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hatrack

(59,446 posts)
Thu Nov 19, 2020, 09:23 AM Nov 2020

Insane? Believe Nature & The Lancet Aren't "Legitimate" Sources? Put An Ad In The Washington Post!

Lawrence Gelman and I both want to prevent mass death. We just disagree on the threat humans face. I think it’s climate change. Gelman thinks it’s me. “I think the people who believe they are doing good on [climate change] are actually doing a bad thing,” said Gelman, an anesthesiologist based in Edinburgh, Texas. “I think what they’re doing is going to kill a lot of people.” He thinks this because of “a lot of study” he’s done, none of which includes peer-reviewed science. “I don’t consider Nature, or Scientific American, or the American Medical Association, or the Lancet, or the New England Journal of Medicine legitimate,” he said, adding that climate scientists were “charlatans” who “don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Gelman, in other words, is a climate truther: Someone who believes, without evidence, that climate change is a hoax. It is the editorial policy of most reputable news outlets not to publish the views of climate truthers, because they are fundamentally grounded in falsehoods. But Gelman has found a way around most news outlets’ editorial policies: the advertising section. When he wants to get published in reputable newspapers, he simply takes his views there. He’s gotten ads containing scientific falsehoods and conspiracy theories published in many small newspapers over the years, including one in April that said COVID-19 was “manufactured” by China.

But last week, Gelman got his biggest get yet: a full-page, 1,421-word screed of unhinged climate trutherism in The Washington Post—the same paper that won the Pulitzer Prize for documenting that climate change has already become “a life-altering reality” and public health crisis across the world. He says it cost him $25,000, and that it was worth every penny.

EDIT

Ask any newspaper employee, and they’ll tell you there is a firewall between the advertising department and the newsroom. What the advertising team does has no influence on what the reporters do. That certainly appears to be the case at The Washington Post, which has some of the best climate coverage in the nation. Sure, the Post’s editorial page sometimes publishes questionable climate arguments. But they’re never based on claims as egregiously false as those in Gelman’s ad. Post climate editors did not respond to questions about whether they would ever publish claims resembling those in Gelman’s ad. But it seems obvious they would not, the reason being the same reason the Post does not publish false claims about the science of coronavirus, or the science of smoking cigarettes.

EDIT

https://heated.world/p/for-25k-you-can-publish-climate-denial?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0MjAzNzQ0LCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxOTE2Mjc5MCwiXyI6InJGT05EIiwiaWF0IjoxNjA1NzA4Mzk0LCJleHAiOjE2MDU3MTE5OTQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0yNDczIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.e6tgJQWetRTsrWm2pSWkbgnHB6SylBSJdXn9NWkiUqU

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