Fox News Misleads Viewers on Climate Change
Fox News Misleads Viewers on Climate Change
Is the climate changing, and are humans responsible for this troubling phenomenon? There’s virtually no debate in the scientific world that the answer to both questions is yes, but public opinion is confused and conflicted.
There are various reasons for this. It’s difficult to wrap our minds around issues involving gradual, big-picture change, and we’re disinclined to believe anything that would necessitate curbing our cherished lifestyles.
But there’s also another explanation: simple misinformation, which continues to spread not only via emails and neighbor-to-neighbor chatter, but also through mainstream news organizations.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has just released a study entitled “Is News Corp. Failing Science?” It looks at climate change coverage in two of the most influential arms of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire: the Fox News Channel and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
“Over a recent six-month period, 93 percent of Fox News Channel’s representations of climate change were misleading (37 out of 40 instances),” the report states. “Similarly, over the past year, 81 percent of the representations of climate science in the WSJ’s opinion section were misleading (39 out of 48 instances).”
Specifically, the researchers noted a disturbing pattern on the Fox News Channel in which hosts and guests would “broadly dismiss the scientific conclusion that climate change is occurring or human-induced.” They found many instances of “disparaging and mocking climate science,” and pointed to 10 instances “in which a panel member expressed acceptance of climate science findings but was drowned out by hosts or other panel members who responded with multiple misleading claims.”