Last week, the New York Times, a leader in climate coverage, announced they would be hiring Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, a leader in climate denial. Our befuddled reaction can be summarized by the above image.
Both MediaMatters and Joe Romm at ThinkProgress took a look back at some of Stephens’ past pieces in reaction to news of his new job. None of them inspire confidence, and one is particularly objectionable: in a 2015 column, Stephens writes about how climate change, institutional racism, campus rape statistics and hunger in America are all “imaginary enemies” concocted by the left to advance a political agenda.
Perhaps the folks at the Times who made the decision to hire Stephens were impressed by his February speech on “maintaining intellectual integrity in the age of Trump.” Admittedly, it’s a lovely piece of writing.
But the paean to truth loses all credibility and enters Orwellian territory when it’s delivered by someone who thinks millions of hungry Americans are imaginary (his new colleague Nick Kristof should talk to him about that), denies the experience of countless women on college campuses across the country (Bret should grab a coffee with Ross Douthat), and thinks hundreds of years of institutional racism evaporated with the election of Barack Obama (Charles Blow might disagree). All this is on top of his repeatedly science-deficient views on climate (school him please, Tom Friedman).
Perhaps we should reserve judgement for now and see if Stephens carries his head-in-the-sand views from the Journal to the Times. If he does, we trust the Times readers to express their discontent.
But if Stephens’ climate denial was merely a symptom of working in the Journal’s fact-free opinion section, it does beg the question if he truly believes in “intellectual integrity”.
The Times announcement notes that Stephens “will bring a new perspective to bear on the news.” Given the generally factually-accurate opinions offered by other NYT columnists, that is certainly true. Stephens’s particular “perspective” may be more suspect.