In a little 354-word item tucked away on page A21 of this morning’s New York Times, we get an update on the saga of Philip A. Cooney, the White House staffer who the Times recently outed as having revised reports from the President’s Environmental Policy Council in order to cast doubt on scientific findings about climate change. Just two days after being fingered in the Times, it would seem that Cooney has finally had enough of public service, and is abruptly leaving the White House for the private sector — taking an undisclosed job at ExxonMobil in the fall.
We wanted to know more. Surely the Times could do better than this on a story recounting the startling outcome of its own earlier exclusive. So after marking the print piece for further scrutiny, we checked the paper’s Web site this morning and found an updated version that appeared in the Times’ online science section — while the earlier version remained posted in the “Washington” section.
Curious, that.
In the print version of the story, the Times ran two quotes, one from Dana Perino, a deputy White House spokeswoman, and the second from an Exxon spokesman praising Cooney and Exxon’s efforts in “prepar[ing] for the risks of climate change.” This seemed an inadequate rendering of the facts of the case. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday, Exxon has taken the lead in fighting against emission standards and in scuttling any chance that the United States would sign the Kyoto protocol.
While it did make mention of Exxon’s lobbying efforts in this regard, the Times left out any mention of the close ties Exxon has had with the Bush administration. By contrast, the British Guardian reported on June 8 that papers obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that U.S. Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky thanked Exxon executives for the company’s “active involvement” in helping to determine the administration’s climate change policy, including offering up the company’s advice on what climate policies Exxon might find acceptable.
So we turned to the Web version of the Times story aware that there was a lot of room for improvement. And while that version at least goes beyond the exclusive use of friendly quotes, it adds little of value.
The Times’ print story ended with the Exxon spokesman spinning the company’s concern about “reducing emissions” (which, as the Journal and the Guardian have pointed out, simply isn’t true). But the Web version ends with a rebuttal of sorts. While the penultimate paragraph uses the evidence-free “Some climate scientists and environmental campaigners said” construction (failing to tell us who they might be), it does quote David G. Hawkins, director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private environmental group, as saying:
“Perhaps [Cooney] won’t even notice he has changed jobs.”
Funny? Sure. But informative? Not so much.
To us, half the rationale for a newspaper’s Web site is to give reporters unlimited space to escape the constraints of print. The Times has a long way to go in exploiting that wide-open opportunity.
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.