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by Paul D. Thacker
Post date 01.26.06 | Issue date 02.06.06

In his final column of the year, FoxNews.com science columnist Steven Milloy listed "the top 10 junk science claims of 2005." For number nine, Milloy attacked the research of Michael Mann, a Penn State scientist who, in 1999, published research showing a dramatic rise in global temperatures during the twentieth century, after hundreds of years with little climate change. Calling Mann's science "dubious," Milloy praised Representative Joe Barton of Texas, whose calls for an investigation into Mann's methodology last June were cut short when the scientific community and members of Congress protested it as a witch hunt. Representative Sherwood Boehlert, the chairman of the House Committee on Science, wrote to Barton, "The only conceivable explanation for the investigation is to attempt to intimidate a prominent scientist and to have Congress put its thumbs on the scales of a scientific debate."

Another conceivable explanation for the investigation is that Barton, as chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, is swimming in donations from oil companies. But that probably didn't bother Milloy, because he receives his own sponsorship from ExxonMobil. As revealed in Mother Jones last spring, between 2000 and 2003, ExxonMobil donated $90,000 to two nonprofits Milloy operates out of his house in Potomac, Maryland. Milloy's defense of Barton--and excoriation of Mann--is typical of his corporate-subsidized science reporting, in which he has attacked not only global warming, but also secondhand smoke studies and clean air regulations.

Over the past year, there have been several instances of political columnists shilling for the Bush administration. In January 2005, Tribune Media Services booted Armstrong Williams after discovering he had taken a government contract to write columns favorable to Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. And, in December, Copley News Service dropped Doug Bandow after discovering that he was taking money from Jack Abramoff to write columns favorable to the Republican lobbyist's clients. But the trend in paid-for-punditry seems to have spread to the world of science journalism as well. Earlier this month, BusinessWeek Online reported that, in 1999, Scripps Howard columnist Michael Fumento received $60,000 from Monsanto, one of the biotech companies he later covered in his columns, to help pay his salary at the Hudson Institute and to cover some of the overhead of his book BioEvolution. Fumento had not disclosed the Monsanto money to Scripps Howard.

But, whereas Scripps Howard fired Fumento and apologized to its readers, Fox News continues to look the other way as Milloy accepts corporate handouts. And it's not just the ExxonMobil money. Milloy has a long history of taking payment from industries that have a stake in the science stories he writes. The ethical standards are clear. "Not disclosing this is wrong," says Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The real question, then, is why Fox News continues to employ Milloy. Or, in the words of James Hansen, a climate scientist and the head of nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, "The question is, 'Why does a major news organization employ such a hack?'"

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[ 31 January 2006: Message edited by: Snuckles ]