FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
On April 14, a massive storm swept down out of the Rocky Mountains into the Midwest and South, spawning more than 150 tornadoes that killed 43 people across 16 states (Capital Weather Gang, 4/18/11). It was one of the largest weather catastrophes in United States history—but was soon upstaged by an even larger storm, the […]
The Washington Post had a piece yesterday (6/9/11) on Mitt Romney’s views on global warming. It serves as a reminder that Republican political candidates are under enormous pressure from the right-wing base of the party on this issue–any politician who’s ever suggested that climate change is a problem, or backed efforts to address it, is […]
I was intrigued to see this headline at the Guardian‘s website yesterday: Renewable Energy Can Power the World, Says Landmark IPCC Study UN’s climate change science body says renewables supply, particularly solar power, can meet global demand This was one of the points Miranda Spencer raised in an excellent piece in the last issue of […]
Scientific American editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina (10/28/10) responded to criticism from Climate Progress‘ Joe Romm (10/26/10) and FAIR Blog (10/27/10) of the magazine’s recent coverage of climate change: In actuality, Scientific American reports on climate-related science in depth in nearly every issue and frequently online. You can see a sample list of past print and online-only […]
Has Scientific American jumped the shark on climate change? That’s the contention of Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm (10/26/10), who accuses the magazine of treating human-caused global climate change as an open question. Romm points to an article by Michael Lemonick (11/10) about Judith Curry, a climate scientist whose critiques of the Intergovernmental Panel on […]
“Aren’t there things Obama & Co. could have done differently?” Howard Fineman writes in the current issue of Newsweek (9/20/10). “Election Day is still seven weeks away—but it’s not too early for a ‘pre-mortem.’” No, never too early—especially since Fineman’s column offers the same advice corporate media pundits have been giving to Democratic politicians for […]
PBS ombud Michael Getler has thankfully expanded on his “I trust Nova” response to concerns that public TV’s leading science program might be influenced by its climate change-denying funders (FAIR Blog, 9/8/10). In a more extensive response to those who thought they detected the fingerprints of oil tycoon David Koch (and industry giant ExxonMobil) in […]
PBS‘s Nova is taking money from one of the biggest bankrollers of climate change denial—and, surprise surprise, the resulting programming tells viewers not to worry about climate change. But PBS‘s ombud doesn’t see this as a conflict of interest—because Nova is a “consistently first-rate program,” and he trusts it. Nova‘s conflict of interest was highlighted […]
Newsweek‘s “environmental issue” has an article (5/28/10) by correspondent Stefan Theil declaring climate change to be “Uncertain Science.” Giving the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the denialist case, Theil refers to “e-mails and documents suggesting that researchers cherry-picked data and suppressed rival studies to play up global warming”–without mentioning that after sensationalistic media stories suggested […]
The New York Times’ May 2 Week in Review section leads with a piece from Jad Mouawad headlined “The Spill vs. a Need to Drill.” You get a sense of the tone of the piece early on: Readers learn that “emotions are running high” as the disaster gets worse. And this has led to predictable […]
I find it very peculiar that the New York Times can publish an editorial observer piece about unheeded warnings–“Cassandra, the Ignored Prophet of Doom, Is a Woman for Our Times,” by Adam Cohen (4/19/10)–without once mentioning climate change. The piece cites various foretold disasters–Bernie Madoff, sexual abuse by priests, the financial meltdown, September 11, New […]
Via Climate Progress (3/16/10), Scientific American guest blogger John Horgan (3/16/10) makes a disturbing claim: Two sources at the Science Times section of the New York Times have told me that a majority of the section’s editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity. Now, reviews of climate research literature […]
Bill McKibben (TheNation.com, 2/25/10) has a good analogy that explains the success of global warming deniers: The campaign against climate science has been enormously clever, and enormously effective. It’s worth trying to understand how they’ve done it. The best analogy, I think, is to the O.J. Simpson trial…. The Dream Team of lawyers assembled for […]
From the paper’s editorial today (2/22/10) on climate change deniers: The Earth is warming. A chief cause is the increase in greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. Humans are at least in part responsible, because the oil, gas and coal that we burn releases these gases. If current trends persist, it’s likely that in coming […]
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank thinks it’s pretty silly for Republicans and climate change deniers to say that the recent snowstorms mean that climate change is phony. BUT…. don’t think for a second that Milbank’s going to let “greens” off the hook that easy. No way. As he put it on Sunday (2/14/10): “There’s some […]
On Tuesday, the New York Times (2/9/10) was front-paging a non-story about criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change– hyping accusations about scientific misconduct and conflicts of interest that the paper itself called “half-truths” (FAIR Blog, 2/9/10). Well, it turns out that there was quite a bit of snow on the East Coast this […]
Last month CJR blogger Curtis Brainard (1/29/10) complained that the media were not giving enough attention to some complaints—mostly from climate change deniers—about the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and complaints about IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri. Jim Naureckas suggested right here that this was a bad idea, but today the New York Times […]
Curtis Brainard of CJR‘s Observatory blog (1/29/10) complains about the lack of coverage of what he calls “Glaciergate”: Almost two weeks ago, the Sunday Times, a British newspaper, “broke” the story that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had made significant errors in its 2007 report on the impacts of global warming…. The report stated […]
A New York Times piece seemed designed to bolster one of the key messages from the climate deniers.
New York Times‘ climate change reporter Andrew Revkin is taking a buyout from his employer after a tough year, the Columbia Journalism Review‘s website (12/14/09) reports. Revkin, whom CJR‘s Christine Russell describes as “one of the most influential and respected reporters on the environment,” says that 2009 “has been the hardest year I’ve experienced on […]
