Actually, the name “news” really shouldn’t apply to what this diary discusses. Propaganda would be the more appropriate word. A report by Media Matters shows that from the period December 2009 until April 2011, American television news organizations presented 152 “guests” who opposed the EPA’s regulation of green house gas (GHG) emissions. That represented 76% of all the individuals “invited” to discuss this topic on air.
Fox News Channel and Fox Business Channel far outstripped the other networks in both the number of guests invited to express their “views” on regulation of GHG’s and in the number of people who appeared on those two networks in opposition to the EPA’s right to issue and enforce regulations regarding GHG’s. Here’s the chart complied by Media Maters that lays out the disproportionate coverage of this issue by Fox and its affiliates:
As you can see from the chart, Fox New Channel an Fox Business Channel accounted for 124 of the appearances by GHG anti-regulation opponents, while inviting only 19 guests who favored regulation of GHG’s by the EPA and 9 who were neutral on the issue. In effect, Fox dominated the discussion of this topic, since the other networks combined (MsNBC, CNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC) invited only 57 individuals to address EPA regulation of GHGs, and CNBC (NBC’s Business News Channel) accounted for 29 of those (21 opponents of regulation, 5 in favor and 3 neutral).
In addition, Republicans who appeared on the networks to discuss GHG regulation by the EPA outnumbered Democrats by a factor of 6:1. Furthermore, of the advocacy groups and “think tanks” whose members appeared on the networks, 76% opposed GHG regulation. These groups included conservative and anti-regulatory organizations such as he Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, CATO, The US Chamber of Commerce, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute to name but a few.
Perhaps even more telling is the fact that only one (1) scientist with any background in climate scientist appeared, Patrick Michaels, a professor at George Mason University and a Fellow of the Cato Institute. Not surprisingly he voiced opinions opposing regulation.
For those who would like to know more about Patrick Michaels’ bona fides as a climate scientists you can find them here. His stated testimony before Congress and his published opinions about the effects of GHG’s on climate change have been generally disputed by a number of prominent climate scientists who are active in the field:
Climate scientist Benjamin Santer noted that in Michaels’ Congressional testimony of November 2010, Michaels had claimed human GHG emissions caused less then half the warming (since 1950), but that this assertion was not credible:
“…Professor Patrick Michaels (in Congressional testimony of November 2010) claimed that human-caused changes in greenhouse gases explain less than half of the post-1950 warming. This claim [by Michaels] is not credible. Michaels arrives at this incorrect result by completely ignoring the cooling effects of sulfate aerosol particles.” […]
In 2003 Peter Gleick, a conservation analyst and president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, said “Pat Michaels is not one of the nation’s leading researchers on climate change. On the contrary, he is one of a very small minority of nay-sayers who continue to dispute the facts and science about climate change in the face of compelling, overwhelming, and growing evidence.”
Dr. John Holdren of Harvard University told the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, “Michaels is another of the handful of US climate-change contrarians… He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science.”
An article in the journal Social Epistemology concluded “…the observations upon which PM [Patrick Michaels] draws his case are not good enough to bear the weight of the argument he wishes to make.”
Dr. Tom Wigley, lead author of parts of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and one of the world’s leading climate scientists, was quoted by Ross Gelbspan as stating that “Michaels’ statements on [the subject of computer models] are a catalog of misrepresentation and misinterpretation… Many of the supposedly factual statements made in Michaels’ testimony are either inaccurate or are seriously misleading.”
In 2009, Michaels’ statements regarding the insignificance of GHGs as they related to climate change have also been criticized at length by Gavin Schmidt of NASA on the respected climate science blog, Real Climate here and here.
Michaels himself has stated that 40% of all of his funding for his research comes from Petroleum related interests. Yet of all the scientists picked to appear on television to discuss whether GHGs should be regulated, only Michaels, a known Climate Skeptic, a scientist held in low regard by his peers, and a man who has admitted that he is largely funded by industries and organizations that promote the use of fossil fuels, was offered the opportunity to express his opinion.
Of course, we expect FOX News and other Murdoch affiliated networks to lead the charge in opposing anything that might rein in the ever increasing amounts of GHGs we are pumping into the atmosphere as shown here:
What is dispiriting, however, is how little discussion of this topic has occurred on the other “news” organizations including supposedly liberal and centrist networks such as CNN and MsNBC. Their coverage of the issue has been abysmal, especially when you consider, as Media Matters pointedly demonstrated, that public opinion favored regulation of GHG emissions by a wide margin:
CNN/Opinion Research Poll: 71% Say EPA Should Move Forward With GHG Regulations. … [CNN/Opinion Research, 4/11/11] […]
Wash. Post/ABC News Poll: 71% Support Government Regulation Of GHG Emissions.…[ABC News, 6/10/10] […]
Stanford Survey: 76% Say Government Should Limit GHGs From U.S. Businesses.…[Stanford University, 6/9/11]
To sum up, with Fox you get what you expect — lies and more lies to promote the interests of Big Oil. But with the other networks we appear to be experiencing a deliberate failure to communicate. When the “credible’ new organizations refuse to cover a story like this it is proper to ask why, especially since their largest competitor is catapulting the propaganda like there is no tomorrow.
I have to ask (and so should you): Is their failure to cover the issue of climate change, and in particular the attacks on the right to eliminate the EPA’s authority to regulate GHGs, a result of pressure from upper management at their parent companies or from their corporate sponsors–or both?
