The NYT’s environmental blog, Dot Earth, covered the disclosure of e-mails and other files from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, noted that the files are available on various other website, but did not reproduce any files on its site. As Andrew Revkin explained in the post:
The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.
Am I wrong in thinking that this is a change in policy for the NYT? Hasn’t the Grey Lady published illegally obtained documents on national security and other matters in the past?
As I posted earler this morning, there are reasons to believe these documents were released by an internal whistleblower, rather than an external hacker. If so, would the same considerations apply? My initial thought is that arguments against publishing hacked documents might not apply to those disclosed by a whistleblower. In any event, it seems these documents contain substantial material of legitimate public interest, and this interest is not diminished by the way in which the documents were obtained. I readily concede that if the documents were stolen, as it appears, the individual responsible should be prosecuted, but this is a separate question from whether to disseminate the contents of the documents themselves.
Houston Lawyer says:
Release of the documents doesn’t harm national security, hence the Times is not interested.
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November 23, 2009, 10:11 amPeteP says:
‘Insider’ wouldn’t suprise me — it’s a curious collection, from a computer point of view, to have emails and data files and reports ‘all in one zip file’, as each tends to be on a different server at the source ( emails on the email server, stored under different accounts, data source files rarely on the email server, reports often on still a different server, etc. To put that disparate collection together, from a computer-geek point of view, is a rather intensive manual process of ‘picking this from here, picking that from there, copying them all to one place, then Zip’ing them up together’, etc.
This implies someone who is familiar with the various items ahead of time, who knows what he wants to copy and where it is, and who took time to assemble the collection. a ‘midnight hacker’ wouild not have this familiarity ( unless he was in fact an insider ), nor would he have time ( a goodly number of hours required ) to pick, copy, and ZIP up 68 MB of ( zipped ) selected data.
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November 23, 2009, 10:12 amJ says:
The Pravda Times is hilariously transparent. And not in a good way. LOL
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November 23, 2009, 10:25 amGlenn Bowen says:
No.
Touché.
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November 23, 2009, 10:26 amDjDiverDan says:
Yes, you are wrong — the NYT consistently follows a policy of publishing anything and everything (including rumor, inuendo, unattributed quotes from unidentified “experts” and “highly placed sources”, and all manner of illegally or improperly placed documents) which might be harmful or embarassing to those whose politics are contrary to what the NYT deems proper, and feigning fidelity to whatever journalistic ethics might prevent it from publishing anything which might be harmful or embarassing to those with which the NYT agrees. How could you even suggest that the NYT might be inconsistent or hypocritical?
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November 23, 2009, 10:27 amBrahma says:
Weren’t the Pentagon Papers illegally acquired?
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November 23, 2009, 10:27 amHans says:
I was left temporarily speechless by the hypocrisy of The Times.
The Times published the Pentagon Papers, which were obtained illegally, and which not even the U.S. Supreme Court denied were obtained illegally, in its ruling refusing to impose a prior restraint on their publication.
Any invasion of privacy involved in hacking the emails would not render them inadmissible, or in any way reduce their obvious relevance. See, e.g., Lee v. Lee, 967 S.W.2d 82 (Mo. App. 1998) (Video tape depicting sexual activity between wife and another man was admissible in dissolution proceeding, regardless of whether husband obtained tape by criminal trespass or invasion of privacy).
Indeed, once they were hacked, the First Amendment protected the ability of the public to disseminate and discuss the contents of those emails. Bartnicki v. Vopper , 532 U.S. 514 (2001) (First Amendment barred tort lawsuit over publicizing tape that someone else obtained through illegal invasion of privacy).
I guess we could call this the “ACORN exception” to the First Amendment. (The argument that left-wing organizations and ideologues are entitled to silence discussion of their wrongdoing, if a law, constitutional or not, limits disclosure).
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November 23, 2009, 10:29 amAllan Leedy says:
Probably not hypocrisy. Just garden variety incompetence (in this case, ignorance of past practice), with which the print media seem to be thoroughly saturated.
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November 23, 2009, 10:33 amKirsten says:
Some of the emails are correspondence with Revkin. Our prestige journalist, he doth protest too much.
http://www.threesources.com/archives/007126.html
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November 23, 2009, 10:33 amroger rainey says:
I don’t see the distinction you make. Confidential documents leaked by an insider are appropriated illegally as well. Stolen documents are stolen documents, whether by an insider cloaked as a whistleblower or an outside hacker. In fact, the act of the insider may be worse, as he was privileged with access in the first place.
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November 23, 2009, 10:33 amMJH21 says:
Some illegal disclosures are more equal than others.
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November 23, 2009, 10:35 amgeokstr says:
This does not surprise me, since you are one of the few conservatives who has bought into AGW. I’ll bet that the desire to prosecute those responsible for this will break down along partisan lines, with the AGW acolytes for summary execution and the skeptics not so much, in line with the left’s theory that whistleblowers are only legal if they help the Collective, not the other way around.
That being said, if this helps lead to the crash of the AGW house of cards, I for one would be for the harshest punishment. Exile the perps to their own private island in the South Pacific, to be guarded 24/7 by comely female guards uniformed only in grass skirts, and forced to subsist on lavish luau menus washed down with beverages with those ridiculous little umbrellas in them. That’ll teach ‘em to screw with the Religion of Leftism.
And I read somewhere in the myriad sites covering this that the contents of one of the emails does not reflect well on the character of one Andrew Revkin. I wonder what that had to do with the switch in policy for the Purveyor of the Pentagon Papers.
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November 23, 2009, 10:35 amUgh says:
Or, maybe, it’s just the personal policy of the blogger, since, of course, the Times published an actual article on the subject with many a link to climate warming skeptics where the documents can be found and no mention of a policy of not publishing illegally obtained documents, which of course the Times has done many a time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html?scp=1&sq=East%20Anglia%E2%80%99s%20&st=cse
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November 23, 2009, 10:42 amTamerlane says:
Why don’t you write a letter to the NYT explaining how evil it was of them to publish the Pentagon Papers?
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November 23, 2009, 10:46 amTed H says:
There is a difference between illegally obtain private communications that do not serve the public interest and illegally obtained government communications that serve the public interest.
What the Times has published in the past that was obtain by another party illegally has always been something that serves the public interest (or at least could be argued serves the public interest). For example, the Pentagon Papers clearly served the public since their government was lying and misleading them all the while also acting unethically; while we had no idea. In the case of an exchange of private e-mails between researchers, where is the public interest there? I’ve read the e-mails and there is nothing damning about them if you know anything about science and how scientists behave. So, why reveal private, illegally obtain communications that don’t serve the public interest and offer nothing in the way of news? In my view, this shouldn’t even be a national story.
Furthermore, I don’t believe you can generalize NYT policy from the personal choice of one columnist on their blog that happens to be hosted on their site. I’d conjecture the writers have far more discretion in policy on their blogs.
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November 23, 2009, 10:46 amLoyola says:
The emails show pretty clearly that their famous dataset on climate change was certainly deleted on purpose after a freedom of information request and that the dataset was bogus all along. All research based on their black box dataset should be ignored.
You occasionally see these science frauds but this one is likely the largest in the history of modern science as far as impact on public policy goes.
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November 23, 2009, 10:47 amKLH says:
The only way these hacked emails would be discussed in the NYT or any other left wing newspaper is to claim they came from Sarah Palin’s hacked yahoo account
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November 23, 2009, 10:55 amRedman says:
Search the inner sanctums of the hightest echelons of the NYT, where the $2,000.00 suits reside, and you’ll find scumbags.
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November 23, 2009, 10:55 amKevin says:
PeteP said, “[I]t’s a curious collection, from a computer point of view, to have emails and data files and reports ‘all in one zip file’, as each tends to be on a different server at the source ( emails on the email server, stored under different accounts, data source files rarely on the email server, reports often on still a different server, etc. To put that disparate collection together, from a computer-geek point of view, is a rather intensive manual process of ‘picking this from here, picking that from there, copying them all to one place, then Zip’ing them up together’, etc.”
This is not an accurate depiction of how data and documents are encoded in an email message. Attached documents are not ‘stored’ elsewhere, but actually embedded within the email: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME
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November 23, 2009, 10:56 amHah says:
I love that so many were willing to came to a hasty conclusion about how the Times was being inconsistent. I wonder if those same people will come back here and concede that they were wrong and that the Times was being consistent all along. Thanks “Ugh” for the catch. I’m not sure how Adler confused the policy of a blogger from the NYT with the paper itself. I suppose it will be interesting to see how many more people pile on (The Times is liberal propoganda, err, even though it was a cheerleader for the war!).
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November 23, 2009, 10:57 amDangerMouse says:
Why is this surprising to anyone? The whole purpose of the New York Times is tyo serve the interests of the liberal establishment. They have no other reason for being. They don’t report news that doesn’t serve that interest, and they will change policy on a dime if necessary to do so.
I can’t believe people still consider anything the Times does as important. They are fishwrapping.
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November 23, 2009, 10:58 amBob in FL says:
Ted H, you’re either ignorant or lying. “Nothing damning about them”? We have a group of scientists discussing how to “hide the decline” by what amounts to falsifying their test data. We have political activists masquerading as scientists conspiring to “delete the files” if hit with a legal requirement to disseminate their data under US or UK FOI laws (and later, in response to an actual FOI request, it was announced that mysteriously, those data files WERE in fact deleted. Quelle surprise!). That’s (a) academic misconduct (b) conspiracy (c) fraud (d) contempt of court.
Sure, you go ahead thinking there’s “nothing damning about them”. Maybe in your world. Back in the real world, many people are going to lose tenure and/or be put in jail.
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November 23, 2009, 10:59 amLarryA says:
IANAL, but it seems like there’s a lot of law designed to protect whistleblowers from company retaliation, so I’d have to disagree.
Playing Devil’s advocate without a license however, I’d think we need a newer example than the Pentagon Papers to indict for hypocrisy. 1971 is a long time ago, and one might hope that professional journalists might have learned something along the way, and changed a few minds. “If you aren’t a liberal at 20 you have no heart/If you’re still a liberal at 30 you have no brain” and so forth.
Oh, wait. We’re talking about the NYT.
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November 23, 2009, 11:00 amTamerlane says:
I thought I knew a little about science and how scientists behave. I worked several years in a high energy physics research unit and several more in a low temperature physics lab. I always thought that knowingly publishing data that was deliberately doctored in a statistically inappropriate manner to support an otherwise untenable hypothesis was a scientific non-no. Likewise conspiring to prevent other researchers from exposing the fact that your data was doctored. But maybe scientific mores have changed in a way that TED H is familiar with and I am not.
Leaving aside the science, the emails clearly demonstrate a conspiracy to evade FOIA requests for publicly-funded data sets. IANAL, but it would seem to me that this is a felony. I think that there’s significant public interest in exposing a conspiracy to feloniously misappropriate millions of dollars of public funding and a further conspiracy to cover up the misappropriation.
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November 23, 2009, 11:00 amCatoRenasci says:
The New York Slimes published the Pentagon Papers which were clearly illegally obtained.
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November 23, 2009, 11:00 amG.R. Mead says:
Some Premises and a Question:
If a body of data is subject to applicable (US or UK) FOI mandatory release, then the public has a right to its disclosure. If a researcher subject to lawful FOI obligations is engaged in secreting, or worse, a reasonably suspected pattern of destroying FOI data — can one bring accusations of “data theft” (however legally formulated) when the purpose of the hack was to overcome the illegal secretion or to prevent the unlawful destruction?
As a legal matter, would this argument be properly part of the element of the offense, i.e. — whether there can even BE a crime of hacking to disclose FOI material by whatever technical means (that does not do damage, per se) or, conversely, should it be treated as an affirmative defense to a presumptively unlawful trespass into the possession of the data unlawfully withheld ?
In other words, if a possessor of FOI data has no presumptive right against disclosure, does this make his unlawful attempts to avoid disclosure amenable to a presumption of lawful self-help; or, must the mere possessory interest of the FOI obligated possessor be overcome by the hacking discloser by some other executory fashion to obtain it, when the possessor is already in violation of the normal executory processes of FOI law that should be used to ordinarily obtain it?
What possible relief other than non-damaging self-help disclosure would suffice in this situation ?
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November 23, 2009, 11:01 amplutosdad says:
Wow this ajax comment editor appears broken.
Lol! Hilarious. They publish illegally acquired docs all the time.
It seems the difference between a whistleblower and a leak is in the eye of the beholder.
When are they changing their slogan to “Half the news that’s fit to print”.
one might hope that professional journalists might have learned something along the way
How about how they love to print unnamed sources when it supports their editorial position? Sure that’s not a document, but they are more than willing to print any rumour they hear. It all depends on if they like the opinion or not.
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November 23, 2009, 11:01 amBlue says:
It’s the “Earth blogger.” Of course he doesn’t want to quote any of the damning text.
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November 23, 2009, 11:02 amHah says:
Not sure how the formatting on my post got screwed up. Here is what I said:
I love that so many were willing to came to a hasty conclusion about how the Times was being inconsistent. I wonder if those same people will return and concede that they were wrong and that the Times was being consistent all along. Thanks “Ugh” for the catch. I’m not sure how Adler confused the policy of a blogger from the NYT with the paper itself. I suppose it will be interesting to see how many more people pile on the Times (“The New York Times is liberal propoganda!!!, even though it was a cheerleader for the war in Iraq.)
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November 23, 2009, 11:04 amjgreene says:
“Pinch” Sulzberger and his Merry Band of Green Journalists are beyond the point of no return. Reading the NY Times is like reading Pravda in the now defunct Soviet Union.
Of course they have published material that had been taken “illegally”... because publishing the material would harm the Republican Administration and/or our troops in the field. Publishing the Green Global Warming Scientist Hoax emails would destroy their Green, Leftist-Socialist agenda. The NYT is a propaganda sheet for the Democrats and the Left.
It is so satisfying to see the NYTimes continue on their downward spiral as this HUGE story unfolds. Eventually, they will publish a white-wash of the faux science being foisted on the World by these liars and criminals calling themselves “Scientists”. Will Al Gore return his Nobel Peace Prize?
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November 23, 2009, 11:04 amplutosdad says:
well remember when they refused to go after Edwards, they used an article long ago from the Opinions page to prove they did address the scandal. Most papers don’t count the opinions page as news or investigative journalism, but they did and said “see we didn’t ignore the story”. So if the opinions page is good enough to know the position of the NYT, then I think one of their bloggers is just as reputable. They lowered the bar themselves.
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November 23, 2009, 11:07 amPeteP says:
Kevin — “This is not an accurate depiction of how data and documents are encoded in an email message. ”
I was referring not only to docs that may have been ‘captured’ by virtue of being email attachments ( and thus would be copied on the email server ) but also the OTHER docs, the FTP site they mentioned, etc. Even if a link to an FTP site or other source is given in an email, that actual document is not part of the email, and thus not on the email server per se.
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November 23, 2009, 11:08 amJEM says:
The NYT has a nearly fifty-year policy of printing stolen anything and everything. I think another commenter noted their ‘stunning hypocrisy’.
As for whether the individual or individuals who exposed this material to the light of day should be prosecuted, should that come to pass I’ll send $500 to the defense fund. My guess is it won’t happen, because Messrs Jones, Mann et al can’t afford letting any more light shine under their rock.
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November 23, 2009, 11:15 amfrankcross says:
Jonathan, I think that’s a misreading of the post. It doesn’t purport to state NYT policy, just the blogger’s decision.
I am fascinated by the conservative obsession with the NYT. The NYT has covered this more promptly and thoroughly than the WSJ, yet there is massive fulmination about the NYT.
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November 23, 2009, 11:17 amRichard Aubrey says:
It’s not a change in policy.
It’s a change in excuses.
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November 23, 2009, 11:17 amDotar Sojat says:
All the news that fits the narrative, and none that doesn’t.
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November 23, 2009, 11:20 amJon says:
Unless it’s Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! account.
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November 23, 2009, 11:25 amDon Keefhardt says:
Dude...really.
“Serving the public interest”, in this case, means — “Only stuff that I agree with, or I find on common political with me” ?
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November 23, 2009, 11:27 amNamazu says:
This criticism should be directed at the NYT: Revkin is a blogger for them and can set his own standards for inclusion. He has also made a reasonable attempt over the years to cover this issue fairly–although to my taste, we should have more scientists and fewer science writers on the pages he occupies. In the next few days, the NYT can decide whether they want to repair some of the damage to their credo “all the news that’s fit to print.” Failure to do so will reflect on them, not Revkin.
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November 23, 2009, 11:27 amJonathan H. Adler says:
It’s possible that I am being to hasty to attribute the refusal to post the documents to NYT policy. However, when asked by a reader about the apparent inconsistency, the blog author responded that “it’s a lawyer thing.” That seems to me a good indication that it was not simply an editorial decision by a single blogger. If I am wrong on this point, I will post a prominent clarification or correction.
JHA
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November 23, 2009, 11:28 amNCBob says:
It’s logical. The NYT is “all in,” backing the anti-American leftists and serving as their advocate. They’ve simply abandoned the pretext (probably because of the expense) of an objective observer and declared their role as propaganda mouthpiece.
And, it’s not a bad position. It anticipates the next 6 to 12 months. The world now sees that Obama is not divine but is really a lazy, not too bright, inept leader. His associates are racists and crooks, his policies are garbage and his vision offends America.
The NYT MUST see that there are others who will step forward with hidden documents. Look at Obama, himself. There must be people who know about his school records and performance, his drug use, his medical condition. Then, there is Dodd, Murtha, ACORN, Axelrod, Rangel and many others.
No, the NYT is not worried about globalwarminggate, it is slamming it’s door in the face of the criminal evidence that is coming.
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November 23, 2009, 11:28 amRyan Waxx says:
Oh. My. God.
Please, tell me you are a cartoon or some other form of comic relief. You cannot possibly be that blind, can you?
I mean look, I do know that rabid partisanship can shut down brain processes that would otherwise lead one to a conclusion one doesn’t want to reach. But I used to believe there were limits to just how much of the brain could go dysfunctional to serve that purpose... now I’m not as sure there are any such limits.
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November 23, 2009, 11:32 amNeal says:
To: Ted H
If you think scientists routinely massage their field observations to comply with a hypothesis, conspire against the careers of fellow scientists who may disagree with one’s methods or interpretation, or collude to corrupt the peer review process then I suggest you don’t know much about the philosophy and ethics of science.
For a proposition to be scientific it must be falsifiable. A researcher who deliberately creates obstacles against those whose review of data and methods may falsify the researcher’s proposition cannot be considered a good scientist nor is his intellectual product good science. The CRU e-mails (yes, I have read and disseminated them) demonstrate the erection and defense of such obstacles.
Considered individually, the ethical affronts are similar to the kind of squabbles that get people fired from research projects, cause grant money to dry up, or wreck hopes of tenure. Considered as a whole we are looking at the corruption of an entire field of study as well as possible criminal evasion of the Freedom of Information Act.
The scope of possible damage to the economies of the industrialized West and the wholesale corruption of the scientific method constitutes the greatest harm done to Science as an institution since the trial of Galileo.
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November 23, 2009, 11:32 amMatt says:
I’ve got two words for the New York Times: PENTAGON PAPERS!!!
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November 23, 2009, 11:40 amuh_clem says:
I am fascinated by the conservative obsession with the NYT.
It’s just garden variety NYTDS.
I’m still trying to figure out if there is any “there” there to the contents of the stolen emails, but the comments here lead me to believe that the commenters would bark at anything.
Anyway, the blogger doesn’t say it’s NYT policy to refrain from publishing the docs, just that he isn’t doing so himself. My hunch is that the company would want to run something like this through legal first, so the blogger probably can’t make the decision to do so on his own.
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November 23, 2009, 11:41 amRyan Waxx says:
Hah. Figures that one of the usual suspects would show up and have nothing to say... except about the commenters.
Back under the rock with you!
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November 23, 2009, 11:46 amLN says:
I love how you guys are following a news story through the New York Times, all the while insisting that the NYT is an evil conspiracy dedicated to subverting America. I guess RedState hasn’t come up with a decent newspaper yet, shockingly enough.
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November 23, 2009, 11:47 amJEM says:
Ted H — every one of the individuals participating in the emails released from UEA is sucking government funding for their ‘science’. They are the top of the food chain in the climate-science business. These are not ‘personal’ emails in any sense, there’s no grocery lists or picking-up-kids stuff, they were all sent from instititional accounts, and it’s all work-related material. By US law they’re the property of the institutions for whom Dr Mann, et al. work.
You don’t believe that there’s ‘public interest’ in evidence of conspiracy to evade FOI laws, intent to destroy materials subject to FOI, and to control and manipulate the publication of scientific journals to ensure that contrary material is not published on a matter of singular policy impact? Unbelievable.
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November 23, 2009, 11:53 ammojo says:
Fully agree with PeteP re “curious” nature of doc release. Emails over a 10-year span (RICO, anyone?), last dated a couple of days before release occurred. Full (apparently) fortran code for evaluating the data sets (!!) enclosed. This took time to pare down, and it didn’t happen over a 2-day period.
Somebody’s CYA file?
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November 23, 2009, 11:58 amRyan Waxx says:
Guess they didn’t evaluate who was “reliable” quite as rigorously as they thought, eh?
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November 23, 2009, 12:03 pmuh_clem says:
What is so hard to understand here? The blogger is give an outlet by the Times, but there are limits to what he can post there. In particular, if there’s doubt whether publishing allegedly stolen material is legal, the blogger would have to ask the first. Since it’s a legal question it naturally goes to the lawyers.
One can spin this into some kind of NYT-wide conspiracy to suppress the truth, but the simpler explanation is that there’s a policy against NYT bloggers unilaterally publishing illegally obtained material, regardless of the ideological bent of the material.
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November 23, 2009, 12:04 pmNeal says:
To: LN
Actually some of us (many of us?) aren’t following the story in the NYT. The raw undigested story is available to anyone who cares to download the files. I invite you to review the case for yourself, without the intercession of “prestige media” priesthood. Just google CRU torrent and proceed from there.
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November 23, 2009, 12:05 pmmicdeniro says:
Ugh nailed it when he/she/it wrote:
a position with which Ted H, Hah, frankcross, and Namazu concurred.
JHA: When you do post “a prominent clarification or correction,” the following yaysayers should have to sign it: Houston Lawyer, J, Glenn Bowen, DjDiverDan, Brahma, Hans, Allan Leedy, MJH21, DangerMouse, LarryA, CatoRenasci, plutosdad, Blue, jgreene, JEM, Richard Aubrey, Dotar Sojat, Jon, Don Keefhardt, and NCBob.
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November 23, 2009, 12:07 pmSunTzu's Nephew says:
Got it in one!
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November 23, 2009, 12:07 pmJohn Skookum says:
I am following this through Climate Audit and Watts Up With That. This is just a delicious footnote to the big story, which is now partially ABOUT the New York Times and not just IN it.
It will actually do more for the cause of smashing the Left in the long term if all the lamestream media does the same kind of wagon circling and messenger shooting at the outset. It’s just like Rathergate. It can’t be swept under the rug forever, and the full story will take months or years to play out, but every such obvious episode of knee jerk partisan hypocrisy will add to the heaps of trash piling upon the reputation of the bicoastal elite media.
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November 23, 2009, 12:08 pmDangerMouse says:
I love how you guys are following a news story through the New York Times, all the while insisting that the NYT is an evil conspiracy dedicated to subverting America. I guess RedState hasn’t come up with a decent newspaper yet, shockingly enough.
WTF are you talking about? Everything about this story has been reported in the blogs. The MSM, to the extent they’re reporting anything, are playing catch-up.
I can’t decide which is more funny: the fact that you automatically assume people are reading the NYT, or the fact that you automatically assume that the NYT exists to report the news.
Don’t you have some kids to chase off your lawn, or something?
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November 23, 2009, 12:09 pmSunTzu's Nephew says:
Right...like the Pentagon Papers? The transcripts of a cellphone conversation between politicians? A few hundred other examples where the NYdogtrainer has published illegally obtained papers, the only criteria being that they damage conservatives or the Nation?
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November 23, 2009, 12:10 pmRyan Waxx says:
Let me propose a wager, for those of you who cannot bring yourself to comment on the subject, but have lots to say about the paranoia of the commenters.
I’ll wager you that the AP assigns less then half the reporters to work on this story than they did in their effort to “debunk” the Sarah Palin autobiography. I think we can all agree that this story is more important than a politician’s autobiograpy, right?
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November 23, 2009, 12:12 pmPacey says:
I’d certainly be curious to see what could be construed from 68 mbs of cherrypicked emails and data from ANY resource.
I’ll admit I’m slightly biased; I’ve worked in atmospheric science, and I find a great deal of the data to be persuasive regarding the generalities of global warming. If this is the dirtiest stuff the party in question could dig up over a presumptively long period, though, there’s not much newsworthy here. If you’re looking for something juicy, it’s not in this, at least not in terms of fabricated data.
If you want dirty politics, try VORTEX 2, the current cash-burning being perpetrated by the NOAA and a bunch of grant-grubbing professors in our own midwest. The waste surely isn’t on the same scale, but I guarantee the politics are dirtier and more sexy.
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November 23, 2009, 12:15 pmDjDiverDan says:
As to whether or not there is any “there” there, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I am particularly interested in the following:
(1) The emails discussing strategy and tactics to ensure that any peer reviewed scientific papers which question either the methods or conclusions of those supporting AGW not appear in any influential scientific periodicals;
(2) The emails discussing how and why data was manipulated to minimize any showing of temperature drops after 1991; and
(3) The emails discussing how to avoid disclosing data requested in FOI Requests.
Uh Clem can certainly make his own call, but it seems readily apparent to me that there is some “there” there. Of course, it’s possible that I’m just barking at the moon — “Move along, nothing to see here, ignore the man behind the curtain.”
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November 23, 2009, 12:16 pmDavid Schwartz says:
We’re not talking about intercepting emails in flight here but intercepting them in storage. How they are encoded for transport between systems (using MIME) has nothing to do with how these emails were stored for archive on the system they were taken from.
The emails to CRU contain information Eudora adds to the email to track where it stored the attachment, which it separates from the main email on receipt by the final recipient. So these emails were taken after they were received by Eudora and are as finally delivered. The fact that they were MIME encoded for transport to get to that machine is irrelevant — they would have been processed and stored by Eudora the same way (separating attachments from emails) regardless of how they go there.
The emails are not in MIME format either. They contain no envelopes. The only MIME information (or headers other than payload headers) are in those emails that contain another email embedded within them.
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November 23, 2009, 12:17 pmegd says:
It isn’t really clear that the blogger is talking about a general NYT policy. And the next sentence of the cited story includes a link to a source where the emails are accessible. This is in fact similar to the Palin email hacking. The emails weren’t published, but a link to the materials was provided.
Of course, there’s a very different tone between the two blog posts, but I’m sure that’s only because there are two different bloggers.
Actually the NYT isn’t the one providing information on the story, the information is mostly provided by blogs, while the MSM picks and chooses what to publish from the available information.
The situation is in the process of changing from newspapers creating content and blog aggregating to blogs creating content and newspapers aggregating.
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November 23, 2009, 12:19 pmRyan Waxx says:
Oh, and let me be the first to predict that the NYT will eventually be forced to report on the emails anyway, although its quite possible they’ll manage to not include the contents of the emails themselves.
The total sum of their fact checking will be to ask the people in the emails to give a statement as to what they meant by some of the statements. They will allow the emailers to choose the most easily spun of the emails, ask no tough questions, and report the responses as fact. That’s it. No more checking. The end.
Who wants to challenge THAT prediction? Mmm?
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November 23, 2009, 12:19 pmtim maguire says:
As with some others here, I am still waiting for Revkin to come clean on the fact that he is not merely a reporter of this event–he is a participant, directly (if unwittingly) implicated in one of the fraud cover-ups.
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November 23, 2009, 12:21 pmAndrew Revkin Spins ‘ClimateGate’ Story :: Boycott The New York Times says:
[...] “The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here,” he wrote — as if the Times hasn’t published illegally obtained news before. [...]
yankee says:
“Will eventually”? Try last week.
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November 23, 2009, 12:25 pmThe Blackboard » NYT policy on posting illegally obtained documents? says:
[...] weighed in on the NYT apparent change in policy with regard to publishing these sorts of materials here asking Am I wrong in thinking that this is a change in policy for the NYT? Hasn’t the Grey Lady [...]
Ryan Waxx says:
Do you call that a news story, Yankee? That one follows every prediction I made. Try again?
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November 23, 2009, 12:30 pmrrr says:
I’m gonna call bs on that last. If you looked, you’re lying, if you didn’t, you’re being disingenuous. It’s noticeable you assert, with such authoritative words, instead of provide evidence. NYT had a blog post and an article, by the same person, who also has a clear conflict of interest. WSJ actually links the docs in question. There’s no way you actually checked.
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November 23, 2009, 12:34 pmyankee says:
You predicted that the NYT “will eventually” be “forced” to report on the emails. Apparently you made no effort whatsoever to check if they’d actually done any reporting, which they had. I made no comment about the quality of their reporting.
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November 23, 2009, 12:34 pmRyan Waxx says:
Apparently you made no effort whatsoever to check weather they’d included any of the emails in question. Newsflash: they didn’t. Please re-read the topic of the thread if you are confused as to why this matters.
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November 23, 2009, 12:38 pmRPT says:
ACORN’s reach now extends to the scientific arena. Next will come Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright. Who knew?
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November 23, 2009, 12:38 pmmatt says:
paging Daniel Ellsberg, paging Daniel Ellsberg......
or how about that hit job on McCain and the lobbyist? or anything written on Palin?
All the news that fits....
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November 23, 2009, 12:39 pmPhil says:
Whether the policy is an official policy of the NYT, or merely the policy of the blogger is an amusing aside, but ultimately an aside.
Let’s accept that the NYT blogger isn’t willing to post material which may have been obtained illegally.
I hope we can assume that the environmental blog is intensely interested in anything that is relevant to the debate over global warming. Given that the blog knows that some relevant information exists, can’t we assume that the NYT will file an FOI to obtain the information, so that it can be used in their blog?
If not, why not?
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November 23, 2009, 12:40 pmgeokstr says:
Wow. Talk about “cherry-picking”.
This is a consistent theme used by the left to refute the NYT leftist slant (must be the approved spin or something.)
Look! We found one whole instance where the NYT backed Dubya (at least for a little while), so this is the absolute proof of the total objectivity of the NYT.
Please ignore the militant opposition by the NYT to everything else right of center since around 1950 that’s behind the curtain. Please also ignore that at that time, for one of the few times in memory, the country was united, against Islamic terrorists, with the likes of Kerry, Clinton and other heroes of the left making jingoistic speeches that Sadaam had to go because he had WMD.
Oh, and did I mention that filthy rich corporate suits own the NYT, just another nail in the coffin for the rightwing bias crap?
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November 23, 2009, 12:41 pmFat Man says:
Sorry, not all bloggers are created equal. If I start a blog on blogspot.com or wordpress.com, I am solely responsible for its content. The platforms are simply common carriers.
Revkin is not an uncompensated, free-lance, amateur. He is a full time employee of the NYTimes Company, who regularly reports on the issues he “blogs” about, and whose “blogging” is part of his regular job responsibilities. Just because his “blog postings” are not part of that day’s print newspaper, does not relieve the NYTimes for responsibility for them, or mean that separate ethical and journalistic standards apply.
The NYTimes is not a conservative obsession because conservatives are irrational. I am more conservative than any of you and I subscribe to the rag in dead tree format and read it every day. I do this not because I want to learn what has occurred in the world. There are many faster, cheaper, and more accurate ways of doing that. I do it because the NYTimes is the coxswain for the mainstream media in this country. The NYTimes’ obsessions and hobby horses are the agenda of the MSM and the Democrat party. Read the NYTimes and you need not read any other mainstream outlet, nor listen to the crooks and liars who are running the country. It is a tremendous economy of time and money.
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November 23, 2009, 12:43 pmCelebrim says:
“There is a difference between illegally obtain private communications that do not serve the public interest and illegally obtained government communications that serve the public interest.”
The research in question was publically funded as has a massive influence over public policy. I would say that that is sufficient evidence that the publication of the documents serves a public interest.
Furthermore, I didn’t always see the public interest in publishing, for example, the inner workings of a classified finance tracking program designed to uncover terrorist funding, but at least some members of the public did. I submit then that what serves the public interest is a matter that reasonable people may disagree upon, and that in the past the NYT has argued that they want to err on the side of publishing such documents rather than supressing them.
“I’ve read the e-mails and there is nothing damning about them if you know anything about science and how scientists behave.”
I think you are confusing ‘damning’ with ‘shocking’. There is nothing shocking within the emails if you actually work or have worked within the academic establishment and recognize therefore that scientists are people too, capable of being corrupted, of dishonesty, of unethical behavior, and of lying when it serves there purposes. I worked in labs in two major universities for about 5 years (and there are a couple of papers out there with my name on the), and I’m quite familiar with scientific pettiness in all of its forms. It doesn’t shock me that scientists had some other priority than the discovery of and desimination of knowledge.
However, just because I’m not surprised doesn’t make the emails less damning. There are clear indications of scientific misconduct recorded here. Some of what is implied I think will absolutely shock and disgust a goodly portion of the meterological and climatology community. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in global warming (I do) or not, the emails are disgraceful. They suggest all sorts of improper behavior, from knowingly massaging data (what scientist doesn’t do this to at least some extent?) to conspiring to suppress opposing viewpoints from appearing in peer reviewed journals, attempting to subvert the entire peer reviewed process destroying or supressing raw data to prevent you work from being reviewed, and outright scientific fraud.
Outside of the climate community, I suspect the disdain showed for the peer review process is going to raise the most hackles. Most scientific communities are pretty tiny. You inevitably end up having to do peer review of your rivals, and inevitably your rival can tell which reviewer was you just based on the criticisms you make. But when you go beyond merely trying to make life hard on your rival to actively undermining the peer review system to suppress rival viewpoints then its a threat to the entire scientific community precisely because everyone can see just how easily they can get screwed by some cabal with an agenda.
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November 23, 2009, 12:47 pmDavid McCourt says:
“Am I wrong in thinking that this is a change in policy for the NYT?”
Not just for the Times, but it appears to be a “change in policy” for Times reporter Andrew Revkin and his Dot Earth blog. Earlier this year Revkin had no problem posting on his blog internal documents from an industry group, Global Climate Coalition, which documents appear to have been disseminated by litigants in violation of court order.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/a-climate-of-doubt/
I say “appear” as Revkin is a bit opaque on the precise circumstances of the documents’ disclosure to the Times:
The key internal document in question, a draft position paper, was used by Revkin to report on a supposed scandal: that the industry group had deleted the views of its own scientific advisors before publicly circulating the position paper, and that those views were never publicly disclosed.
Turns out, Revkin’s reporting was wrong; he missed a publicly released position paper from the group which conformed to the scientists’ views. The Times published one of its typical corrections, aimed at minimizing the error, even though it made a nonsense out of Revkin’s entire article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/science/earth/02editorsnote.html
Has Revkin disclosed that he is a party to at least one of the e-mail exchanges released from the CRU?
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November 23, 2009, 1:03 pmKazinski says:
It looks like the release of the emails was not illegal, according to the UK Whistleblower law if the release meets these conditions the person releasing the documents is protected:
I think clearly (B) applies in this case since the emails show that Phil Jones was failing to comply with his legal obligation to release materials under a valid FOIA request.
Here is a more detailed discussion of the UK act.
So the green light is on for the NY Times, but don’t hold your breath.
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November 23, 2009, 1:11 pmfrankcross says:
rrr, I checked. I read both religiously NYT and WSJ had comparable online coverage. There’s trivial difference between having the emails and linking to them. However, the print edition of the NYT beats the WSJ.
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November 23, 2009, 1:16 pmClaude Hopper says:
I bet all these CRU scientists sport goatees in the style of Lenin.
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November 23, 2009, 1:34 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » NYT Policy on Illegally Acquired Documents -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jeff Nolan, Scoble Favorites. Scoble Favorites said: jeffnolan: Extreme hypocrisy re the NYT Policy on Illegally Acquired Documents http://bit.ly/8fRxEO http://url4.eu/oX5X [...]
ArthurKirkland says:
This strikes me as bizarre. There may be some circumstances — embarrassing revelations about a crime victim, for example, or personal information relating to a public figure’s child — in which a journalist might withhold information (for a reason other than lack of newsworthiness), but those circumstances are associated with content rather than provenance. If material arrives in a plain envelope, and its legitimacy can be establish, it is (and has been, and should be), time to start the presses and unleash the electrons.
The day the New York Times refrains from reporting whistleblowers’ revelations will be a sad day for every sensible American. I assume (and hope) something other than provenance has motivated the Times to withhold information in this circumstance, and that the “acquired illegally” reference does not mean what has (reasonably, it appears) been inferred.
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November 23, 2009, 1:39 pmArthurKirkland says:
After reading comments, it is apparent:
(1) The Times reported the underlying story properly, without withholding information; the “policy” appears to be that of a Times-associated blogger rather than a Times policy.
(2) The original inference (curious position taken by the Times) was reasonable, albeit mistaken.
(3) Efforts to avoid retracting the mistaken inference are unseemly.
(4) This site attracts a strikingly large number of commenters residing at an ideological margin from which “mainstream” seems a perjorative.
(5) This site attracts a strikingly large number of commenters
willingeager to rely on a mistaken inference even after the mistake has been established.(6) Points (4) and (5) would be expected at FreeRepublic.com and RedState.com; they are disappointing here.
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November 23, 2009, 2:03 pmDennis N says:
It will shock people outside the meteorological and climatology community, as well. It does nothing less than call into question, the veracity of the whole scientific argument for AGW. I would argue that absolutely nothing that has come out of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit can be relied upon for anything other than toilet paper, until an adversarial audit has been done of all their work. The place cannot be said to have any more scientific significance than Mad Magazine.
They have intensified the question into the veracity of all the various studies that have refused to release their raw data or their computer source code.
Scientific product that cannot be completely checked, is nothing more than erudite noise.If all you’re doing is classifying beetles, it may be insignificant, but when you are trying to set public policy, no weight can be placed on uncheckable results.
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November 23, 2009, 2:04 pmGlenn Bowen says:
–unless the writer has a stack of “credentials” after his name (the Timies love an academic department head, but they dig former advisors to Democrat presidents the most) it ain’t gonna be published.
I saw once some author who wrote fiction had his letter published; it was entitled, “The Scourge of Guns”- the guy was upset because he got a house in the country upstate and he had neighbors a mile or so away who used firearms, and who knows, he posed, if they were poaching or not??? So the anti-gun BS can buy you a space but only if nothing much else is available.
A blog, and its comment section, is the letter to the New York Times you can write until you’re blue in the face, but they’ll never publish, because, gosh darn it, you’re just not on board with them and important enough.
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November 23, 2009, 2:21 pmjum1801 says:
Ah, such rich, rich irony. The only thing which could have possibly made it better:
“Today the NYT announced it would not be publishing ‘hacked’ emails which purportedly reveal that climatologists significantly their data to provide support for their claims that global warming had occurred at an alarming rate. In justifying its reversal of a policy the Times has had in place since for at least 36 years, former NYT special correspondent Daniel Ellsberg said the documents “appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye.’ ”
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November 23, 2009, 2:48 pmWilla says:
NY Times = BREATHTAKING HYPOCRISY
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November 23, 2009, 2:55 pmlucia says:
Yes.
If you insist of full disclosure, so am I.
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November 23, 2009, 2:55 pmaf says:
From the Revkin article:
[1] Revkin clearly states that his reasons for not posting the emails includes his view that they contain a great deal of information that is private, ie, not of public interest, ie, not newsworthy. He does not say that he is applying a “policy” of not publishing illegally obtained materials. On the contrary, if such a policy existed, it would be unnecessary to point out that the information was private.
[2] Revkin writes he will not (not cannot) post the emails on his blog. This suggests an editorial decision rather than application of some “policy” which is not mentioned.
[3] In a passage that Adler omits, Revkin links to the very emails that Adler is complaining he did not post.
Bottom line: There is no policy against publishing illegal emails, and therefore no policy shift. Rather, out of concern for privacy(and perhaps for legal liability for invasion of privacy or libel if the emails turn out to be fake), and recognizing that the emails were easily obtainable elsewhere, the paper decided to link to the emails rather than post them.
There is no there here. Adler should post an update saying that on reflection his criticism was inaccurate (there is no “policy”) and unfair (there was no concealment).
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November 23, 2009, 2:59 pmChrisTS says:
JUM1801: Today the NYT announced it would not be publishing ‘hacked’ emails
There might be “rich, rich irony” in this, except that it is false.
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November 23, 2009, 3:03 pmReasoner says:
The global warming debate is over. Virtually all global warming data and research is by environmentalists. Environmentalists want governments to make major policy changes. Why should we make such changes? Because of the data and analysis the environmentalists have provided. It was always dubious to base public policy on the evidence provided by a radical special interest group. But we sympathized with their cause, they seemed well meaning, and we were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they were being honest. Now it’s very clear they can’t be trusted. This means that now there is no trustworthy evidence for them to make their case. When we say “why should we make these expensive changes?”, there is nothing they can show us. No hockey stick graphs. No data set that shows a temperature rise, because it might just be the random opposite of the data set that showed a decline but was deleted. It’s like a witness caught lying at trial. The evidence they submit can no longer be trusted.
The only way out I can see to continue the debate is if they can find some data that can’t be faked. But while it seems extremely difficult to find fake proof data proving global warming, it seems impossible to find fake proof data that humans are causing it.
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November 23, 2009, 3:20 pmD.R.M. says:
Ah, yes. Everybody knows that if you supported going to war in Iraq, you can’t possibly be liberal. Senators Clinton, Dodd, Feinstein, Kerry, Reid, and Schumer, they’re all right-wingers, too, since they voted for the 2002 AUMF.
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November 23, 2009, 3:28 pmloki13 says:
Prof. Adler,
1. I happen to believe that AGW is real and consitutes a posible danger to us.
2. That said, I am extremely concerned about the conduct that these emails seems to indicate, and I hope that this is investigated throughly. In science, the ends do not justify the means, and if scientists were suppressing data or pressuring journals from accepting submissions, that needs to be exposed. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
3. I think that this post badly mischaracterizes the issue wrt. the NY Times, and has elicited the predictable responses from the usual suspects when it comes to the NY Times. The problems with your apparent take on thids issue were pointed out several times already in this thread, and while I certainly don’t blame you for your initial reaction (as we all make mistakes) I’m more than a little curious as to why you haven’t either posted a retraction or a clarification by now.
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November 23, 2009, 3:36 pmLeland says:
(3) Efforts to avoid retracting the mistaken inference are unseemly.
Is this a reference to Mr. Adler’s inference or others. Because I think Mr. Adler gave a very clear retraction of what he consider a potential mistake, but then pointed out exactly what prompted him to make the inference. How is his response unseemly?
And what strikes me is
bizarrehypocritical is someone writing a comment to try and build some credibility as unbias. Then following up that comment with ideological slurs and admissions of bias.Quote
November 23, 2009, 3:40 pmDavid McCourt says:
“Hasn’t the Grey Lady published illegally obtained documents on national security and other matters in the past?”
The Times has even published illegally obtained documents that it knowingly helped to obtain in violation of the law. See this damning opinion by Judge Jack Weinstein of the Eastern District of N.Y., about how NYT reporter Alex Berenson “conspired” — Weinstein’s word — with a plaintiff’s attorney and an expert witness to obtain confidential documents produced by the defendant that the co-conspirators knew were under court-ordered seal. Weinstein outlines how Berenson was “deeply involved” in the “unprincipled” theft of the documents, through means of a dummy subpoena to the plaintiffs, without notice to the defendants, from a lawyer of Berenson’s acquaintance, so that the NYT could publish a series of exclusive, and one-sided, stories on them.
http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/zyprexa/zyprexa_judgement.pdf
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November 23, 2009, 3:45 pmuh_clem says:
loki13 wins thread.
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November 23, 2009, 3:48 pmAssistant Village Idiot says:
Arthur Kirkland. #4. Mainstream media is a pejorative to some here, not mainstream belief. As you likely knew that, I wonder why you obscured it.
Which, BTW, weakens your points 5 and 6 as well.
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November 23, 2009, 3:48 pmRyan Waxx says:
For all the tut-tutting from the usual suspects as to weather this “proves” the NYT does or does not have such a policy... I notice that none of you... none of you! have one link to a NYT article that prints even one of those emails. Which is a very curious coincidence.
I wonder, had Yale not publically stated their reason for banning images of Mohammed from their book on the subject — instead simply publishing the book without the images, what would be the reaction of the tools on this thread? If someone dared ask if Yale had removed them for political correctness reasons, would you be calling them paranoid?
The fact is, we have an indication that is short of a full admission that the NYT is not publishing the emails as a matter of policy. Then, when you look at their actual articles... the emails are indeed not published, even when you might expect them to be. Were this a legal question, I bet a jury would convict.
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November 23, 2009, 4:00 pmloki13 says:
Ryan,
While many of you believe this is the biggest thing ever, the NY Times does not make a habit out of printing the entire emails that form the basis of the news, and pointing to the Pentagon Papers (which is sui generis) doesn’t count. Did the WSJ or the NY Post print the entire email collection? They have covered it, see e.g. here. Your hysterical mischaracterization “short of a full admission” is just that– something short of a full admission is, in fact, not an admission, and covering the news and telling people how to find the emails in question is hardly hiding the ball.
When did you stop beating your wife Ryan?>
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November 23, 2009, 4:11 pmRyan Waxx says:
Convenient, that.
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November 23, 2009, 4:25 pmjt007 says:
Mr. Rivkin won’t reproduce the incriminating emails nor does he have a link to the emails on another website. I Googled Sarah Palin having her email account hacked and immediately found the NYTimes blog entry at the link below.* It didn’t quote Palin’s hacked emails but it linked directly to a screen shot of those emails. Good to see the Time’s biases in action.
*Palin emails linked in this blog entry
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/palins-e-mail-account-hacked/
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November 23, 2009, 4:30 pmRPT says:
Does all of this email controversy mean that the weather is going to change for the better? Australia, Antarctica and other areas would like to know.* (IANAS)
*(I am not a scientist)
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November 23, 2009, 4:54 pmloki13 says:
Ryan,
I hate to break the news to you, but consider the following:
1. Pantagon Papers occured in the 1970s. Hard as it is to believe, there were no intertubez back then. That means that if source documents were to be widely disseminated, they had to be published. If the NY Times (and Wahington Post per agreement) did not do so, they would have been suppressed. Once out, they were out. Now with the magic of the intertubez, anyone with a connection can look up source docs themselves. Why would a print paper with limited space make a habit of printing the source documents of articles? You haven’t yet shown other (recent) examples where the Times does so, or shown other Papers (like the liberal WSJ) that have done so.
2. Pentagon Papers was about the government systematically lying to us about a war. These were the source documents that definitely proved that (and, because of lack of intertubez, had to be published). These emails are important, and have received coverage. But I somehow doubt that anything short of the NY Times using “Victory in Europe” font size headlines, with the entire paper being devoted to printing out all the emails, will be sufficient for you. Why? Because you’re a zealot. Others (including myself) think the story is important, and want to see investigations, but find your belief that the NY Times ha to publish the source documents of every story you deem super-important (and in the way you want them to) nothing short of bizarre, especially when you haven’t provided any evidence that they have either ignored the issue, or covered it in a different (or worse) way than any other paper.
3. Is there a single person on this blog, complaining about the NY Times not printing the source documents, that is unable to get to them? Didn’t think so. So why should they waste dead trees printing what is easily available on the internet, instead of printing their summary of what is a somewhat important story (but not nearly as important, yet, as y’all hope– I think the leading cause of greenhouse gases is the hot air this has elicited).
4. Finally, as usual, I find that my great concern about the possible issues raised by these emails is beginning to be eroded by the hyperbolic commentary by people like Ryan. I’m all for further investigation, and I am disgusted by people that seek to avoid FOIA requests, but the buffoonery on exhibit leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I hope you realize that 1) underselling the documents and calling for further investigation is a more fruitful avenue to pursue, since your claim that this is the “mother of all smoking guns” and will forever vindicate you may not end up happening, which will further erode what little credibility you have gained and 2) honey tastes better than vinegar.
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November 23, 2009, 4:56 pmRyan Waxx says:
You mean, as in not warm?
Sure. As of since the turn of the century, at the very least.
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November 23, 2009, 4:57 pmRyan Waxx says:
Loki — you do an awful lot of namecalling for someone who dares say “honey tastes better than vinegar”.
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November 23, 2009, 5:02 pmloki13 says:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Besides, I have my nom de plume (as opposed to my nom nom nom) to live down to.
Anyway, while I use colorful language to make my point (such as “hysterical mischaracterization”) I would never get just say that you’re an obtuse idiot that ignores the points other makes and just blthers on. Instead, I prefer to think that your arguments are poor. Helps me sleep at night.
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November 23, 2009, 5:31 pmDialla says:
Double Standard No?
Pentagon Papers, Palin emails, etc....
This is a public institution, surely they deserve the same reporting as others have had?
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November 23, 2009, 5:39 pmRyan Waxx says:
It feels almost wrong to debunk your “news” with so little effort, but that’s what happens when there’s an obviously unequal contest of wits:
1. Your point that publishing was more necessary back in the Pentagon Papers era is important, but also irrelevant, since we are no longer in that era. You supply no context for modern standards, allow me to fulfill that gap you intentionally left.
It’s not invariably the case that sources are reproduced in the article, but there’s good reasons why you’d expect it here. Firstly, the story or stories in question have interviews purporting to explain what they meant by the email, not including the specific email they are clarifying verges on bizarre. Next, although reproducing sources is less necessary nowadays, it’s also easier to do so online... unless you are theorizing that the Times is running low on pixels? Thirdly, no one expects the times to reproduce the entire file... but their articles only focus on one or two of them specifically, and that wouldn’t be a huge burden. Lastly, its actually harder to write an article discussing what someone meant, without telling the reader what was said. Why go through the extra effort unless you have to?
2. Isn’t even an argument. It’s “You’re a zealot” with extra rant included. Forgive me if I don’t feel compelled to address it.
3. Weather or not someone can get the information if they search for it isn’t the subject of this post or even relevant, as I’m sure you already know. In fact, it’s sort of cute how the Times assumes its gatekeeper function is still intact.
* Free hint: You don’t “waste dead trees” on an online story, genius. And if you were talking about the print version, I’d love to know how they put the links in that you are referring to.
4. Sigh... the last refuge of the scoundrel... “I’m sorry, I’d LOVE to address the issues, REALLY I would, but the evil partisans have ruined everything by being so MEAN! So, I’ll just mouth some words denouncing felony destruction of FOIA’d information, the better to provide cover to attack people who are actually upset about it *wink* *wink* “.
You really aren’t fooling anyone, you know?
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November 23, 2009, 5:44 pmRyan Waxx says:
Yeah, but it takes a special kind of extra smallness of the mind to do something and — in the same post — condemn others for doing the same thing.
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November 23, 2009, 5:50 pmgeokstr says:
ROTFLMAO
I suppose you consider yourself “mainstream”. What a joke.
Of course, if you consider the NYT and its ilk “unbiased” because they always agree with you, I can see where the delusion comes from.
I am proud to call myself a conservative, there is no BS about my being a moderate. I have also read most of the posts on this site for over a year now, including most of the comments. I would put you as far left as they get here. Now you’re trying to claim “mainstream”. It’s impossible to make up stuff this hilarious.
ROTFLMAO even harder.
From the political direction that astroturfs every sleazy lie and fantasy about Palin, Limbaugh, and everyone else to right of Bernie Sanders, which then become permanently imbedded in the historical record as conventional wisdom. I still see stated as fact, everywhere on the internet, even on this site occasionally, where some of the (supposedly) most intelligent, scholarly and “intellectual” minds meet, that Palin believes 6,000 years ago when the universe was created that men kept domesticated T. Rex for pets, that she said the Iraq war was God’s will, that she said she can see Russia from her house, and that she personally slit the throat of the Wasilla Librarian, because, even after protracted waterboarding, she wouldn’t burn its copy of “Catcher in the Rye”. (OK, so I made the last one up. I probably shouldn’t have, because in a couple hours, someone on HuffPo will quote me as saying she did, then it will go viral.)
All the leftwing myths that are floating around have been quite deliberately set in motion, too, knowing full well that they’ll be with us pretty much forever.
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November 23, 2009, 5:54 pmloki13 says:
Ryan,
I enjoyed your excellent rebuttal. Made me all warm and tingly inside. I did notice the, um, absence of any comparisons. Please show me in what way a comparable “acceptable” newspaper (we’ll use the WSJ as a proxy) has had better coverage. Please show me (other than blogs, which have different policies) the many *articles* the Times has done recently linking to the original source documents.
Since this is how it’s supposed to be done, it should be easy, right?
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November 23, 2009, 6:19 pmDavid McCourt says:
It’s about linking to the documents, but not just about linking to the documents.
We shall have to see how this plays out, but right now I’d say the Times, via its newspaper reporter and blog writer Andrew Revkin, is fairly soft-pedalling the CRU document story, especially in comparison with the way the NYT and Revkin treated what they thought was a major scandal involving a pro-industry group, Global Climate Coalition, and its supposed suppression of the advice it got from its scientific advisors re AGW.
In that instance (see my first post above) there were accusatory headlines, front-page treatment, jumping to conclusions (later proved wrong, as the Times had to admit) and, in the blog, more of the above, and links to — and screen-shots of — the likely illegally obtained documents. Now its all quiet, discrete coverage, shrinking violet placement, bland, yawn-inducing headlines, and no connecting of dots.
And no documents. Oh, I forgot, that might disclose personal information of the people who deleted raw government data rather than produce it to other scientists who might see what “adjustments” they have made to it. Too bad that lady whose name, and picture in an evening gown, were splashed on the Times’ front page, because of some unfounded rumors linking her to McCain, didn’t work at CRU. Her privacy would have been well protected then.
As Michael Mann, e-mailed to Revkin a few weeks ago, assuring him he need not take criticism of CRU’s work by the scientist who had earlier pointed out the errors in Mann’s “hockey stick” seriously: “Fortunately, the prestige press doesn’t fall for this sort of stuff, right?” Revkin replied: “Thanks heaps.”
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November 23, 2009, 6:26 pmKerry says:
I suggest Revkin be deluged with offers of Sarah Palin dirt, emails and whatever else on can come up with.
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November 23, 2009, 6:51 pmAlphecca » The New York Times is an ‘Effing Rag says:
[...] comments in this Volokh Conspiracy post are priceless and deserve your reading. By now you all know that the NY Times has about as much [...]
Ryan Waxx says:
Really, this is like whack-a-mole. Smack down each argument, the troll just pops up in another hole, with another demand.
Erm, Loki... free hint: read the OP. If you had, you would have noted that the NYT item in question was a blog. Hence, requiring any counterexamples to not be a blog is... a very carefully rigged demand, indeed.
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November 23, 2009, 7:06 pmChrisTS says:
Ryan:
Do you deliberately misspell ‘whether’ as ‘weather’ to be cute, or are your spelling skills in line with your reasoning skills?
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November 23, 2009, 7:54 pmDavid McCourt says:
Hey folks, what say we move the discussion a few notches less personal and vitriolic? I see they’re walking out (I originally wrote “their” Chris — stuff happens), and it isn’t even intermission.
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November 23, 2009, 8:10 pmArthurKirkland says:
While geokstr is rolling on the floor (I’ll give him $50 to lick that floor and another $50 to lick the restroom doorknob, by the way) consequent to his misperception that my “mainstream” comment was self-directed (rather than aimed at those whose peculiar perspective causes them to consider the term a damning slur), my advice to Ryan: Quit while you are behind but not yet eviscerated.
Loki: Were you in my neighborhood, I would award a six-pack of excellent pumpkin and other holiday beers. Under the circumstances, I offer a tip: Mad Elf Ale.
Regarding a substantive matter: Is there evidence that Mrs. Palin does not consider “The Flintstones” to have been a documentary whose premise merits a place in the curriculum of public school students? If so, I will think better of her.
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November 23, 2009, 8:24 pmRyan Waxx says:
What a devastating comeback. Do you practice being obtuse in front of a mirror?
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November 23, 2009, 8:25 pmDavid McCourt says:
I have a question for everyone: shouldn’t Revkin recuse himself, or practically speaking, shouldn’t the Times keep him off this story, and put someone else on it?
Given that Revkin appears maybe a dozen times as author, recipient, or reference in these e-mails, I would think it would be a sensible, badly needed confidence-building gesture by the Times. At this point, it is not unreasonable to assume that, the more minor this scandal is, or can be made to seem, the better it is personally for Revkin, who was, it appears, a congenial correspondent with, and go-to disseminator for, but not a questioner or uncoverer of, the alleged wrongdoers.
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November 23, 2009, 8:26 pmDavid McCourt says:
Me: “Hey folks, what say we move the discussion a few notches less personal and vitriolic?”
Next post — Arthur Kirkland: “’ll give [geokstr] $50 to lick that floor and another $50 to lick the restroom doorknob....”
I guess not. Have a nice evening, gentlemen.
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November 23, 2009, 8:32 pmloki13 says:
Ryan, earlier:
“Oh, and let me be the first to predict that the NYT will eventually be forced to report on the emails anyway,”
They have.
Ryan, again:
“none of you! have one link to a NYT article that prints even one of those emails.”
We point out that this is similar to other papers. We ask Ryan for an example of a paper that has correctly pursued the story– like, say, the WSJ. Still waiting. Ryan’s complaint was above– here was my response:
“Please show me (other than blogs, which have different policies) the many *articles* the Times has done recently linking to the original source documents.”
Ryan makes the bold prediction that the Times will not have an article with the emails. It is patiently explained that, well, of course they won’t, because they normally don’t. But hey– I love to be edumacated. So I ask for any (ANY!) counter-examples– either a recent article (as Ryan delineated) from the NY Times where they publish the source documents OR coverage from another prominent newspaper where they have done so.
Good thing I don’t hold my breath.
(PS — ArthurKirkland... I’ll have to try the MadElf.... been on a Belgian kick lately)
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November 23, 2009, 8:44 pmArthurKirkland says:
Loki: Mad Elf is a cherry-hinted holiday ale from Troegs Brewing Company. A 100-ounce bottle (about three feet high) makes a dandy gift that practically ensures festivity.
I have avoided American-brewed Belgian-style products lately — the alcohol-generated astringency is often too pronounced for me (disclosure: I don’t like Stone’s Arrogant Bastard or Dogfish’s 90-century IPA, either).
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November 23, 2009, 8:52 pmloki13 says:
AK–
I meant real Belgians. I’ve had some absolutely amazing ones. Worth the price. And you can never go wrong with Delirium Noctornum.
But I agree with you on Stone’s and Dogfish– I used to (somewhat) enjoy the super-hopped IPAs. Now, not so much. Bitter and complex is not the same as enjoyable.
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November 23, 2009, 9:14 pmRyan Waxx says:
Loki13:
Are my eyes failing me or did your post simply restate your position, with my responses conveniently left out?
*looks again*
Yep. Well, its not as if listening to your excuses for an inexcusable situation was going to get anywhere anyway. Arguing with a fanatic is much like wrestling with a pig.
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November 23, 2009, 9:21 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
Here’s a long, round-up response to comments.
Several commenters believe that I jumped to conclusions in my initial post. Perhaps I did. I believe all of my inferences were reasonable given what the Times posted – certainly no less reasonable than alternative hypotheses some have put forward. And at this point, contrary inferences is all that anyone has put forward. Let’s review.
Is there a “policy”? The post in question did not simply decline to post any of the relevant documents. Rather, it announced that the documents would not be posted on the site and provided an explanation for the editorial decision. Specifically, noted that the documents a) “appear to have been acquired illegally” and b) “contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye.” Presumably, these rationales are the basis for the editorial decision – i.e. they are the basis of a “policy” of some sort, either the Times’ or Revkin’s.
The Times and the Dot Earth blog are certainly under no obligation to post the documents. Had Revkin not announced the decision not to post the documents, it would not have caught my eye. Yet Revkin did announce an editorial decision, and provided reasons for the decision. In such a situation, I think it is perfectly reasonable to scrutinize the decision and rationale. It would be one thing to not post the documents because of space concerns or something else. Quite another not to post them for reasons that are over-inclusive or that would have applied to other documents the Times has posted in the past.
If there is a policy, is it new? It appears so. The NYT has posted illegally obtained documents on a wide range of subjects, and Revkin’s blog has itself posted documents of questionable legal provenance. While some e-mails appear to contain “private information” – that is, information that is of no real public interest – this would explain selective posting of documents, not a refusal to post all of the relevant documents.
Is this a Times policy, or simply Revkin’s own choice? I assumed the former because Dot Earth is hosted by the Times and is almost certainly subject to the paper’s editorial control at some level. Moreover, as I have already noted in the comments, when challenged by a reader about the decision not to post the documents, Revkin replied that “it’s a lawyer thing.” This clearly implies the decision was not his alone to make. From this, I think it is reasonable to assume that there is a Times policy of some sort, but I would welcome evidence to the contrary.
If, as some suggested, Revkin was simply running the question by the legal department before making a decision, perhaps because he just lacks authority to make such a decision unilaterally, there would have been no reason to declare that the documents “won’t be posted” on Dot Earth. It would have made more sense to provide a link to other sites (as he did, on both his blog and the on-line version of his news story) and say nothing more.
For the above reasons, I believe I drew fairly reasonable conclusions from Revkin’s initial post. None of the comments I’ve read present any contrary evidence or demonstrate any of my inferences are unreasonable. If presented with such evidence, however, I will note it in an update to the original post. Revkin has updated his post with the following statement:
There are two issues here. Some have claimed, in the comments above and elsewhere, that the Times has failed to cover the story. As Revkin notes, that is clearly false. The issue in my original post, however, is the paper’s decision to post other documents of uncertain legal provenance while declaring it will not post these documents. That decision – not alleged selective reporting – prompted this post.
While I questioned the stated rationale, and its consistency with prior conduct, I never suggested that the NYT or Revkin was trying to conceal anything – and my original post notes that Revkin reported that the documents were widely available on other websites.
Several of the other attacks on Revkin in the comment thread are also unjustified. He has been quite upfront about his involvement in some of the e-mail exchanges. Further, he has encouraged discussion of the documents’ content on his blog. See, for instance, here and here.
One final note. As regular readers know, I believe that the balance of evidence suggests that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases contribute to atmospheric warming and that such warming is a serious (if sometimes overstated) public policy concern. Many skeptics – too many in my view – appear to have let their ideological preferences cloud their assessment of the science (a point I made here). Though I discount most apocalyptic scenarios, I believe there are ample reasons to adopt reasonable policies to reduce GHG emissions. Among other things, I support a revenue-neutral carbon tax, measures to accelerate energy-related innovation, and developed nation indemnification of more vulnerable, developing nations. At the same time, I believe many of those who advocate conventional climate change policies routinely exaggerate the relevant scientific evidence and are particularly intolerant of reasonable debate on climate change issues, going so far as to engage in character assassination of those who do not toe the line (see here). The CRU documents disclosed this week provide the latest evidence of such bad behavior – behavior that ultimately undercuts the case for a reasonable and responsible policy approach to the threat of climate change.
JHA
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November 23, 2009, 9:34 pmloki13 says:
Ryan,
I wouldn’t worry about your eyes falling out as I am not positive it would effect your reading comprehension.
You made two claims:
1. That the NY Times would not report on the issue.
That was immediately shown to be false. You have ignored that and changed the subject.
2. You have asked for one article from the NY Times that has the source emails.
It was explained that this was not common practice. But I love to learn, so I asked if you could show that it was common (or if it occured at all). I am willing to accept either a) articles from the NY Times on different subjects or b) articles from other papers on the same subject.
If my belief is correct, they are covering this story like they cover other stories, and in the same fashion other papers (including the WSJ) are covering this story. Which means the story isn’t that the NEW YORK TIMES is hiding the ball, but rather that the NY Times, and the rest of the media, aren’t covering this story exactly like you want it to be covered.
In other news, I still don’t have a pony.
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November 23, 2009, 9:39 pmArthurKirkland says:
Because you eviscerated it.
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November 23, 2009, 9:46 pmloki13 says:
Prof. Adler,
While I disagree slightly with some of your characterizations, I appreciate the long and thoughtful update. Perhaps it’s because I don’t see the difference between linking to (or telling readers how to find) vs. actually hosting something from a news point of view– for example, a previous NY Times *blog* had a link to Wikileaks on a similar issue, but didn’t host the docs themselves, whereas I do see the difference from a legal point of view. And if I was advising the NY Times, I would say this–
Do you have to host the files? No? You can just link to them? Then link to them. Let somebody else deal with that headache.
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November 23, 2009, 9:49 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
loki13 –
I think we agree on that last point. It would be totally reasonable for the Times to have a policy of linking to, but not re-posting, documents of questionable legal provenance. But that has not been their policy in the past, as the Times has posted other stolen documents that contained information not intended for public consumption.
JHA
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November 23, 2009, 10:08 pmRyan Waxx says:
loki13:
Because the OP has made a major post in the comments, I decline to continue to argue with you so as not to “clutter” the area below that post, as that’s an important part of this comments section.
Interpret that however your sense of self-impotence demands.
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November 23, 2009, 10:35 pmuberVU - social comments says:
Social comments and analytics for this post...
This post was mentioned on Twitter by jeffnolan: Extreme hypocrisy re the NYT Policy on Illegally Acquired Documents http://bit.ly/8fRxEO...
John Moore says:
The grey lady is a whore to certain political interests. Reading the formerly useful NYT on subjects of controversy is a waste of time — they lie through omission and they lie through commission.
Hopefully their near-term demise will reduce the propaganda level of the media, but I fear it won’t.
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November 24, 2009, 12:49 amSpence_UK says:
WSJ have covered the e-mails here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704888404574547730924988354.html#%20articleTabs=article
The article above (from the opinion pages) does not include a link but includes extensive quotations. The following article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html
Includes one full e-mail text (which seems to be a scan of the paper, so presumably appeared in the full paper and not just online) and a link to the full download, as well as quotations.
I’m not sure what this has to do with anything, but someone wanted an example.
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November 24, 2009, 4:21 amaf says:
Professor Adler,
You respond in a characteristically thoughtful way, but I still think you’re way offbase in suggesting the Times is announcing a “policy” of any sort against publishing illegally obtained materials, and, in fact, in criticizing the Times at all on this issue. As you acknowledged, the illegal provenance of the materials is only one of the considerations cited by Revkin. This strongly implies that the Times does not have a policy against publishing illegally obtained materials, but rather considers the provenance of the materials as one factor among others in the decision whether to publish. The other factors include the newsworthiness of the materials and their availability in the event the Times does not publish them. In this case, both of these factors weigh against publishing.
Incidentally, your argument that the Times could have posted a selection of emails misses the points that (1) the Times did quote select emails in the article, (2) the emails are not newsworthy on the scale of a secret surveillance program or the Pentagon Papers, (3) for this reason editing out the private information from thousands of emails is not worth the candle, (4) particularly since the Times can just link to them.
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November 24, 2009, 7:53 amDavid McCourt says:
“(2) the emails are not newsworthy on the scale of a secret surveillance program or the Pentagon Papers.”
Are they newsworthy on the scale of the other documents that the Times’ Dot Earth blog has posted on its site? They are far beyond that in newsworthiness.
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November 24, 2009, 8:19 amJonathan H. Adler says:
af –
Some of the e-mails are clearly as newsworthy as private industry documents on climate change of questionable legal provenance that the Times has posted, so I believe there is ample basis for questioning their consistency, and it would be easy to post them without private info. Indeed, if the concern is not disseminating the private information, the Times could serve this interest better by posting redacted versions than by linking to the various document dumps.
JHA
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November 24, 2009, 8:23 amaf says:
Some of the e-mails are clearly as newsworthy as private industry documents on climate change of questionable legal provenance that the Times has posted, so I believe there is ample basis for questioning their consistency, and it would be easy to post them without private info. Indeed, if the concern is not disseminating the private information, the Times could serve this interest better by posting redacted versions than by linking to the various document dumps.
Or publishing an article about them, quoting the most notable ones, and then linking to unredacted versions of them — as it did! I’m still shaking my head trying to figure out what’s wrong with this.
I’m not sure what private industry documents you’re referring to, but it’s hard to see how the considerations involved in publishing leaked industry documents are analogous to those involved in publishing a trove of personal emails.
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November 24, 2009, 8:59 ambubarooni says:
In general, government seeks to expand, it’s raison d’etre. It is in the interests of bureaucrats to push AGW as a means to both justify and extend their power over the public. They use their control of the public’s purse to fund ‘scientists’ who publish ‘research’ that bolsters their case for increased control over the public.
It is in the interests of ‘scientists’ to publish research that bolsters what bureaucrats want in order to keep the money flowing. The more dire the scenario they can construct, the more money they can receive. It is also in their interests to suppress contrarian views as is evidenced by the CRU emails.
There is nothing that can be done about Sun spot activity, variations in the Earth’s orbit or variations in the rotational tilt of the Earth. Therefore, these causes are to be discounted and the only acceptable cause is to be Man’s activity which, conveniently, can be controlled by the Mandarin’s in various levels/types of government.
I ain’t much on conspiracy theories, but I can recognize the human lust for power and greed as well as the next. You can dress it up with whatever ‘research’ you want, but it is a Government-Science Complex that has driven this debate for their own ends and whatever it is they are doing, it is not science.
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November 24, 2009, 9:03 amSteve P. says:
I’m not too surprised that this Revkin guy doesn’t want to host or link the files. I mean, they contain private emails to and from him, right? They may be public now, but I don’t think he’s under any obligation to make it easier for his readers to read his email.
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November 24, 2009, 9:17 amDavid McCourt says:
Af,
The Times’, and Revkin’s, aggressive (and ultimately inaccurate) treatment of a supposed scandal involving industry documents re AGW, which featured both posting and screen-shots of the documents, is outlined in my first post in this thread, and is also referred to by Professor Adler in his longer post above.
By contrast, look at the bland headlines from the NYT story and the blog entry on the CRU documents: “Private Climate Conversations on Display,” and “Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute.” The burden of both stories is that the documents are “causing a stir among global warming skeptics” – but not among those at the Times, or among sane people — and that the Times already knows that the “hacked material in unlikely to erode the overall argument” for AGW. So, nothing to look at here, folks, let’s move on.
Revkin does not quote from the most notable emails. Amazingly, he misses this one, where Phil Jones, the head of the CRU, tells Michael Mann (the “hockey stick man”), about other scientists who wish to examine the raw temperature data to see if they can replicate the work:
Revkin also fails to mention that after a FOIA request was made for the raw data, CRU reported that it had been “inadvertantly deleted.”
Here’s another that Revkin fails to quote: Jones, again writing to Mann, with the subject heading “IPCC & FOI”:
There is much more that goes unquoted in the Times, including CRU’s efforts to exclude the peer-reviewed work of less than compliant scientists from the IPCC reports, discussion of efforts to get a journal editor fired, efforts to massage the data to make the Medieval Warm Period look less warm and recent years more warm, the defense of tree-ring data as solid when it is suspected by them to be faulty, an exasperated admission that it is farcical that they cannot explain the recent cooling, etc., etc.
This is an explosive story that, with the vivid quotes available, practically writes itself, for any newsperson with an interest in the newsworthy, and a hand not stilled by self-censorship. Instead, the Times and Revkin seem strangely inert and uninterested. In the four days since his first post, Revkin has not posted any new story discussing or quoting from the e-mails, but seems more interested in playing defense for the CRU people. Here’s what Revkin says he’s doing to report on the story: “I’m running down tips and assertions related to the theft and hackings . . . . Needless to say, if anyone has information or ideas, feel free to email [me].”
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November 24, 2009, 10:43 amedward says:
Keep in mind that these emails may not be final word on what gets released. The person releasing them said they were a “sample”. I think there is quite a bit of caution for those involved not to say anything to even defend themselves that could be illustrated to be a lie by future releases. Keep in mind the ongoing and devasting releases of the Acorn tapes. I think there is more to come and who knows what role journalists have had in this aptly named Climategate. The NYT may be maintaining silence as a defensive posture while check to see if they have email exposure.
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November 24, 2009, 12:00 pmmegapotamus says:
Well, so what? No one, and I mean NO one relies on the Times to know what is happening in their world. Whatever few poor mooks left who may expose themselves only to the Times knows by now that this is an exercise in defense of their ignorance, if not stupidity. And yes, it is also in defense of stupidity.
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November 24, 2009, 12:21 pmLeo Marvin says:
As usual, what the partisans on both sides have in common is their certainty the other guy is wrong. Of course some people are snottier about it than others.
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November 24, 2009, 2:53 pmRyan Waxx says:
People can agree that something is noteworthy without agreeing what it means. When you cannot even bring yourself to admit that when the authors of the U.N. climate change reports and the sole providers of much of the historical record that other climate scientists and politicians making multi-trillion dollar decisions regarding the economies of dozens of nations rely on just might be fudging their reports and their basic data... then it doesn’t take an IQ of 175 or a doctorate in climatology to see THAT THIS MIGHT JUST BE A PROBLEM. All it takes is a pulse. Preferably one that extends as high as the ears.
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November 24, 2009, 6:58 pm