The relationship between "denier" journalists in the media and reader comments

There’s been a whole raft of articles on the web preceding the pope’s proclamation. Unfortunately, a small but obvious minority have resorted to the same childish name calling of “denier”. However, as I tried to comment on these articles and explain how childish it was, I began to notice a distinct pattern: most didn’t have reader comments. And it seems a far higher percentage than other sites.
There are two possible conclusions:

1. They don’t have comments because they are rather nasty extreme alarmists.
2. They are rather nasty extreme alarmists because they don’t have comments

And of the two, because many journalists have substantially changed their tune and those “denier” sites are really just the stragglers, I’m beginning to see that reader comments are having a very positive effect on many journalists causing them to tone down the extremist rhetoric they get in their green-spin press releases. But that effect seems to be absent from those which don’t have comments.
Which basically means that a paper which allows comments is far more in tune with its readership and so far more likely to have higher sales and therefore bigger advertising revenue.