Daily Caller Silent On EPA's Legal Victory

Yesterday a federal appeals court unanimously upheld the EPA's finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare, deeming the EPA "unambiguously correct" in addressing climate change through the Clean Air Act. One media
The Daily Calleroutlet that is curiously silent on the ruling is the Daily Caller, whose reporter Matthew Boyle previously claimed the resulting regulations would cause the EPA to hire an “ARMY OF 230k BUREAUCRATS.” The claim was completely false, and their refusal to correct the clear error damaged their reputation and embarrassed employees.

Boyle's claim on Twitter echoed his Daily Caller article misreading an EPA court filing. The EPA said that it avoided a scenario that would require 230,000 workers by using a “tailoring rule” to regulate only the largest polluters -- a rule that was upheld in the recent court ruling. After several outlets ridiculed Daily Caller's error, its executive editor defended the article by making a snide comment to Politico and making several bad rationalizations about why they did not correct their false report.

In addition to ruling in favor of the tailoring rule, the court also affirmed that the EPA made a "science-based judgment." This court ruling directly contradicts a previous Daily Caller report titled “Weird Science: EPA's own Inspector General calls greenhouse gas science flawed,” which falsely claimed that the “scientific basis” of the endangerment finding for greenhouse gases “violated the EPA's own peer review procedure.” In fact, the Inspector General report addressed obscure procedural issues, not the merits of EPA's finding or the extensive science on which it was based. The Daily Caller later changed its headline (without noting the change) to “Weird science: EPA Inspector General calls greenhouse-gas regulatory process flawed.”

The Daily Caller also dedicated an entire article earlier this year to listing every reason that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli thought the EPA “violated the law.” You'd think the Daily Caller would let its readers know the result.