I thought that Thursday's "Times" story sounded awfully familiar. "Timeswatch"
"Aside from some new interviews with current and former government scientists, some identified in the report and others quoted anonymously, most of the information in the documents had been reported previously by a variety of major newspapers, magazines, scientific journals and nongovernmental organizations."
Spinning Left-Wing Straw Men Into Anti-Bush Gold
Call it alchemy: A left-wing activist group puts out a report rehashing old accusations against the Bush administration, and science reporter James Glanz transforms it into a news story in Thursday's Times titled "Scientists Say Administration Distorts Facts."
His story begins: "More than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement yesterday asserting that the Bush administration had systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad. The sweeping accusations were later discussed in a conference call organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization that focuses on technical issues and has often taken stands at odds with administration policy. On Wednesday, the organization also issued a 38-page report detailing its accusations. The two documents accuse the administration of repeatedly censoring and suppressing reports by its own scientists, stacking advisory committees with unqualified political appointees, disbanding government panels that provide unwanted advice and refusing to seek any independent scientific expertise in some cases."
In fact, the Union of Concerned Scientists, far from being an "independent organization that focuses on technical issues," is a left-wing activist group where being a scientist is not even a membership requirement. In the past it has lobbied against Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") and nuclear power. (It was formed in 1969 to protest the Vietnam War.)
To his credit, Glanz talks to science advisers for Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., who challenge the assumptions of the UCS report. Glanz even admits (in paragraph 13) there's not really much new in it: "Aside from some new interviews with current and former government scientists, some identified in the report and others quoted anonymously, most of the information in the documents had been reported previously by a variety of major newspapers, magazines, scientific journals and nongovernmental organizations." But that's not before he includes a helpful link: "The full list of signatories and the union's report can be found at www.ucsusa.org." |
