We bump into a whole mess of assumptions here, don’t we? I’ll just go after a few of them.

• The most obvious wrong assumption here (and the most dangerous) is that professional journalists have the authority to dictate the public conversation. They don’t. Journalists are not independent authorities, bestowed with the burden of managing truth. Journalists are participants in a marketplace, be it a market of ideas or advertising revenues, and usually both. Journalists enjoy the fiction that they deem what the public is worthy to hear, but that’s a purely self-serving myth. It tells the public that they must obey the Lords of Journalism. We don’t have to do nothing, pal.
• Another assumption is that the reporter or editor is any more qualified to sort out truth and falsity than the public is. If the public needs to be spoon-fed what to believe because they’re not scientific experts, well neither are the reporters. Besides, the public is filled with some very intelligent people, who may not be scientific experts but are experts in other fields, and to labor under the fantasy that you have to spoon-feed them because you’re a reporter is just arrogance. So if the reporter feels he can sort out the truth from the available options, well then so too can the public. But the difference is that truth belongs to everyone, not just to reporters. It’s the public’s right to make that decision, not the reporter.
• One more assumption – and it’s revealed in the original article’s offhand dismissal of religion in the last paragraph. “…environmentalism can become a religion, and religions always seek to silence or marginalize heretics.” If nothing else, that reveals a deep misunderstanding of religion. In the marketplace of ideas, consumers encounter different points of view, and the consumer’s job is to evaluate the different “brands” and select one.
• But in the marketplace, religious believers aren’t shoppers. They’re sellers. They’ve already come to their conclusions themselves, and they go to the marketplace to advocate for their conclusions.
• That’s why it’s not their job to offer different points of view. The market does that. The seller’s job is simply to present the strongest case for their beliefs as possible.
• What’s a heretic? A heretic is someone within the believing community who contradicts the beliefs. It’s like an employee of Microsoft who tells shoppers that Windows sucks and they should buy Apple. You can’t defend that disloyal employee by saying that he was just seeking the independent truth.

If any reporters wonder whether they should smother alternative points of view, it just shows that they don’t respect the authority of the market. It would be like Microsoft demanding that Apple close shop and leave. That’s not a decision for each of the competing sellers to make. That’s for the market to make. If Apple goes out of business on its own, the market has decided. In the same way, the marketplace of ideas will decide which ideas deserve to stay and which can go.