Remember those times that all the bees died? More fake news.

The line between deliberately manipulating a story or poorly reporting the facts is perilously thin.

During Sunday’s Academy Awards presentation, the United States’ ‘paper of record’, the New York Times, launched an advertising blitz positioning itself as the highbrow ethical responder to the spate of so-called ‘fake news.’ “The truth is hard…to find…to know,” the add proclaimed, somberly.

It’s a powerful message, one that the public and the media should reflect upon—including the leadership at the Times itself. Whether a journalist presents a story in good faith but wrongly can be a matter of healthy debate. But increasingly, a more troubling ethical line is being crossed: some writers choose to arrange facts, or even invent them, in ways that grey out nuances to advance a story-line arrived at before independent reporting even commenced. That leaves the editor as the public’s final integrity life-line. But to fulfill that responsibility, editors need to be aware of their own biases, or they risk crossing over from being guardians of the truth to creators of biased or even what has come to be popularly known as "fake news."

Case in point is the New York Times’ coverage of food and farming issues, most recently what has come to be known in recent years as “beemageddon”— concerns about the health of one of nature’s most important pollinators, the bee.

Are bees facing extinction as many environmental advocacy groups and some scientists claim; and are neonicotinoid pesticides the key reason behind their health problems, as many activists, and the Times, suggest?

The world’s top scientists cringe at the hyperbolic framing of environmental issues. When it comes to bees, National Medal of Science and Goldman Environmental Prize winning bee expert May Berenbaum has called such scare claims unhelpful. “The rhetoric has gotten ridiculous. It is hyperbolic to talk about the apocalypse,” she said.

Faced with a slew of missteps in its coverage of the “beeapocalypse”, the Times might be well served to reflect on its neonics and bee crisis narrative. Next up for its editors: reporter Danny Hakim, who has faced sharp criticism from independent scientists for his reporting on the GMO debate, is taking on the bees and pesticides. The Times was unresponsive when scientists and science journalists challenged his prior reporting as biased (and in some cases factually inaccurate).

Is the Times willing to devote the time and resources to report on nuanced stories outside of its traditional fields of expertise? That would require a level of oversight at the vetting stage and after an article is written but before publication—which now appears to be lacking, at least on the issue of pollinators and pesticides.

In 1982, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a consumer advocacy group, published a report on ACSH's practices that stated, "ACSH seems to arrive at conclusions before conducting studies. Through voodoo or alchemy, bodies of scientific knowledge are transmogrified into industry-oriented position statements."^[33] CSPI director Michael F. Jacobson said of ACSH, '"This organization promotes confusion among consumers about what is safe and what isn't.... ACSH is using a slick scientific veneer to obscure and deny truths that virtually everyone else agrees with."^[34]

LooseGoose wrote:Once again - they can't refute the facts so attack the messenger(s).

NigelUno wrote:

LooseGoose wrote:Once again - they can't refute the facts so attack the messenger(s).

All the bees died? I thought I saw one the other day.

CheesySpartan wrote:It was a few years ago Bob. What nobody wants to talk about is the reason the native bee numbers were declining was because illegal African bees were coming over the Mexican border and killing them. Thats why we need a wall!!!

LooseGoose wrote:Once again - they can't refute the facts so attack the messenger(s).

LooseGoose wrote:Once again - they can't refute the facts so attack the messenger(s).

GRR Spartan wrote:

LooseGoose wrote:Once again - they can't refute the facts so attack the messenger(s).

You are using a group paid for by the pesticide industries to call scientific studies as fake news.  The same kind of outfits that deny global climate change or paid for by the leaded gaoline lobby or the tobacco industry.

Its a fake group to support your premise that bee colony collapse is fake news.

Better tell that to the Ag department at MSU that is working on making sure we have enough bees to pollinate all the nations crops.

If you don't agree its fake news.

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

LooseGoose wrote:Once again - they can't refute the facts so attack the messenger(s).

It would just be nice if you provided reputable sources every once in a while instead of your usual IHateLibrals.com links. At least when science is involved.

LooseGoose wrote:

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

It would just be nice if you provided reputable sources every once in a while instead of your usual IHateLibrals.com links. At least when science is involved.

List your "reputable" sources.   What I like is your constant attacking of my links and near silence when others post shit with no links or sourcing whatsoever.   It's ok, I'll persist though because I think it's going to be fun watching  Libs sputter for a few more years.

LooseGoose wrote:

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

It would just be nice if you provided reputable sources every once in a while instead of your usual IHateLibrals.com links. At least when science is involved.

List your "reputable" sources.   What I like is your constant attacking of my links and near silence when others post shit with no links or sourcing whatsoever.   It's ok, I'll persist though because I think it's going to be fun watching  Libs sputter for a few more years.

GRR Spartan wrote:Goose lives in a taker county. There isn't much to do.

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

LooseGoose wrote:

List your "reputable" sources.   What I like is your constant attacking of my links and near silence when others post shit with no links or sourcing whatsoever.   It's ok, I'll persist though because I think it's going to be fun watching  Libs sputter for a few more years.

Goosie, that is exactly why I call you out all the time. A lot of the shit that gets posted here without links is just trolling bullshit. You on the other hand tend to pass off your trolling bullshit as the one indisputable truth with links that no one really believes to be unbiased.

Feel free to whine about that some more, that's what this board is for. 

LooseGoose wrote:

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

Goosie, that is exactly why I call you out all the time. A lot of the shit that gets posted here without links is just trolling bullshit. You on the other hand tend to pass off your trolling bullshit as the one indisputable truth with links that no one really believes to be unbiased.

Feel free to whine about that some more, that's what this board is for. 

So you're not going to post a list?   I guess that would be awkward when one of your list members prints something you disagree with - there goes your primary rebuttal.

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

LooseGoose wrote:

So you're not going to post a list?   I guess that would be awkward when one of your list members prints something you disagree with - there goes your primary rebuttal.

I have no clue what you're talking about. Who are my list members? Have you been reading too much Alex Jones lately?

LooseGoose wrote:

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

I have no clue what you're talking about. Who are my list members? Have you been reading too much Alex Jones lately?

I asked you nicely for a list of your acceptable sources. Which news organizations I can link to without you immediately calling what they print a lie. Would the New York Times be on it? The paper that posted McCakill's Russia lie yesterday then deleted with no editor's note or correction?

LooseGoose wrote:

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

I have no clue what you're talking about. Who are my list members? Have you been reading too much Alex Jones lately?

I asked you nicely for a list of your acceptable sources.   Which news organizations I can link to without you immediately calling what they print a lie.    Would the New York Times be on it?   The paper that posted McCakill's Russia lie yesterday then deleted with no editor's note or correction?

GRR Spartan wrote:Goose admitted he just posts for reaction. He admitted so today. He doesn't believe what he posts. He posts solely to stir things up.

Goose is a troll.
He doesn't have a moral compass.
He posts to get reactions. No different than Antineoblahblahblah or Blanch or The Dude or Bobny Sak who posts only to bother Goose.

GRR Spartan wrote:Goose admitted he just posts for reaction.  He admitted so today.   He doesn't believe what he posts.  
He posts solely to stir things up.

Goose is a troll.
He doesn't have a moral compass.  
He posts to get reactions.  No different than Antineoblahblahblah or Blanch or The Dude or Bobby Sak who posts only to bother Goose.

LooseGoose wrote:Once again - they can't refute the facts so attack the messenger(s).

Robert J Sakimano wrote:I don't pay attention to fake news..

I'm too busy concerning myself with the #BowlingGreenMassacre and the victims of the terror attack in Sweden... and the fact that the one woman didn't stand at the speech.

#PrayForSweden #NeverForget

Blanch32 wrote:

Robert J Sakimano wrote:I don't pay attention to fake news..

I'm too busy concerning myself with the #BowlingGreenMassacre and the victims of the terror attack in Sweden... and the fact that the one woman didn't stand at the speech.

#PrayForSweden #NeverForget

Lol

I'll never forgive fake news for what they have done to me and my family