McKelway, D ailes

mma 621

...

Special Report undermines climate science

The overwhelming consensus from scientists, both domestic and abroad, is clear: Warming trends over the past century are extremely likely to be caused by human activities emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

In 2007, just two years before Bret Baier took the helm of Fox's flagship news program, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international coalition of scientists who assess peer-reviewed scientific papers to summarize knowledge of the causes of climate change, released a report stating that the “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that oceans and other ecosystems were “being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases.” The report said anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions were “very likely” the cause of global average temperature rise, and it also urged policymakers to consider “a wide variety of policies and instruments” to “create the incentives for mitigation action.” These findings were strengthened in the IPCC's next six-year review in 2013, emphasizing that changes in the climate since the 1950s were “unprecedented over decades to millennia.”

Despite these direct warnings from the world’s scientific experts, Baier’s viewers have heard a different story: Special Report’s coverage of climate change and environmental degradation has flatly denied science, focused on debunked, concocted controversies that attempted to dismantle scientific consensus, and selectively reported cool weather events to dismiss warnings of dire climate change consequences. 

Overall, 14% of the misinformation and misleading or false narratives about climate change spread by Special Report since 2009 have undermined the consensus and conclusions of climate science, with nearly half of that misinformation -- 46% -- occurring within the first three years of Baier's run. In fact, throughout Obama’s first term, Special Report spread two and a half times as many instances of misinformation and false or misleading narratives undermining climate science as it did during Trump’s term.

Within just his first month as anchor, Baier ran a misleading climate segment on January 28, 2009, which cited David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank funded in part by the fossil fuel industry.Kreutzer suggested that scientists were moving to use the term “climate change” instead of “global warming” to distract from cooling trends and make it “easier” to blame humans for natural environmental variation. In February 2010, Baier himself even claimed that “‘global warming,’ the phrase, has been changed really to ‘climate change’ by supporters,” and he hosted current Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson to lament that “there’s nothing that can’t be explained by the phrase ‘climate change.’” (While Fox News is still undermining climate science by conflating weather patterns with long-term climate disruption, the term “climate change” was actually championed by longtime Republican strategist Frank Luntz in an infamous 2002 memo advising the GOP on how to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that human activity was warming the planet.)

Baier has continued to attack the science of climate change by giving climate skeptics’ opinions equal weight to peer-reviewed scientific consensus. In February 2015, Baier ran a segment that cited a “retired accountant, blogger, and self-described climate historian” who baselessly claimed that climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had been modified to be “more supportive of those who say the planet is warming and that man is directly responsible.” The segment also cited another Heritage Foundation representative, Nick Loris, who cast doubt on the human-made drivers of climate change and falsely suggested that scientists do not believe policies restricting greenhouse gas emissions would be effective.

In October 2018, the next IPCC report estimated that human activities have caused approximately 1 degree Celsius of global warming above preindustrial levels, which is already wreaking havoc on communities, causing more extreme weather events and rising oceans. The report also gave a more dire warning of the urgency of climate change, telling policymakers they had as little as 12 years to limit warming to 1.5 C before climate change and the ensuing environmental degradation reach an irreversible tipping point. The report gave special note to a change in the “frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration, and timing of weather and climate extremes,” yet Baier’s reporting has failed to note the potential impact of climate change on extreme weather events. The program even flatly denied the existence of climate change as recently as February 2019.

Special Report dismissed the IPCC’s warnings once again, and Baier ran a segment in May 2019 that quoted Marc Morano, a fossil fuel industry-funded climate skeptic who has been described as “a central cell of the climate-denial machine.” In the segment, Morano dismissed another U.N. report warning of mass species extinction as “politics, not science.”

Video file

CitationFrom the May 6, 2019, edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier

Between 2009 and 2021, Morano’s climate denial was highlighted in at least 10 segments on Special Report, similar to his frequent visits on Fox opinion shows such as Tucker Carlson Tonight.

Morano appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight in April of this year, responding to Carlson’s opening question on the Biden infrastructure bill: “How much of this bill is geared not toward cleaning up the environment, which we could badly use, but toward this global warming theory that they have? How much of it is climate-based?” Morano again argued that a focus on climate change was not due to necessity or scientific consensus, but claimed that it was simply a maneuver to accrue political power.

Video file

CitationFrom the April 1, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

Special Report's undermining of climate science wasn’t just left to his guests or correspondent segments -- Baier himself recently engaged in the same rhetoric to doubt climate science as a figure from Fox’s opinion side, The Five’s Jesse Watters. On May 3, Watters complained that “the worst part about the whole story” is that “Biden isn’t certain schools are gonna be open this fall, because, you know, he does not have a crystal ball. But at the same breath he says if we don't spend a trillion dollars on green energy, he knows the Earth's temperature, to a degree, in a hundred years. It’s hard to square those.”

Video file

CitationFrom the May 3, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Five

Baier attempted to make the same point in the next hour, asking why the Biden administration was being cautious in making predictions about school openings while citing scientific unknowns, but “they don’t have that same phrasing when talking about climate change.”

Video file

Citation From the May 3, 2021, edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier

Special Report sets up a false conflict between a healthy planet and a thriving economy or misrepresents the efficacy and public demand for climate action and environmental protections

Fox News figures and other right-wing media personalities have often falsely pitted the economy against the environment, demonizing climate solutions as either too expensive or a waste of money that will not bring adequate returns in the green economy, in an effort to justify a lack of congressional action. Special Report’s coverage was no different throughout the last decade, with 29% of the misinformation or misleading narratives that it spread perpetuating that false dichotomy or failing to consider the cost of climate inaction, and 43% misrepresenting the efficacy and public demand for climate action.

Special Report often emphasized the immediate cost of climate solutions while also pushing narratives that depicted environmental regulations as ineffective or decried the supposedly “socialist” implications of climate legislation. Almost one in three of the problematic segments identified by Media Matters -- around 273 -- both undermined the efficacy of climate action and portrayed potential environmental protections as hurting the economy.

Scientists and policy experts have repeatedly warned that transitioning to a clean energy economy -- often incentivized through legislation -- is not only necessary to ensure a livable planet, but will also reduce the price of mitigation after irreversible climate impacts take hold. In 2018, the Fourth National Climate Assessment warned that the “continued warming that is projected to occur without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century, especially in the absence of increased adaptation efforts.” Another recently published study in Scientific Reports estimated that the cost of failure to keep warming to a 1.5 C threshold rose “from 1.3 trillion dollars per year of inaction in 2010 to over 5 trillion dollars per year in 2020.”

Yet despite the long-term economic suffering promised by increasingly extreme weather and climate disasters, regional temperature changes reducing crop yields, and environmental degradation reducing tourism and recreation, much of Special Report’s climate coverage since 2009 has been fed by fossil fuel industry talking points emphasizing short-term -- and often biased -- economic costs.

Beginning during the Obama administration, Special Report relentlessly attacked the Environmental Protection Agency, framing its mitigation efforts as executive overreach without regard to the economy. 

In April 2009, then-chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle declared on Special Report that the EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide could be restricted under the Clean Air Act “could hardly be more sweeping because it could affect everything from airliners to lawnmowers and almost every corner of the U.S. economy,” fearmongering that it “has the potential for shutting down or slowing down virtually all economic activity” without mentioning the environmental benefits of the proposed regulations.

In a June 2011 segment on Special Report, disgraced former Fox correspondent Doug McKelway cited the Heritage Foundation's Nick Loris, who argued that President Obama and then-Commerce Secretary nominee John Bryson's carbon emission reduction policies “are intended to raise energy prices, and lower-income families pay a disproportionately higher percent of their income on energy prices,” resulting in the policies “hurting those people more than helping them.” In reality, Loris was pushing an oversimplified view of carbon pricing legislation. A study by the World Resources Institute found that legislation addressing either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program does not “inherently help or hurt lower-income households.” Its impact depends on how the policy is designed; for example, a small portion of the revenue raised from carbon pricing could be offered as rebates to protect low-income households from increasing energy prices.

A month later, Angle appeared in another segment quoting both Loris, who claimed that the Obama administration’s plan to increase fuel efficiency standards would “be a significant ramp-up,” and the former chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, who fearmongered that the change would be costly to business and result in hundreds of thousands of job losses. In April 2014, Baier himself responded to the announcement that a federal appeals court upheld stricter emission standards from the EPA by citing complaints from anonymous “state and industry groups'' that the “new limits on toxins” would “cost billions of dollars annually to comply.” ...

At a press conference Tuesday, Fox News correspondent Douglas McKelway told presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Bidenthat “some have speculated” he is experiencing “cognitive decline” and asked if the former vice president had been tested for it. Biden replied that he is “constantly tested,” adding, “I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive capability to the cognitive capability of the man I’m running against.” After the press conference was over, McKelway suggested on-air that Biden may have "mild dementia," because "there is speculation and it is widespread."

The "speculation" that McKelway referred to neatly lines up with Sean Hannity's talking points. The day before the press conference, Hannity alleged that Biden “can barely string two sentences together” and challenged the “mob and the media” to ask whether Biden has dementia.

Briefly, on McKelway: Roger Ailes hired McKelway after the then-local news correspondent became a conservative cause celebre for a bogus report criticizing then-President Barack Obama and “far left environmental groups.” He regularly attacked Democrats on his (now-deleted) Twitter feed, and drew criticism from within Fox after he sent an email to colleagues trying to defend Trump’s infamous comment that there were “very fine people on both sides” following the August 2017 neo-Nazi Unite the Right rally and resulting counter-protests. He was subsequently dispatched to cover the Democratic primary in spite (or because of) his past attacks on the candidates.

McKelway played his part at the Biden presser: A whole slew of Fox programs covered McKelway's question; anchor Bill Hemmer lauded him for it, as did Hannity himself.

The entire episode reveals how things work at Fox: The “opinion” side of the organization speculates; The "news" side reports what other people are speculating -- no matter what factual issues there may be.

wapo no lnx

doug McKelway retires from Fox News with an eyebrow-raising video: ‘I want to thank Roger Ailes’

Doug McKelway has retired as a Washington correspondent for the Fox News Channel. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

By

Jeremy Barr

September 22, 2020 at 8:07 a.m. PDT

Doug McKelway, a longtime Washington correspondent for Fox News Channel, announced his retirement this month in an unusual video posted on Facebook praising the network’s disgraced co-founder Roger Ailes.

In the video, which was posted on Sept. 11 but drew little attention beyond McKelway’s friend group, the bluegrass enthusiast is seen emerging from Fox’s Washington bureau on Capitol Hill as he peels off a white dress shirt to reveal a “sex, drugs, and Flatt & Scruggs” T-shirt and starts talking to the camera. Main takeaways: his gushing praise for Ailes, the late ousted Fox News chairman, and what sounds like oblique criticism of staff members who have complained about their treatment at the network.

“I want to thank Roger Ailes,” McKelway says. “Yes, I’m going to repeat that. I want to thank Roger Ailes. Much maligned, generally through errors of omission in reporting by people who had it out for him." (Ailes resigned under pressure in July 2016 after being accused of sexual harassment by several female employees and died 10 months later.)

I survived 40 years in TV news. And lived to tell about it! RETIREMENT DAY!

Posted by Douglas McKelway on Friday, September 11, 2020

After describing the television news business as a visual medium in which physical appearance is important, McKelway offers his advice for “young people” who are entering the industry. “You make a deal with the devil when you work in television news. You make a Faustian bargain,” he says. “You got hired in part because of your looks, and that’s the Faustian bargain. Over time, you start to age. You don’t look as well as you did. And there’s another young crop of young, good-looking, talented people who are making their own Faustian bargain.”

McKelway continues: "When that day comes for you to leave, a piece of advice: Don’t leave embittered. Don’t leave feeling like a victim. Leave with your head held high, and with graciousness, with grace.”

With the Capitol dome behind him, McKelway goes on to swig from a bottle of Pol Roger, “Winston Churchill’s favorite champagne,” and toast himself with one of the British prime minister’s aphorisms: “To victory, I deserve it.”

One Fox News colleague described the video as “bizarre.” Another, upon seeing it, said in a text to The Washington Post, “Um … WOW!”

McKelway did not respond to requests for comment on multiple platforms; his wife, Washington Examiner correspondent Susan Ferrechio, seen briefly on the video, replied via email to ask what the story was about but did not comment. Representatives for Fox News also did not comment on McKelway’s departure.

McKelway joined Fox in 2010 after a long career in local news — most recently at Washington’s WJLA, where he had been dismissed earlier that year after a shouting match with the station’s general manager over his coverage of an environmental protest.

His tenure at Fox was not without controversy. In April 2019, he drew the ire of a colleague after using another quote often attributed to Churchill — “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on” — to suggest in an internal email that President Trump was being unfairly maligned for saying in 2017 that there were “very fine people on both sides” of protests that drew neo-Nazis to Charlottesville. “Your posts read like something you’d read on a White Supremacist chat room,” Jon Decker, a White House correspondent for Fox News Radio, retorted in a leaked email, demanding an apology from McKelway.

Later, McKelway deleted his Twitter account after receiving criticism for some of his posts, as chronicled by advocacy group Media Matters for America, including a February 2019 tweet in which he called Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) a “freak show."

On his Facebook account, McKelway frequently shares Twitter commentary from Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter who has been skeptical about the danger presented by the coronavirus. In threads about the response to the virus, McKelway wrote that “one could make a strong case we are in the midst of a widespread hysteria.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_McKelway

Douglas B. McKelway (born 1954) is a television journalist who serves as a general assignment reporter for the Washington, D.C. bureau of the Fox News Channel. He joined the network in November 2010.^[1] McKelway previously worked at the Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate WJLA-TV.

He was born and raised in Washington D.C.^[2] His grandfather, Benjamin M. McKelway, was editor of the Washington Evening Star newspaper and President of the Associated Press. His father, William Prentiss McKelway, was an obstetrician and a clinical professor at George Washington University Hospital.^[3] McKelway graduated from the Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Skidmore College.^[1]

Broadcast career

McKelway's first television news job was in Charlotte, North Carolina at WPCQ-TV (now WCNC-TV) from 1980 to 1982. He also worked in Kansas, Missouri and Florida, before returning to Washington. He was a reporter and news anchor with WRC-TV until October 2001, when he joined WJLA-TV.

On May 13, 2009, as co-host of Washington, DC's Let's Talk Live on local cable's TBD TV (Formerly News Channel 8), McKelway conducted a live interview with blogger Michael Rogers where they discussed Rogers' efforts to "out" secretly gay politicians who oppose gay rights. At one point, McKelway told Rogers, "I'd take you outside and give you a punch across the face... I think you're hurting innocent people."^[2][4]

In July 2010, McKelway provided live coverage for the noon newscast of a rally by religious and environmental groups that were protesting BP's response to the Gulf oil spill.McKelway made comments regarding BP's contributions to Democratic President Barack Obama. After the broadcast, McKelway met with WJLA Station Manager Bill Lord, who objected to the BP contribution facts being divulged in the live report, and following a heated exchange, McKelway was suspended from his reporting duties as well as anchoring the early-morning Good Morning, Washington news show.^[2] The Washington Post later reported on September 17, 2010, that McKelway had been dismissed.^[5] Since his firing he has been hired by Fox News Channel, for which he is now a reporter.^[1]

Personal life

McKelway plays the banjo and occasionally performs Bluegrass music at local taverns.^[6] He is married to Susan Ferrechio, chief congressional correspondent for The Washington Examiner. They have four children: Doug, Eliza, Chris, and Alexander.

References

1. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_McKelway#cite_ref-foxnews.com_1-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_McKelway#cite_ref-foxnews.com_1-2) "Doug McKelway - Personality Bio - FoxNews.com". Fox News. 2011-01-13.
2. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_McKelway#cite_ref-wp_2-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_McKelway#cite_ref-wp_2-2) Farhi, Paul (August 10, 2010). "WJLA-TV's McKelway suspended, sources say". The Washington Post. p. C1.
3. ^ "William P. McKelway Obstetrician". The Washington Post. February 10, 2010. Retrieved 2010-08-10.
4. ^ "Anchor Loses His Cool With Gay Activist", AOL News, 2009-05-13, retrieved 2009-05-15
5. ^ Farhi, Paul (September 17, 2010). "WJLA-TV fires veteran anchor Doug McKelway". The Washington Post. p. C04. Retrieved 2010-09-17.
6. ^ "Doug McKelway". WJLA. Retrieved 2010-08-15.^[permanent ^dead ^link]

External links

• Fox News profile

Categories: 

• American television reporters and correspondents
• Skidmore College alumni
• Living people
• 1954 births
• Journalists from Washington, D.C.
• Fox News people
• American male journalists

ug McKelway retires from Fox News with an eyebrow ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com › media › 2020/09/22

Sep 22, 2020 — Doug McKelway, a longtime Washington correspondent for Fox News Channel, announced his retirement this month in an unusual video ...

Doug McKelway - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Doug_McKelway

Douglas B. McKelway (born 1954) is a television journalist who serves as a general assignment reporter for the Washington, D.C. bureau of the Fox News ...

Doug McKelway - Correspondent - Fox News | LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com › doug-mckelway-3862a0161

Washington DC-Baltimore Area · Correspondent · Fox News

Doug McKelway | Washington DC-Baltimore Area | Correspondent at Fox News | 4 connections | See Doug's complete profile on Linkedin and connect.

Doug McKelway - Washington Correspondent - Fox News ...

https://www.linkedin.com › doug-mckelway-1aa68326

Washington, District of Columbia, United States · Washington Correspondent · Fox News Channel

Doug McKelway | Washington, District of Columbia, United States | Washington Correspondent at Fox News Channel | 202 connections | View Doug's ...

Former Fox News Washington Correspondent Doug ... - Adweek

https://www.adweek.com › tvnewser › former-fox-news...

Sep 22, 2020 — ... a “unique” video from former Fox News Washington correspondent Doug McKelway talking about his retirement from the TV news business.

Doug McKelway - Wikizero

https://www.wikizero.com › Doug_McKelway

Douglas B. McKelway (born 1954) is a television journalist who serves as a general assignment reporter for the Washington, D.C. bureau of the Fox News ...

Doug McKelway | Media Matters for America

https://www.mediamatters.org › doug-mckelway

Doug McKelway joined Fox News in 2010 as a Washington, D.C.-based correspondent after being fired from the local ABC affiliate.