Based on the quality of the Newsweek piece, which, I trust, any thinking person will disregard as propaganda, I suspect the answer increasingly is "no." Marc, who is more generous to Newsweek than I, does come up with a value in Newsweek's piece:

Journalism students across the world can read this week’s cover story to learn how reporting should not be done. Hopefully, that will be Newsweek’s legacy -- serving as a shining example of the failure of modern journalism to adhere to balance, objectivity and fairness.

It is almost like the Newsweek writers and editors were watching the controversies the New Republic has gotten itself into by publishing stories without properly fact-checking them, and said to themselves: How can we get ourselves some of that kind of attention?

I know that sounds far-fetched, as theories go, but when people go so far out of their way to make fools of themselves, is it not reasonable to wonder if they are doing it on purpose?

The Newsweek article is here; Marc's criticism, which, as harsh as it seems, is actually too nice, can be found here. Marc's criticism focuses on the issue of climate science, and how Newsweek reported it.

The Newsweek piece is nothing but a collection of every canard the environmental left has said about conservative and free-market organizations on global warming going back to the late 80s (if not earlier), without regard to accuracy. Allegation after allegation is made in Newsweek about organizations as well as individuals who oppose the environmental left's agenda on global warming, yet the piece does not even pretend to include even a token rebuttal. It's not as if the facts were unavailable to Newsweek, either: One of the reporters on the story, Sam Stein, called the National Center for Public Policy Research (which I head) for, he said, information on the history of the climate change debate on July 26, around 2 PM. I called him back personally a bit after 3 PM, told him I would be happy to talk to him about this, and left my direct dial number. I never heard from him again. The way we "patterned" our work was still described by Newsweek, however -- in a quote from former Democratic lawmaker Tim Wirth, a green activist and Clinton appointee who is definitely on the other side of the policy fence, and who has no idea what he is talking about.

Gee, is Tim Wirth really an expert on how conservative and free-market think-tanks "pattern" our work? Even more than we are?

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