Wall Street Journal Sinks to New Anti-Green Low
by David Sassoon - Feb 4th, 2009
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It is a shame that the senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore, is not interested in existing economic data. He proved it once again in a opinion piece masquerading as a news story under the headline California Green Jobs Experiment Isn't Going Well.
We can dispense with the lie in the headline quite easily by citing the most current jobs data available: Green jobs have grown 10 times faster than total job growth in California since 2005. The data released just last month is available here, and the economic benefits of the green trend have been documented in study after study. The state's pursuit of energy efficiency over the last 35 years has translated into 1.5 million jobs and tens of billions of dollars in payroll taxes and energy savings.
We reached Terry Tamminen, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's environment advisor, via e-mail as he stepped off a plane in India. Here's what he had to say: "I don't know quite where to begin correcting the blatantly wrong information. I would think the Wall Street Journal, being a financial paper, would rely on accurate economic data and could afford a fact checker or two."
But Stephen Moore apparently has no need for facts that get in the way. In a WSJ op-ed called Gang Green published on August 15, 2008, he wrote:
The environmental movement has morphed into the most authoritarian philosophy in America.
We took him task for that comment, and many others, in our own rejoinder last summer, and revisit it here only to remind readers that he is an unreliable guide to economic reality, particularly when it's green. Here again we catch the Wall Street Journal's senior economics writer peddling financial misinformation. Somebody should call the journalism police and have this man arrested.
It may not do much good, because this is not a case of a single rotten apple but a barrelful in an advanced state of intellectual decomposition doing the bidding of the larger interests they represent. It has been a past-time of ours to correct the distortions emanating from the paper's infamous editorial writers we've dubbed the Greenhouse Asses. They sit at the apex of the climate denial communications machine, and this latest piece by Mr. Moore demonstrates to where their oppositional strategy is shifting.
Denial of climate science will no longer work, and so the fossil and free market guns are focused on fear-mongering over pocketbook issues. Scientific facts never stood in their way; now, apparently, neither will economic ones, as Mr. Moore demonstrates. And what better target could exist than the recognized paragon of green economic success -- California?
We suspect it will be the first salvo of many directed at rewriting the truth; and the Greenhouse Asses, well schooled in Rovian tactics, know very well how easy it is to manipulate the truth by causing lies to proliferate.
In the current issue of the New Yorker, there is a wonderful piece by John McPhee on fact checkers. What one of them, Sara Lippincott, said bears repeating here:
As Sara told the journalism students, once an error gets into print it "will live on and on in libraries carefully catalogued, scrupulously indexed ... silicon-chipped, deceiving researcher after researcher down through the ages, all of whom will make new errors on the strength of the original errors, and so on and so on into an exponential explosion of errata."
That is precisely what the Greenhouse Asses at the Wall Street Journal are counting on. They practice a dark art and do damage to the integrity of the journalism profession that McPhee's piece celebrates so well.
On the very day that Rupert Murdoch took over as owner of the Wall Street Journal in December 2007, we wrote an open letter asking him to make the paper's editorial pages carbon neutral. After all, his NewsCorp had adopted the goal as a corporate commitment. We said, in part:
Certainly, the paper's news pages adequately point to this coming transformation as the entire business community is grappling with the issue of how to internalize the cost of carbon in its strategic planning and operations. Why just yesterday, the Journal even carried news of a carbon exchange opening in the first quarter of 2008. It is to be a place where the the world's leading banks, investors, hedge funds, and energy and industrial corporations will leverage the power of financial instruments and markets to address the challenge of global warming.
Wouldn't continued editorial denial of this accelerating reality be astonishingly irresponsible? Wouldn't it betray the public trust now in your hands and undermine the constructive social role that newspapers -- especially the best newspapers -- are expected to play?
Mr. Murdoch, the prize is now yours. The entire planet is now waiting to see whether you are worthy of being its owner.
Apparently, he's not worthy. With all his wealth, it seems he's unwilling even to hire a fact checker or two to keep his writers honest.
See also
WSJ Economics Writer: Send All of America's Garbage to Ted Turner's Montana Ranch
Greenhouse Asses at the Wall Street Journal
Mr. Murdoch, Please Make the Wall Street Journal Carbon Neutral
Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Is Laughingstock -- Of Its Own Conference
The Wall Street Journal's Anti-Business Agenda
Fishy Smell from the Wall Street Journal
Wall Street Journal Projects Its Inhumane Theology Upon the World
Pressing Murdoch on the Journal's Climate Views (New York Times)
WSJ Launches New Environment Blog (Columbia Journalism Review)
Signal Fading from Wall Street Journal's Alternate Climate Universe?
Case Study: How Climate Skeptics Spoon Feed the Wall Street Journal
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The George Costanza of Journalism
You just need to know how "Stevie Moore Is Less" operates to find his column so much more valuable than you're grokking.
All you've got to do is take the exact opposite of what Moore Is Less says as fact and you'll find the Bizarro World logic in his writing.
If Moore Is Less says jobs are growing then you know they're sinking.
If he says environmentalists are bad for business you know they're really good for business.
If he says climate change is nothing to worry about then you better start fretting.
If he says it's too costly to do anything then you know its well worth the price.
If he claims Coal is Kleen than you know its a killer poison.
As a subscriber to the WSJ for 20 years now I understand that they have their head up their ass on every key issue they cover. They never saw the collapse of the economy coming, they still believe there are WMDs in Iraq and they're still denying that Karl Rove is a washed up putz who had his balls handed to him in the last election.
Where's Perry White when you need him? Great Caesar's Ghost!
Whats News
I always thought this section and its header were declarative; however, it might perhaps better be viewed as a question the Greenhouse Asses ought to be asking themselves. It would be fascinating to have them explain their answer.
Great post.
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