Regulation religion that is.

I have no problem with Stossel pointing out uncertainties in our understanding of climate, or even arguing in an opinion piece that "the debate is not over." But I'm not at all certain his viewers understood that his "Give Me a Break" segment on global warming was not actually journalism but straight up bloviation. Stossel is clearly motivated less by a desire to follow the truth than by blind allegiance to a laissez-faire ideology. Since the free market alone probably cannot solve global warming, Stossel's ideology likely will prevent him from ever acknolwedging even the possibility of a threat from anthropogenic climate change. He is therefore disqualified from covering this issue as a journalist.

Disqualified? What kind of idiocy is that? And the regulation advocates are motivated by a desire to follow the truth? Hardly. Stossel's sins are no greater than those who have alternative beliefs. Blind allegiance to a totalitarian ideology, like that supported by climate change believers, prevents them from ever acknolwedging that their regulatory schemes are even less likely to be effective than more market oriented methods. The sad, sad truth here is that such advocates would be happy to see climate change so long as they gained control of world economies. They'd moan a bit and gnash their teeth - and blame someone else - but take comfort from their new power.

I know some critics will say that Cooper, Corwin and Gupta were just as biased in their treatment of this material as I maintain Stossel was in his. But I'm not buying it. Whereas Stossel simply rehashed the same old tired arguments, twisting the truth along the way, "Planet in Peril" was notable for its originality and in-depth reporting. One of my favorite segments was on pollution spewing from a Chinese mine into a river used by a local village for irrigation and drinking water. People in the village are getting sick, but little is being done to clean things up. In the great tradition of television investigative reporting, Sanjay Gupta literally walked right in to the mine offices with a camera crew to conduct an interview of the unsuspecting mine manager. In China! It was stunning.

There's nothing stunning, or even interesting, about tired old ambush interviews masquerading as journalism. Does anyone, anywhere, not know that China is currently suffering the ravages of pollution common to early industrial societies emerging from subsistence agriculture? Can someone wave their wand and make it better? What can be done to "clean things up"?

I'm glad that there are a few folks like Stossel who are secure enough to confront the magical thinkers and ignorant "scholars", exposing their simple minded glosses on reality for what they are: mindless beliefs that will make things worse rather than better. We will have to be much more thoughtful and wise to deal with the current set of global challenges than the advocacy community grasps, and it will require continued investigation and debate about conditions and policies.

BTW, this is one of the greatest dangers in the stultifying uniformity of the academy these days. Every issue is gamed to advance a political view rather than investigated and evaluated to discover rational approaches. Society suffers from a lack of informed input from the academy. I doubt this will change, at least not soon. Instead, society will leverage advances in information and communication technologies to work around the academy, as it has done with broadcast media. Journalism, in that old fashioned sense that includes even Stossel, is in decline as a consequence. So is the academy, though the slide isn't fully realized yet, especially by those in the academy. They are always the last to know, the slowest to learn. More's the pity.