Ira Stoll writes for the Washington Free Beacon about another case of legacy media malpractice.
“Never read just one newspaper” is one of my media literacy rules. Sometimes even that fails, as it did on Monday April 13, 2026, when the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both weighed in with suspiciously similar, and sadly unskeptical, stories claiming that the Iran war somehow provided vindication for China’s emphasis on wind and solar energy.
How’d the New York Times (“War Highlights China’s Renewables Lead”) and the Wall Street Journal (“An Iran War Winner: China’s Clean Energy”) wind up with the same bad takes on the same story on the same day? It’s likely that their editors were both reading the Associated Press, a wire service that drives newsroom agendas by providing a tip sheet in advance disclosing what stories the AP is working on. The AP had its own version of the same story, headlined, “Iran war’s global energy crisis sharpens China’s advantage in clean tech.” Datelined Hong Kong, a China-controlled territory where journalists are imprisoned if they publish articles that the Chinese authorities disapprove of, the AP story begins, “China is poised to benefit from the Iran war as global energy disruptions accelerate a shift away from fossil fuels and toward clean technologies and renewable power, industries that China dominates.”
The gist of the story—that the Iran war somehow demonstrates that China is right about wind and solar energy—is a fantasy, not a fact. …
… A headline that said “Iran War Winner: U.S. Fracking and Offshore Drilling” would be as accurate, probably more accurate, than the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Associated Press headlines. It’s unlikely to appear so long as the AP is driving the agenda.
The AP used to be funded largely by dues from member newspapers. But as the newspaper industry has collapsed, the AP has become increasingly reliant on grants from nonprofit organizations with ideological agendas.
