Scientific American "Fox News Distorts Climate Science; in Other News, the Pope Is Catholic "

Scientific American "Fox News Distorts Climate Science; in Other News, the Pope Is Catholic "

Link to the Scientific American article

The first few paragraphs:

For anyone with an interest in journalism, it’s no surprise that Fox News Channel and the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal lean well to the right. Editorially, these two jewels of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. have a long history of denying human-induced global warming, in keeping with certain ideological interests.

New data support the anecdotes and conventional wisdom. At a midday panel on September 21 in New York City’s Science, Industry and Business Library, the Union of Concerned Scientists released results of an analysis quantifying the media outlets’ distortions of climate science.

In the six months from February to July 2012, the UCS searched for the terms “climate change” and “global warming” during primetime Fox News Channel programs, which consist of political commentary shows such as The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity.

The UCS found that, in 37 of 40 instances, Fox News programs misled viewers about climate science—mainly, by broadly dismissing it. As an example, the UCS quotes an on-air statement from April 11, 2012: “I thought we were getting warmer. But in the ‘70s, it was, look out, we’re all going to freeze.” (The report didn’t reveal the name of the actual source.) Fox News hosts and guests also mocked and disparaged statements from scientists and drowned out genuine scientific assertions with cherry-picked data and false claims.

The WSJ opinion pages fared a bit better: only 81 percent of the 48 references to the climate key words were misleading, according to the UCS analysis. Such instances included a reference to climatologist James Hansen as an alarmist and an assertion that we are only in a global warming “bubble” that raises questions about the veracity of climate science and the “credibility of its advocates,” WSJ editors wrote. The few accurate statements came from readers’ letters to the editors, remarked Brenda Ekwurzel, a UCS climate scientist who presented the data at the panel. (The opinion pages are distinct from newsroom operations, which media researchers in 2010 actually found to lean left.)

I suppose that it's no secret that the MSM continuously skew the truth on global warming/climate change or any type of human impact on environment, and majority of the world are therefore blinded to the reality, due to their dependancy of mainstream news.

Nevertheless, the Scientific American magazine published an interesting analysis article that clearly proves the mockery, conscious denial and blatant disregard for scientific evidence. Ultimately conveying a message of trivial unimportance for an issue that can have catastrophic impacts on a global scale.

There's been consistent denial of global warming by MSM, skeptics and deniers for quite some time, which has resulted in careless and dismissive attitudes by public majority, but, I think, this piece can give a somewhat clearer picture of the manipulative games that well-known broadcasters, and the like, can play.

Remember that it applies to anything reported by the MSM and whether you support or dismiss the findings for global warming is completely irrelevant. Please, be objective.

Those people of greed want everything on this planet and spread fear.

If we cut greed out of few greedy humans , this planet has much capability to be used as a bassinet for all human beings.

reply to post by roblot

I found it interesting that your clip says

In the six months from February to July 2012, the UCS searched for the terms “climate change” and “global warming” during primetime Fox News Channel programs, which consist of political commentary shows such as The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity (emphasis added)

That's identical to saying Ed Schultz distorts Romney's record. It's opinion. Everybody knows it's opinion. Now, if their news stories distorted anything I'd be upset. But this is a dog bite man story. It's what you'd expect to see.

Originally posted by roblot

these two jewels of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. have a long history of denying human-induced global warming, in keeping with certain ideological interests.

Oh brother! Remember "HIDE THE DECLINE"?? Left wing scientists own investigation showed they couldn't prove man made global warming .. but they tried to hide the data.

The real truth is that the far left has a long history of denying that global warming/cooling is cyclical and that the whole solar system is heating up. The far left has a long history of blaming humans when there is no solid proof. The deniers are on the far left ..

Please, be objective.

Tell that to the left wing press who keeps pushing faux-man-made-global-warming down our throats when in fact their is no solid proof that humans are causing it. The entire solar system is heating up. The earth goes through cold and hot cycles. So how about the far left 'be objective'??? But of course Al Gore wouldn't allow that. He's too heavily invested in 'carbon credits' and 'alternative energy' goods to allow objectivity to enter into it all. :shk: