What People’s Climate March coverage looked like on Democracy Now!
If over 300,000 people march in New York City to demand action on climate change, does it make a sound? Not if you’re watching the Sunday morning network chat shows.
The September 21 People’s Climate March lived up to its billing as the largest climate change march ever, drawing a massive crowd to focus world attention to the climate emergency. Similar events happened in other major cities around the world.
But the highest-profile discussion shows in the corporate media—ABC‘s This Week, NBC‘s Meet the Press, Fox News Sunday and Face the Nation on CBS—either did not know it was happening or didn’t think it was important.
Other matters were more pressing. On NBC‘s Meet the Press, for instance, new anchor Chuck Todd presented a segment about how the midterm elections should be seen as a battle between Chick-Fil-A and Starbucks. (Apparently Republicans are fond of the fast food chicken, Democrats the coffee chain.)
There was one exception; during a panel on ABC‘s This Week, Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel argued that more US wars in the Middle East distract from “real security challenges” like
a catastrophic climate crisis which the Pentagon has called a clear and emerging danger. There are 100,000 people marching outside this studio today because of that.
The Sunday shows generally give little attention to climate change, as FAIR noted earlier this year (Extra!, 4/14). In February, all three network programs (ABC, CBS and NBC) talked about climate change on the same day (2/16/14), the most notable contribution being Meet the Press hosting a “debate” over the existence of climate change between TV science personality Bill Nye and a Republican politician.
So here’s a simple question to the Sunday chat shows: If a day of massive international climate marches—right ahead of a major United Nations conference—is the wrong time to cover a global climate emergency, when will the right time be?
ACTION:
After their silence on the People’s Climate March, ask the Sunday shows when they think global climate change will be important enough to take seriously.
CONTACT:
Meet the Press
Email: contact.nbcnews@nbcuni.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MeetThePress
Twitter: @MeetThePress
ABC This Week
Email: thisweek@abc.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThisWeekABC
Twitter: @ThisWeekABC
Fox News Sunday
Email: fns@foxnews.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FoxNewsSunday
Twitter: @FoxNewsSunday
CBS’s Face the Nation
Email: facethenation@cbsnews.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FaceTheNation
Twitter: @FaceTheNation
What time on Sunday did the climate change march start? I’m not sure, but I think Meet The Press aired before the march started. They still should have talked about the event. But they can’t report on something that hadn’t yet happened.
Example of the emails I sent to the above email addresses.
To the NBC Meet The Press Staff,
On Sunday, 09/21/2014, over 300,000 people marched in New York City, demanding action against global climate change. This march, the largest of its kind, was not discussed at all on NBC Meet The Press that morning. When will global climate change be important enough to your staff to be discussed on your television program?
-Sena
After emailing the ABC This Week email address provided in this Action Alert, I received a reply stating my email failed to be delivered to the given email address. I checked the spelling of the email address, but the spelling is correct.
Anyone determine a solution to this problem?
ABC news email returned as undeliverable.
Given 350’s many hoaxes funded by Wall Street (i.e. KXL, Clean Energy, Divestment, New Economy), when are independent journalists going to examine Klein and 350, itself a Big Green NGO on the payroll of Rockefeller Brothers and Warren Buffett? If you’re going to investigate censorship, you might want to get real about the agenda of Avaaz, Purpose and 350. Skirting around the issue of hijacked activism that 350 represents aids Wall Street, not Main Street.
This is incredibly hypocritical. The liberal media censors nearly 100% of comments by climate scientists, continually publishes skepticalscience John Cook’s consensus of 65/11944 abstracts as a 97% consensus, and publishes complaints about coverage of a political event like this?
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article