CNBC‘s Joe Kernan interviewing climate denialist EPA chief Scott Pruitt.
If the public rollout of the Trump administration’s new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, is any indication, the Earth’s climate will suffer even greater, irreversible damage during the next four years. And the corporate media’s coverage of it may only make it worse.
For example, in one of his first public appearances, on CNBC’s morning show (Squawk Box, 3/9/17), Pruitt set an ominous precedent for the Trump administration’s climate change policy by outright lying. In response to host Joe Kernan’s question about the role of human-generated carbon dioxide in warming the planet, Pruitt responded:
I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.
Pruitt added: “We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
Pruitt’s comments are, by now, recognized as among the standard rhetorical tools of climate deniers (Guardian, 9/15/13). He boldly mischaracterizes as “tremendous disagreement” what is, in fact, an overwhelming scientific consensus about the link between humanity’s greenhouse gases and global warming. Then he disingenuously calls for more “debate” and “analysis” of the topic, while at the same time the Trump administration is proposing massive budget cuts of the federal agencies that would conduct this research and analysis.
That this White House would embrace climate change denial, of course, comes as no surprise. The current president has a well-documented history of promoting right-wing conspiracy theories about climate change, calling it on numerous occasions an “expensive hoax” that was “created by the Chinese.” During the 2016 campaign, Trump told a right-wing radio host, “I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change,” promising to abandon the landmark Paris Agreement on climate action President Obama signed in 2016. During the first presidential debate, Trump did deny having ever called climate change a hoax, but the public record obviously proves otherwise.
Pruitt, a dogged opponent of the EPA while Oklahoma attorney general, is cut from the same climate denial cloth, minus the outrageous tweets. A trove of 6,000 emails released via court order by an Oklahoma judge last month (New York Times, 2/22/17) revealed that Pruitt had colluded for years with oil and gas companies, as well as the Koch brothers’ political arm, to lobby against EPA greenhouse gas regulations. He even secretly used drafts of oil company talking points in his correspondence to the federal government.
Nevertheless, the selection in December of a hard-right climate denier like Pruitt to run the agency upset a phony media narrative that had begun just a few weeks after the election. Thanks to a few casual comments by Trump to the Times editorial staff in November, much of the pundit class had convinced itself that the new president was pivoting to a more moderate position. The prospect of four more years of this same media credulity and deference to power does not bode well for future climate change coverage.
CNBC’s Kernan, in his interview with Pruitt, provided a sneak preview of what this next four years of media obsequiousness may look like. Not satisfied with merely letting Pruitt lie unchallenged, Kernan felt compelled to back him up. “That’s the whole point of science, is to keep asking questions,” Kernan disingenuously added in his wrap-up. “I don’t want to be called a denier, it scares me. It’s a terrible thing. Administrator Pruitt, I know you don’t want to be called it either.” Before throwing the segment back to a studio host, Kernan didn’t give time for Pruitt to agree. Then again, why even bother?
To be fair, CNBC is not a cable TV network known for its trenchant climate change reporting. And one can safely assume that Pruitt’s climate change denials on Fox News will be met with a “fair and balanced” tongue bath likely to put Kernan’s to shame. But subtle changes in so-called straight reporting and coverage matter too. That’s why the online story (3/9/17) accompanying Kernan’s interview is a better, more ominous barometer of how the corporate media might respond to the Trump administration’s climate policy.
Overall, the CNBC article, by energy reporter Tom DiChristopher, sanded off almost all of Kernan’s overt sycophancy. However, the story still trafficked in classic false equivalence. When comparing Pruitt’s evidence-free claims to the vast amount of climate data and overwhelming scientific consensus supporting anthropogenic climate change, CNBC notably chose to characterize the latter as merely “the opinion” of NASA and NOAA: “Pruitt’s view is also at odds with the opinion of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”
Recent history offers numerous examples of the corporate media succumbing to the temptation of parroting White House talking points, no matter how disconnected from reality. Recall that, for years, major news organizations, including the New York Times, felt compelled to echo the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation” euphemisms for what had previously been recognized as acts of torture (Extra!, 5–6/08). Now that climate denialism has become de facto US policy, it will become almost impossible for journalists to both maintain traditional “objectivity” while also reporting scientific reality to the public. They have a clear choice to make.
As the long indictment of flawed climate change coverage by Robert Eshelman (CJR, 5/1/14) can attest, corporate media have not always chosen wisely. Time and again, it has demonstrated that it can be successfully gamed by denialists operating little more than a propaganda campaign. Asks Eshelman in his insightful essay:
Journalists…wouldn’t have provided “balance” to a debate on gravity, giving equal time to someone asserting that it doesn’t exist; why would they for climate change?
But now that climate change lies have the imprimatur of the president of the United States, we may find that scientific facts and the fundamental laws of physics are subject to even more media distortion.
Reed Richardson is a media critic and writer whose work has appeared in The Nation, AlterNet, Harvard University’s Nieman Reports and the textbook Media Ethics (Current Controversies). You can follow him on Twitter at: @reedfrich.
You can send a message to CNBC here (or via Twitter: @CNBC). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
“Equal time”
Is running out
One important way the mainstream news media and even FAIR can advance climate change science as fact rather than opinion is to stop using the phrase “scientific consensus.” Consensus is voluntary agreement among all concerned, which isn’t the same thing as a preponderance of physical evidence.
Let’s start saying “overwhelming scientific evidence.” And stop talking about how 97% of scientists “agree” about the causes and risks of climate change, and start reporting that 97% percent of scientists’ “research results align” on the subject.
Miranda, very good point. The best I’ve heard in a while.
Climate “science” is less scientific than magic or prestidigitation. As not-repeatable claims by various scammers, it has no claim to any scientific basis. Its follows are little more than a cult that probably also believes in the tooth fairy and the great pumpkin. The so-called “overwhelming scientific evidence” is non-existent.
Ah, here come the trolls.
And you, Mr or Ms qpro4inc, are qualified HOW in assessing climate science? Back up your counter argument, please.
That’s right qp.
The earth is flat and the sun revolves around the earth.
Ecosystems and atmospheres are heresy!
Climate “science” is less scientific than magic or prestidigitation. As not-repeatable claims by various scammers, it has no claim to any scientific basis. Its follows are little more than a cult that probably also believes in the tooth fairy and the great pumpkin. The so-called “overwhelming scientific evidence” is non-existent. The so-called science is nothing more than a bunch of mathematical models none of which agree and none can be proven by empirical evidence. In short, it’s a hoax!
So, answering a question with the same answer. No point in further discussion.
I can see Tom DiChristopher’s point, though. For years, my Uncle Charlie was at odds with the opinion of Isaac Newton. “Just because things usually fall down doesn’t prove squat about so-called gravity,” he’d argue. Wherever in the universe he might now be, I’m guessing that he’s still uncertain.
With the public resisting carbon taxes, will politicians and the mass media do likewise? Probably. You do not bite the hand that feeds.
There can be little hope for countering climate change without enlisting the power of the free market that includes real pricing such as resource depletion and pollution costs. This the public refuses to endorse, either out of economic ignorance or greed.
“You do not bite the hand that feeds”, by which you mean elected politicians are beholden to the public that voted them into office. I want you to do a gedanken experiment: Imagine the range of political choices that the public has is drawn from a group that is beholden to a small but powerful minority. Now ask yourself this: Has there ever been anything popular with a large part of society–like pulling out of a war or a single-payer health care system-that has been ignored by our elected officials? Your answer would be, of course not, because they do not bite the hand that feeds. Well then, maybe the hand that feeds them is not yours or mine. Of course this was just a gedanken experiment and has nothing to do with reality.
An experiment is conducted every election cycle. The majority gets what they vote for. They may not know what they are voting for but blame much of that on Government schools.
Any professor can tell you that incoming freshmen are not up to par. The ability of citizens to contribute to an intelligent debate is by and large nonexistent. This is reflected on social media as well as at the polls.
The so-called free market is almost entirely responsible for global warming and climate change. To take just one example, as the energy crises have exacerbated on environmental, economic and war fronts, US automobiles have gotten bigger. Gargantuan.
What a load of bosh Ernest Martinson. The office-holders are selected in corporate boardrooms long before the first vote is cast. You’ve heard of Obama being supplied a list of cabinet preferences by CitiGroup after he won election in 2008? They eventually almost CitiGroup pick for CitiGroup pick, became the nominees.
Get real. We have nothing resembling a free market. Much more like fascism or national socialism.
Good analysis and an unfortunate boding of what’s to come from mainstream media. I read this blog posted on a NY Times article about Pruitt: “His scientific credentials are unquestionable. He doesn’t have any.” I had to laugh. But, you know, this whole so-called climate debate is facetious. We can complain about Pruitt’s lack of credentials or how the overwhelming scientific consensus (see Mirada’s comment above) is ignored. Of course it’s ignored. What, you expect the advice of a group of scientists is going to be followed when that advice comes into conflict, both ideologically and materially, with one of the foundations of that class’s power? This is not about gathering more data; that’s business as usual. That’s the preservation of the status quo. This is about power, who has it and who doesn’t. So the question is, how do we get that power? Oh yeah, I know, we vote the right people into office. That’s it, right?
The only thing “man made” about global warming is the mythology and religion that has been created to support it. I am no expert. I am just a computer analyst and engineer. But when I read or listen to actual climate scientists like Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT then I realize that man-made global warming is more about money, influence, and power then about real science.
Why Lindzen? There’s hundreds of other climate scientists whose conclusions contradict his.
Paul Street calls it capitalogenic global warming and climate change.