Andrew Revkin, New York Times

NY Times reporter whitewashes Climategate story he is part of

By Steve Milloy
Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Below is a text of the letter sent to Clark Hoyt, the public editor (ombudsman) for the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/scien ... .html?_r=1

Mr. Hoyt,

Shouldn’t Andrew Revkin haved recused himself from his Nov. 21 front-page article, “Hacked E-mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute“?

First, as Revkin briefly acknowledges in the article, he is part of the story. Isn’t it a breach of journalistic ethics for a reporter to report on a story of which he is part?

Moreover, his story to a great extent defended his sources. It’s one thing to rely on sources; it is quite another to defend them at the expense of unbiased and accurate reporting about them.

This is not an innocent faux pas either.

Revkin tried to whitewash the significance of the story — including distracting readers away from the embarrassing/incriminating contents of the files and, instead, focusing them on the alleged hacking.

Finally, as we will report tomorrow, there seems to have been no “hackâ€