Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Telegraph blogger James Delingpole wins Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism

By Damian Thompson

At an awards ceremony in New York last night, James Delingpole was announced as the winner of the 2010 Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism for his Telegraph blog.

This is great news. James’s posts on the Climategate scandal made a huge international impact on the debate over global warming, raising serious questions about the scientific basis of some of the more extravagant predictions of environmental apocalypse.

Also, it is fair to say, the scandal gravely damaged the reputation of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which was accused – on the basis of leaked emails – of manipulating data in order to exaggerate the extent of global warming.

After James’s posts appeared, generating in some cases over a million page views each, the scientific consensus over climate suddenly appeared a good deal more fragile than it had previously, as even some supporters of the global warming thesis concede. (Others, in contrast, splutter with rage at the mere mention of Delingpole’s name.)

A word about the Bastiat Prize: it’s a heavy-hitting award by the free-market International Politics Network, given for both print and online journalism. This is the second year running that a Telegraph blogger has won the digital prize: Daniel Hannan was the 2009 winner. Judges in previous years have included the Nobel Prize Winners James Buchanan and Milton Friedman, and also Margaret Thatcher; this year they included Douglas Ginsburg of the US Court of Appeals and the science writer Matt Ridley.

Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal won the 2010 Bastiat print award; also shortlisted in the two categories were Mark Perry of the Carpe Diem blog, Martin Wolf of the FT and Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe.

Anyway, many congratulations to James. I’m sure he will be too modest to mention his achievement – or, heaven forbid, to rub it in.

Source:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100063465/telegraph-blogger-james-delingpole-wins-bastiat-prize-for-online-journalism/

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- Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at uppsala University in Sweeden.

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