From Justin Clouder
Your defence of New Scientist continuing to run ads for SUVs while taking a strong stand on climate change is a bizarre piece of doublethink, effectively claiming hypocrisy as evidence of integrity (8 April, p 24).
It is depressing to think that the editorial staff of NS are so weak that they need to be defended against commercial pressures in this way, particularly when the effect is also to protect advertising sales staff from having to consider such matters as the impact on the credibility of the magazine, the morality of running such ads at all and the opinions of your readers.
At the same time, the idea that the NS editor does not consider commercial matters is ludicrous. Do you really never attend a budget meeting? Have you no say in the hiring or pay of staff? Do you know nothing of the commercial aims of the magazine? Are you completely uninvolved in pricing?
No, it won’t wash. You are not some naive ingénu who needs protecting from commercial wolves. Your distinction between the commercial and editorial aspects of the magazine is artificial and your abdication of any moral responsibility for the advertising content of NS is reprehensible.
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From Doug Dwyer
I suggest that the car manufacturers who place advertising in New Scientist did not choose the magazine in the anticipation of increased sales of their unnecessarily polluting product to a readership of scientists and engineers.
Rather their tactic draws on the advertising ploy of repetition and familiarity to minimise the dislike your influential readers may feel for their product. The majority of them could not afford such vehicles anyway.
It may be that the stronger the evidence correlating vehicle pollution and global warming cited in your editorials, the greater will be the investment in such advertising.
Northlew, Devon, UK
London, UK
