http://www.chriscmooney.com/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0...
Judging by these two links, Chris Mooney should just be called Mooneybeam. I am sure his "weasel words" are when the reporters aren't biased (leftist) enough for him.
His science background is an English degree which makes him more qualified than most alarmists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Moone...
The man should be an embarrassment but sadly alarmists will no doubt hold him up as some kind of authority since he is a card carrying leftist.
Mooney was reporting on a study published in the journal, "Environmental Communication". The conclusion of the paper is that American newspapers hedge more in wording when talking about climate change than do Spanish Language newspapers.
The actual study is available online for those interested.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.10...
I've only perused the study myself. There doesn't seem to be enough raw data provided to fully judge the statistical analysis, and I don't care enough about to read carefully. But my immediate concern with the methodology is that it includes only four papers, two published in the U.S. and two in Spain. And then it does not analyze the papers separately, combining much of the that data from the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal.
I would have to see the NYT data separate from the WSJ to determine whether there is a American versus Spanish difference in reporting. The NYT is an American owned publication while the WSJ is owned by the same foreign-owned company that owns Fox News with it's principal stockholders being Australian and Arab. The treatment in the NYT and the WSJ might be very different and averaging them together may be giving a false read of U.S. versus Spain. (At least that would be the first thing I would look at were I to really evaluate the study.)
I do though believe that American media does a poor job with most topics because they try so hard to show "two sides". (In Climate Change there is the established theory held by the scientific body and thousands of denialists theories that disagree with each other -- warming, not warming, not caused by man, cooling, made-up, conspiracy, was clouds what done it, is clouds that will stop it, sun spots, gamma rays, coming out of ice age, entering ice age, Marxists, Capitalists, Reptilians, Haarp, on and on and on.)
You might have seen it by now as it's been viral, but the best depiction of U.S. media's coverage of climate change was John Oliver's Climate Change Debate.
The Gray Lady is easy to attack, but like any GOOD newspaper, it always attempts to provide all sides in its coverage. Many folk confuse this - intentionally or not - with the NYT's editorial stance. So, I say "No" to your question. I think the NYT is a good, fair newspaper, and it provides tremendous variety. I have tried to read Mother Jones; I gave up.
Is it in the opinion pages?
Maybe that would indicate that it's not the paper, just one individual.
It would be helpful if you gave a link to what you are discussing.
Chris Mooney has written a piece about a study that says the paper is using more 'weasel words' compared to papers in Spain. Is this a good thing?
