times’s downtown LA real estate, which might actually be worth something when that blessed day comes when the Times ceases to exist. Waxman demanded the meeting because he is “concerned” about the future of the Times.
Exactly what business does Waxman have intruding into the Tribune Company’s business? Waxman says he is worried about the “financial health” of the Times. And that gives him jurisdiction how? Is Waxman thinking of assembling an investor group to buy the Times? (Hope you were not drinking coffee for that sentence.) Maybe Waxman’s many liberal LA friends shouldn’t have gotten their knickers into a twist over the Koch brothers purported interest in the Times. If they had bought it, the Times’s financial future would have been secure.
The Tribune Company’s management should have told Waxman to stuff it.
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