The American Spectator

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Re: Juliet Eilperin is No Joke

By Paul Chesser on 10.16.09 @ 5:57PM

My friend Quin is right as far as the way I phrased my blog post late yesterday: Juliet Eilperin is not a joke. She is a human being created in God's image, and I should know better, and for that I apologize to Ms. Eilperin.

Juliet Eilperin's reporting is a joke. In fact, it's not reporting. It's environmental activism, as my post yesterday explained, and as I noted with Marc Morano's documentation of her work. The reason it's a joke is that the Post, which considers itself an objective news organization, runs it in its news section when instead it should be run in the opinion section or not at all. If Eilperin wrote for, say, The Nation, Grist, or some other ideological publication, she wouldn't be the subject of a blog written by me. That she is the star of reporting workshops sponsored and hosted by the likes of the Center for American Progress (where Eilperin's husband, Andrew Light, is a fellow) proves my point.

That Eilperin did what Quin considers a bang-up job on the negatives of corn ethanol is meaningless to me, as many enviro-lefties are on that bandwagon. Maybe she's a nice person. Maybe she does listen and then spill out her environmentalism anyways. I don't really care. Her advocacy does not belong where it is being published.

And I don't buy into the "don't pick fights with those who buy ink by the barrel argument" either. Eilperin and the vast majority of the members of the Society of Environmentalist Journalists are activists -- plain and simple. I have found that talking with them is a waste of my time (unlike a lot of my conservative, climate realist friends) and that they need to be exposed for what they are -- alarmists and hopelessly biased. Trying to curry their favor is not the best use of my time when I can be writing, researching or doing something else more worthwhile. They can spill their ink and I'll use my keyboard.

If Quin would rather make the case that the Post's reporting -- at least on environmentalism -- is a joke instead of just Eilperin, I won't argue. After all, they let leftist Kari Lydersen do reporting for them also.

topics:
Mainstream Media, Global Warming, Climate Change