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Times Watch for
August 18, 2004
"Alarming" Environmental Bias at the
Times
A Dean Murphy story (which sports the alarmist headline "Study Finds Climate Shift Threatens California") accepts as fact the theory of man-made global warming while pushing an "alarming" study from left-wing environmentalists: "A scientific study released on Monday presents an alarming view of climate changes in California, finding that by the end of the century rising temperatures could lead to a sevenfold increase in heat-related deaths in Los Angeles and imperil the state's wine and dairy industries. The study, published in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers the most detailed projection yet of changes in California as temperatures rise around the world because of building concentrations of heat-trapping gases."
Murphy finally discloses one of the groups behind the study in the seventh paragraph of Tuesday's story--the unlabeled left-wing activist group Union of Concerned Scientists (which the Times consistently fails to label as such): "'California alone can't address the emissions problem, but California is in a position of leadership,' one of the study's authors, Peter C. Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a teleconference. The study was conducted by 19 scientists from several universities and research institutions, including Stanford University, the University of California and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It was financed by a variety of foundations as well as the Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission. Several of the scientists warned against dismissing the findings as overstated. 'We have been studying this for 30 years, and the conclusions are getting increasingly clear, and increasingly consistent,' said Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, a climate scientist at Stanford. He added, 'We think this problem has too high a chance of happening and in negative incarnations for us to ignore it.'"
If Murphy had probed Schneider's background a little deeper, he'd have found Schneider's urge to politicize science for left-wing ends goes back a long way. Schneider outlined to Discovery Magazine in 1990 how politicized scientists push global-warming hysteria: "...we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have….Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."
For the rest of Murphy on climate change, click here.
• Environment | Global Warming | Labeling Bias | Dean Murphy | Stephen Schneider | Science | Union of Concerned Scientists
Fighting Bush on the Pre-Election Education Front
Diana Jean Schemo's "Effort by Bush On Education Hits Obstacles" marks the second front-page story in two days from Schemo that critiques a Bush-supported education reform.
She warns: "At Madison Park Elementary, a high-poverty school whose students have failed to make enough progress year after year, the momentous consequences threatened in President Bush's landmark education law, No Child Left Behind, should come crashing down any month now. At this stage of disrepair, after improvement plans and other 'corrective actions' have failed to raise test scores enough, the law calls for a wholesale restructuring of Madison Park and similar public schools, the educational equivalent of a hostile takeover, with the possible elimination of principals and teachers and the installation of new management. But Michigan has another idea….As events in Michigan and many other states suggest, all is not going as planned with the administration's goal."
Schemo predicts Bush's plan won't work: "By 2014, when the law aims to have all students reach proficiency, nearly all schools in all states will fail under the law, researchers predict."
Later she hints "No Child Left Behind" is too radical: "Here in Michigan, which had some of the nation's toughest standards for judging school performance, state and district education officials are turning away from the sweeping solutions that No Child Left Behind charts for chronically failing schools….In a sense, Grand Rapids is trying to carry out the solutions that could ultimately fix academically broken schools, without emptying them first."
That bluntly headlined front-page story follows on the heels of Schemo's lead story from Tuesday on charter schools, the opening lines of which also paint a Bush setback: "The first national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and regular public schools shows charter school students often doing worse than comparable students in regular public schools. The findings, buried in mountains of data the Education Department released without public announcement, dealt a blow to supporters of the charter school movement, including the Bush administration." The story is based on a report by the liberal American Federation of Teachers, part of the AFL-CIO.
Yet Schemo leaves out a huge part of the story that puts charter schools in a significantly better light. The education blog Eduwonk notes, "when one controls the data for race it turns out there is no statistically significant difference between charter schools and other public schools."
Eduwonk explains: "In fact, to the contrary, a chart accompanying the story fails to offer readers any significance tests for the numbers they're looking at, inaccurately indicating that there are significant differences by race. Is this important? Yes, since charters in this sample disproportionately serve minority students by an almost 2-1 margin compared to traditional public schools. By the way, don't take Eduwonk's word for this, it's in the AFT report (pdf) which was released today in conjunction with the Times article. See page 10-11."
The Wall Street Journal editorial page makes the same point about the AFT study: "Indeed, the AFT's most telling comparisons-- the ones within ethnic groups--cut against the case it is trying to make. This comparison is vital, precisely because prior research has found ethnic differences to be large. Yet when the authors look just at African-American or Hispanic children, they find no statistically significant difference between public school students and those in charter schools."
• George W. Bush | Charter Schools | Education | No Child Left Behind | Diana Jean Schemo
Bush's "Simple Solutions" Made for a
Rough Time In Iraq
Appearing on the PBS roundtable discussion Washington Week in Review on Friday, Times reporter David Sanger vouches for John Kerry's "nuanced" position on the Iraq war: "He doesn't have a bumper sticker position. And a year into the Iraq war, maybe that's a good thing. There are a lot of people who think it was simple solutions and simple slogans that made for a rough time in Iraq."
For the full transcript of the show, click here.
• Sen. John Kerry | Iraq War | David Sanger
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org