Journalism cannot be neutral toward a threat to the conditions that make it possible. Back in November 2009, as the Obama backlash was just gathering steam, Rush Limbaugh devoted a segment of his radio program to “ Climategate .” That was the episode in which a climate research institute was hacked and the private emails of scientists were leaked. Conservative media sifted through the emails, stripping individual sentences and phrases out of context and spinning them to look sinister, as though scientists were coordinating and manipulating results. Mainstream media dutifully covered the “controversy.” No fewer than five separate investigations later cleared the scientists of any wrongdoing,...
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