PBS Ombudsman Posts 72-Paragraph Apology/Explanation Of "Balanced" NewsHour Piece W. Anthony Watts

I can feel the flop sweat from here . . .

This may be the longest ombudsman column I've ever posted because the subject generates about as much thunder and heat as one of those storms many have experienced lately that at least seem to make us think more about climate change. It also is one of those lose-lose subjects for an ombudsman in which whatever one writes is certain not to satisfy a lot of people.
A Program

Here's a guide to why it's long, why it may be worth sticking with it, and what's to follow.

The segment — headlined "Climate Change Skeptic No Longer Doubts Human Role in Global Warming" — was conducted by veteran NewsHour Correspondent Spencer Michels. It started out focused on a perfectly relevant news angle. Physicist Richard Muller had long been among those who denied that climate change was happening, but he made big news last month when he broke with his allies and published an op-ed in the New York Times saying not only was he no longer a skeptic but that "I'm now going a step further. Humans are almost entirely the cause."

The segment went on from there, however, in a much more controversial direction, and I will come back to it. But almost from the moment it ended, email began pouring into my mailbox, hundreds of them. A representative sampling is posted below. Some are quite long. At the same time, several analytical and opinion pieces attacking or supporting the segment were posted online — almost certainly driving more email traffic — by liberal and conservative commentators, and man-made climate change supporters and critics here, here and here.

Later in the week, a petition arrived listing 15,000 names associated with "Forecast The Facts," a group demanding an investigation into "how and why PBS NewsHour promoted falsehoods about climate change and slander against climate scientists." They focused on the broadcast segment and an accompanying blog post by Michels involving a more extended interview with another guest on the program, Anthony Watts, who the "Facts" group described as a "climate change denier and conspiracy theorist." I will come back to him as well.

EDIT

Much, much more at:

http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/2012/09/climate_change_creates_a_storm.html