Fox News' 'Overwhelmingly Misleading' Climate Science Reporting

As Media Matters notes, despite Rupert Murdoch's 2007 pledge to improve reporting on climate science, the coverage at News Corp.'s Fox News and Wall Street Journal remains "overwhelmingly misleading," according to a new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The Union of Concerned Scientists found:

(The promised) improvement has not been achieved. A 2012 snapshot analysis shows that recent coverage of climate science in both outlets has been overwhelmingly misleading.

The analysis finds that the misleading citations include broad dismissals of human-caused climate change, rejections of climate science as a body of knowledge, and disparaging comments about individual scientists. Furthermore, much of this coverage denigrated climate science by either promoting distrust in scientists and scientific institutions or placing acceptance of climate change in an ideological, rather than fact-based, context.

Media Matters also notes:

These findings echo a 2011 study published in The International Journal Of Press/Politics which found that compared to other cable networks, "Fox broadcasts were more likely to include statements that challenged the scientific agreement on climate change, undermined the reality of climate change, and questioned its human causes." This is no surprise considering that Fox's Washington managing editor Bill Sammon directed Fox News reporters in 2009 to cast doubt on the basic fact that the planet has warmed. Indeed, Fox regularly distorts climate research, cherry-picks stories to cast doubt on climate change, and turns climate change into a punch line.

Union of Concerned Scientists has a petition you can sign called Tell Rupert Murdoch: Get The Facts Straight!

Do you like this post?

	Tweet

Showing 11 reactions

Visitor 55 commented 2012-09-24 17:56:39 -0400 · Flag

@mlp – yep, you did answer your own question. But another possibility is that the climate change issue didn’t gain much attention until Fmr. VP Gore brought it up. You know how the right-wing sheep are conditioned to hate Gore.

mlp ! commented 2012-09-24 15:27:00 -0400 · Flag

I haven’t been able to figure out what it EXACTLY is that GooberNation has against the science of climate change. I can understand the money that Koch puts into discrediting the idea of the damage that is being done primarily by fossil fuels, but most of the goobers come from the areas that have been hardest hit. Can they possibly be that stupid?
Oh….maybe I answered my own question.

Thx4 Fish commented 2012-09-24 15:06:55 -0400 · Flag

I’ve found right wingers concern for their grandchildren begins and ends with the ‘national debt’. They don’t want to create a world where their great-grandchildren will have a good education, health care, livable climate or decent jobs. They just want their great-grandkids to pay off the debt of the baby boomers and then stop spending entirely.

Visitor 55 commented 2012-09-24 14:46:14 -0400 · Flag

Joseph Minardi – "Why, just last winter it was cold. So much for the junk science of âglobal warmingâ. "

Notice how quiet kkklannity was this summer when there were thousands of heat record breaking temps? There will always be stupid people like twatty/pRick who will swallow all the bullshit his neocon masters feed him and then ask for more. FoxGOPTV pukes are stupid, but their sheep are the stupid’s stupids.

Jason Carney commented 2012-09-24 14:28:19 -0400 · Flag

So my great grand children will have a Hell on Earth. Who can i sue today? Anybody with me? A class action suit would be best.

bemused commented 2012-09-24 14:09:54 -0400 · Flag

I remember reading something not too long about about one of the head denialists (a scientist) who recently changed his mind. He redid all the calculations from scratch and came to the conclusion shared by over 95% of the scientists who study this sort of stuff.

Could that be because his grant from a denialist organisation was terminated? Wouldn’t surprise me one bit.

patrick tolle commented 2012-09-24 13:49:43 -0400 · Flag

@ Ricky/Tawdry- Grasshopper you have learned well. When you’ve no science of your own your only option is to attack the other people’s. I’ve yet to see any original research come from the denialists. Matter of fact Ricky boy won’t even tell us that the "author"of the “definitive essay” was none other Published as result of her accidental standing as a defeated candidate for the VP position and which,like all denialist screeds, contained no original research,or even a quote cite,or link to source of any original research. than his onanistic fantasy figure the Tundra tart who has about as much standing to comment on anything as my just-learning-to -walk and talk well niece.

Mark Jeffries commented 2012-09-24 13:44:28 -0400 · Flag

I assume Minardi is joking.

Joseph Minardi commented 2012-09-24 13:37:03 -0400 · Flag

Rick Patel is right. Thank G-d for Fox News exposing those limo driving climatologists and their leftist propaganda again the poor oil companies. Why, just last winter it was cold. So much for the junk science of “global warming”.

Rick Patel commented 2012-09-24 13:05:34 -0400 · Flag

What “climate-science?” You mean doctored data, hocus-pocus snake-oil Goracle gibberish & the profit driven scam known as “global warming”? Please re-read the definitive essay on the climate change fraud entitled “Boycott Copenhagen”, authored in December, 2009, and widely published in respectable media outlets world-wide, including Washington Post & UK Guardian.

Lakeview Greg commented 2012-09-24 12:55:16 -0400 · Flag

I’m still waiting for that report on how no one knows how tides happen.