If you recall, last week I expressed some dismay that a three part series on global warming in Scientific American magazine was financed by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. To my surprise, no journalistic watchdogs (or science journalists) rose up to publicly question this unusual arrangement. But Bud Ward at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media comes close in this post. Quite frankly, I'm gobsmacked by what he's learned in interviews with an editor at SciAm and the writer of the series (John Carey). Let's start with this passage from Ward's piece (my emphasis):
Carey says he insisted to Pew that he alone retain editorial control over the story "” "just like any other story" "” and that Pew could not tell him what to write. At the same time, however, he acknowledged showing Pew staffers a first draft and a final draft prior to ...
