Climate blogs, cable news and some inconvenient truths | The Energy Collective

If there is one forum that needs some sanity restoration, it is the climate blogs (science and political ones). Blogs highlight the extremes of the other side. Bloggers call each other names. Bloggers get grandiose and self-righteous.

Yes, absolutely, you can blame the medium. It is impersonal. It is easy to be extreme when the opponent is a collection of pixels and text rather than a living, breathing person. Plus, blogging only works if you have readers. And more controversy equals more page views.

But add it all up, and what do you get?

Cable news. Steve McIntrye as Bill O'Reilly? Joe Romm as Keith Olbermann? Anthony Watts as Glenn Beck? (plus a lot of folks hoping to be Jon Stewart?)

Journos' Biggest ClimateGate Regret: Getting Scooped, Not Getting it Wrong | NewsBusters.org

That's quite an admission; journalists apparently believed that getting scooped by bloggers - on a story with legs, no less - was more regrettable than running with a story for years without fulfilling the fundamental journalistic responsibility of simply asking questions.