“All The Views Are Fit to Print”

From MEDIA MATTERS:

The New York Times hired Wall Street Journal deputy editor Bret Stephens as its newest opinion columnist, claiming he “will bring a new perspective to bear on the news.” Stephens has a long history of promoting misinformation, including on climate science, foreign policy, and sexual assault.

Politico: Bret Stephens Leaves WSJ To Join NY Times As Op-Ed Columnist. Politico reported that Bret Stephens, the deputy editorial page editor for The Wall Street Journal, is leaving the Journal and “will be The New York Times’ newest op-ed columnist.” The Times ‘ editorial page editor, James Bennet, wrote in a memo announcing the hiring that Stephens is “a beautiful writer” who “will bring a new perspective to bear on the news.”

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Stephens Continually Promoted Climate Denial And Anti-Science Misinformation

Stephens: “Global Warming Is Sick-Souled Religion,” Not Science. In a 2008 column in the Journal, Stephens called global warming a “sick-souled religion,” claiming that “much of the science has since been discredited.” Stephens cited conservative talking points that have been repeatedly debunked, including that NASA revised its rankings to reflect that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year on record (NASA noted that 1934 was the hottest in the U.S.; 1998 remained listed as the hottest globally at the time). Stephens added that global warming is a “nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God.”

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Stephens Compared The “Intellectual Methods” Of “Global Warming True Believers” To “Closet Stalinists,” Anti-Semites, And Communists. In a December 2009 Wall Street Journal column, Stephens claimed that “the intellectual methods” of “global warming true believers” and “closet Stalinists” are “instructively similar.”

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Stephens Consistently Pushed Misinformation On Foreign Policy

Stephens Rewrote The History Of The Iraq War, Claiming That The Bush Administration’s Case Against Iraq Was Supported By Evidence. Stephens rewrote the history of the Iraq War in 2013, falsely claiming the Bush administration’s case against Iraq was supported by solid evidence. Stephens criticized the Obama administration’s case for military intervention in Syria by contrasting it with Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, which he claimed was made based on “highly detailed” intelligence revealing weapons of mass destruction. Stephens claimed that the “testimony of U.N. inspectors like Hans Blix” supported the Bush administration’s case for war, and accusations that the Bush administration lied were “libel” and “cheap slander.” In fact, Blix told CNN in 2004 that the Bush administration “chose to ignore” his team’s concerns about the lack of solid evidence in favor of war, and that prior to the invasion the evidence of WMDs in Iraq was revealed to be “shaky”:

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Stephens Claimed The Iran Nuclear Deal Was “Worse” Than The 1938 Munich Agreement With The Nazis. In a November 2013 column titled “Worse Than Munich,” Stephens criticized the interim nuclear deal with Iran, claiming, “Never in the field of global diplomacy has so much been given away by so many for so little.”

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Stephens Denied The Prevalence Of Campus Rape And Sexual Violence

Stephens: “The Campus-Rape Epidemic … Is An Imaginary Enemy.” In a November 2015 column, Stephens claimed that “the campus-rape epidemic—in which one in five female college students is said to be the victim of sexual assault—is an imaginary enemy” conjured to sustain “liberal fictions of a never-ending war on women.”