tv bak

see also Network and Cable TV cats

see also journalism, jrnlism fail

media consolidation

capt bak 519

AN

Scientists at the United Nations’ intergovernmental body focusing on biodiversity sounded alarms earlier this month with its report on the looming potential extinction of one million species—but few heard their calls, according to a German newspaper report.

Deutsche Welle reported Thursday that partially because the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released its report on what it called nature’s “unprecedented” decline on the same day that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had their first child, news reports on the study’s grave implications were few and far between.

While some international and progressive outlets—including Common Dreams—published high-profile stories on the report when it was released, just two of Britain’s national newspapers included any reporting about biodiversity on their front pages on May 7, the day after the royal baby was born to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.< ABC, NBC, and MSNBC did not air a single prime-time mention of the major new U.N. biodiversity report warning of ecosystem collapse. The new royal baby got airtime, though. By @theodorejay. https://t.co/EQPe2qnNJx #CoverClimate#CoveringClimate #ClimateCoverage #EndClimateSilence

— Lisa Hymas (@lisahymas) May 8, 2019

Deutsche Welle’sreport was mirrored by revelations in a Media Matters report published earlier this week which showed that ABC News devoted more time to covering the royal baby’s birth in the week after the child was born than it had to stories about the climate crisis in all of 2018—even as organizers like 16-year-old Greta Thunberg led worldwide climate strikes.

“Where [is] the breaking news?” tweeted Thunberg the day after IPBES released its report. “The extra news broadcasts? The front pages? Where are the emergency meetings? The crisis summits? What could be more important?”...

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https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/03/11/How-broadcast-TV-networks-covered-climate-change-in-2018/223076

many graphs

no lnx

How broadcast TV networks covered climate change in 2018

Research ››› March 11, 2019 9:11 AM EDT ››› TED MACDONALD & LISA HYMAS

Broadcast TV news coverage of climate change plummeted 45 percent from 2017 to 2018, even as the climate crisis steadily worsened. The major news programs on the broadcast networks aired a combined total of just 142 minutes of climate coverage in 2018, or less than two and a half hours. Almost three-quarters of that coverage aired in just the last three months of the year. The networks did a particularly poor job of explaining how climate change exacerbates extreme weather; none of the networks' news reports on the major hurricanes of 2018 even mentioned climate change. The networks’ coverage was also lacking in diversity: Only 9 percent of the people featured in climate segments were people of color, and only 19 percent were women.

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

For this study, Media Matters examined 2018 news coverage of climate change on broadcast TV networks, counting and analyzing segments devoted to climate change and segments in which an employee of the network incorporated climate change. We analyzed coverage on the nightly news programs and Sunday morning political shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC. We also analyzed Fox Broadcasting Co.’s syndicated Sunday morning political show, Fox News Sunday. Fox Broadcasting Co. (which is separate from the Fox News cable channel) does not have a nightly news program, so overall there was far less Fox airtime to analyze.

Top trends from a year of broadcast TV news climate coverage

Key findings:

There was a 45 percent drop in climate change coverage on the broadcast networks’ nightly news and Sunday morning political shows from 2017 to 2018 -- from a total of 260 minutes in 2017 down to just 142 minutes in 2018.

Nearly a third of the time that the networks spent covering climate change in 2018, or 46 minutes, came from a single episode of NBC's Meet the Press on December 30 that was dedicated to discussion of climate change.

NBC was the only network that aired more minutes of climate coverage in 2018 than in 2017 -- an increase of 23 percent. CBS' time spent on climate coverage fell 56 percent from 2017 to 2018, Fox News Sunday's fell by 75 percent, and ABC's fell by 81 percent.

People of color made up only 9 percent of those who were interviewed, featured, or quoted in the networks’ climate coverage, and women made up only 19 percent.

None of the broadcast TV networks' news reports on hurricanes Florence or Michael mentioned climate change. Only nine of their segments reporting on other weather disasters of 2018 mentioned that climate change exacerbates extreme weather.

Almost three-quarters of 2018’s climate coverage occurred in the last three months of the year. Much of it focused on major climate science reports released by the United Nations and the U.S. government.

The links between national security and climate change were discussed only once in 2018, in an NBC segment. ABC and CBS did not mention that climate change poses serious threats to national security.

Solutions or actions offered in response to climate change were mentioned in only a fifth of climate segments aired on ABC, CBS, or NBC.

Climate change coverage fell significantly from 2017 to 2018

Coverage of climate change on the major broadcast networks declined 45 percent from 2017 to 2018. The programs aired a combined 142 minutes of climate coverage in 2018 -- less than two and a half hours. In 2017, the programs spent a combined 260 minutes on climate change. The decline would have been even steeper if not for the December 30 episode of NBC's Meet the Press, which devoted more than 46 minutes to discussing climate change.

This large drop occurred despite 2018 providing plenty of compelling reasons to cover climate change: extreme weather affecting much of the globe; new scientific research raising alarm bells; landmark climate reports being published by both the United Nations and the U.S. government; and the Trump administration continuing to undermine climate protections.

NBC was the only network to air more minutes of climate coverage in 2018 than in 2017 -- an increase of 23 percent. The other broadcast networks each spent less time on climate change in 2018 than they did the year before.

ABC was by far the worst performer. In 2018, the network's nightly news and Sunday morning political shows discussed climate change for less than 11 minutes total, down from 57 minutes in 2017 -- a decline of 81 percent. ABC also aired the fewest number of segments that discussed climate change -- just 12 total for the year. This continues a long trend: ABC has aired less climate coverage than CBS and NBC every year since 2013.

CBS' coverage of climate change fell by 56 percent, from nearly 98 minutes in 2017 to just under 43 minutes in 2018. But CBS did better than the other networks in 2018 on the number of segments in which it addressed climate change -- 33 total on its nightly news and Sunday morning political programs.

NBC outpaced its counterparts in time devoted to climate change, spending 78 minutes on the issue in 2018, up from 63.5 minutes in 2017 -- an increase of 23 percent. But more than half of its 2018 climate coverage -- nearly 46.5 minutes -- came from a single episode of Meet the Press on December 30, which marked the first time that a Sunday morning political show dedicated an entire episode to climate change. Without that episode, NBC would have aired less coverage than in 2017 and lagged behind CBS in the time spent on climate change in 2018. Overall, NBC discussed climate change in 30 segments on its nightly news and Sunday morning political programs in 2018.

Fox News Sunday aired a little more than 10 minutes of climate coverage in 2018, down from almost 42 minutes in 2017 -- a drop of 75 percent. More than seven minutes of its coverage came from one episode on November 25 in which host Chris Wallace and guests discussed the National Climate Assessment. The show aired a total of five climate segments in 2018.

ABC’s two major news programs -- World News Tonight and This Week With George Stephanopoulos, which together air for four and a half hours each week -- spent almost as little time on climate change as Fox News Sunday, which airs for just an hour each week.

For more on Sunday morning political shows' coverage of climate change in 2018, see our recent study.

People of color and women were underrepresented in climate coverage

The four broadcast networks featured 112 people in their news segments on climate change in 2018, excluding the networks' anchors, hosts, and correspondents. The people featured were invited on as guests, shown speaking in video footage, or quoted. The vast majority of them were white men.

Of the 112 people featured in the networks' climate segments, 102 were white, or 91 percent. Only 10 were people of color, or 9 percent. In 2017, 10 out of 222 guests in climate segments were people of color, or 5 percent.

ABC featured the fewest people of color in its climate coverage. The network's nightly news and Sunday morning political programs did not interview any guests of color. The only person of color featured was Los Angeles County Fire Department Chief Daryl Osby, an African-American, who was shown in footage speaking at a press conference in the wake of catastrophic wildfires in California on November 23 on World News Tonight.

Ninety-one of the 112 people featured were men, or 81 percent. Only 21 were women, or 19 percent. In 2017, 34 out of 222 guests were women, or 15 percent.

CBS featured the fewest women in its climate coverage. The network didn't interview any women for its nightly news or Sunday morning climate segments. It only aired brief footage of a speech by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the January 25 episode of CBS Evening News.

Just one woman of color was interviewed about climate change on any of the networks in 2018. New York Times journalist Helene Cooper, who is African-American, participated in a panel discussion that addressed climate change on NBC's Meet the Press on November 25.

The person featured most often in the networks' climate coverage was President Donald Trump: 10 climate segments included footage of him (and in nine of them, he was dismissive of climate science; more on that below).

The longest interview with a single guest about climate change, running more than nine minutes, went to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on the December 30 episode of NBC's Meet the Press.

Broadcast news dropped the ball on linking climate change to extreme weather events

2018 was a devastating year for climate change-fueled extreme weather. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, extreme weather and climate disasters caused at least 247 deaths and nearly $100 billion in damage in the United States last year. The disasters included heat waves, wildfires, and hurricanes. It was the second-costliest year for such events in U.S. history, behind only 2017. Extreme weather hit other parts of the world, too: Europe was gripped by deadly summer heat waves, for example, while wildfires raged as far north as the Arctic Circle, India experienced devastating monsoon flooding, and Australia was hit by record drought.

As these extreme weather events were unfolding, many climate scientists explained how climate change can exacerbate events like heat waves, wildfires, and hurricanes. But while the broadcast TV networks’ news programs collectively aired hundreds of segments on extreme weather events that occurred in 2018, only nine of those extreme weather segments mentioned climate change.

None of the networks’ news reports on the hurricanes of 2018 mentioned climate change, even though major hurricanes struck the U.S. and generated extensive coverage. Hurricane Florence, which reached Category 4 status before hitting the Carolinas in September, broke rainfall records. One groundbreaking scientific study connected Florence’s high rainfall to climate change before the storm even reached U.S. shores. Hurricane Michael, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm in the Florida panhandle in October, was unusually intense. Scientists are becoming increasingly confident about the links between climate change and hurricanes, especially climate change’s effects on storm surge, rainfall, and overall storm intensity. But the broadcast networks are still neglecting to incorporate climate change into their hurricane coverage.

Of the extreme weather segments on ABC, CBS, and NBC that did mention climate change, four did so in the context of reporting on wildfires, three in the context of heat waves, one in the context of extreme rainfall, and one in the context of flooding caused by a Nor’easter. Fox News Sunday did not air any segments about extreme weather events that mentioned climate change. Even that low amount of coverage was an increase over the previous year: In 2017, the networks aired a total of only six segments discussing climate change in the context of weather disasters that happened that year.

While the networks rarely mentioned climate change in their segments on specific extreme weather events, they more frequently reported on how climate change affects extreme weather generally, often as part of their coverage of major scientific reports. The nightly news and Sunday morning political programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox aired a combined 10 segments that discussed climate change as a driver of extreme weather in the context of reporting on two landmark reports that were released in 2018: the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on global warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius, and the U.S. government's fourth National Climate Assessment. Both reports made clear that extreme weather events such as heat waves and droughts are worsening as global temperatures increase. One example of such coverage came from CBS correspondent James Brown on the November 23 episode of CBS Evening News, reporting on the release of the National Climate Assessment:

And severe storms are the new norm according to an alarming government report out today on climate change. The 1,600-page report was written by hundreds of scientists at 13 agencies and departments. It says the impacts of climate change are already being seen with more frequent and severe storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires. The report says extreme weather in the U.S. just in the past three years has cost nearly $400 billion.

Almost three-quarters of 2018’s climate coverage occurred in the last three months of the year

The broadcast TV networks' coverage of climate change was heavily tilted toward the end of the year. More than 73 percent of the time spent covering climate change came in October, November, or December -- 104 of 142 minutes.

Most of the coverage in October and November focused on the release of two landmark scientific reports on climate change -- the IPCC's 1.5 C report, which came out on October 7, and the National Climate Assessment, which came out on November 23. Climate coverage peaked in December, due almost entirely to NBC's Meet the Press climate-focused special episode, which also discussed both major scientific reports.

The relatively high media coverage of the National Climate Assessment was ironic given the circumstances of its release. The Trump administration tried to bury the report by publishing it the Friday after Thanksgiving, but the move backfired and actually drew more attention to its findings.

Every nightly news and Sunday morning political program on ABC, CBS, and NBC covered both reports. Fox News Sunday covered the National Climate Assessment but failed to mention the IPCC report. Altogether, the networks mentioned the National Climate Assessment in 15 segments and the IPCC report in nine. Many of the segments noted that the Trump administration tried to downplay or dispute the reports' findings.

NBC did the best job of covering climate science

NBC featured 16 climate scientists in its coverage in 2018, and it aired 12 segments about climate science research -- more than the other networks on both accounts. NBC also gave the most airtime to a discussion that included a scientist, Kate Marvel of NASA, during the climate-focused special episode of Meet the Press on December 30.

CBS featured 11 scientists in its climate coverage and aired nine segments about climate research. ABC featured just one climate scientist and aired eight segments about climate research. (Fox News Sunday featured no climate scientists and aired two segments about climate research.)

Most of the networks' segments on scientific research either focused on or mentioned the IPCC report or the National Climate Assessment -- 23 out of 31 total. Six segments focused on research about ice loss in the Arctic or Antarctic.

While NBC gave more attention to climate science than the other networks, it also aired the year's most egregious instance of climate science denial on the broadcast networks. On the November 25 episode of Meet the Press, guest Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute falsely stated that global temperatures have been dropping, and host Chuck Todd did not push back against her statement.

Broadcast news climate coverage focused less on Trump in 2018

In 2017, Trump dominated climate change coverage on the broadcast networks: 71 percent of segments on climate change featured actions or statements by the Trump administration, most frequently the president's announcement that he intended to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement. In 2018, the percentage of climate segments that mentioned Trump fell markedly, to 33 percent.

Unfortunately, when broadcast news climate coverage in 2018 did involve Trump, it more often focused on his climate denial than on his administration's efforts to roll back climate protections.

Networks' news programs aired a combined 10 climate segments that included footage of Trump, and in nine of them he expressed denial or skepticism about climate science, often by casting doubt on the IPCC report or the National Climate Assessment. One example came on the November 25 episode of Meet the Press:

CHUCK TODD (HOST): The president is also disputing an urgent warning from his own administration on the issue of climate change. The report from 13 federal agencies was intentionally released on Black Friday in order to bury it in the news. The White House dismissed the findings as, quote, “Largely based on the most extreme scenario.”

The report warns that if significant steps aren’t taken to rein in global warming, climate change could slash the U.S. economy by 10 percent by the end of the century. Just this week, the president tweeted about East Coast cold weather, "Whatever happened to global warming?"

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know that it’s manmade. You have to show me the scientists, because they have a very big political agenda.

[END VIDEO CLIP]

Only two of the segments that featured Trump's climate skepticism rebutted his comments by noting the scientific consensus around climate change.

The networks aired only six segments that mentioned the Trump administration's attempts to undo climate regulations -- four on CBS, one each on ABC and NBC, and none on Fox News Sunday. Three of the segments mentioned efforts to loosen standards for vehicle carbon emissions, and two mentioned the ongoing rollback of the Clean Power Plan, which would have reined in pollution from coal-fired power plants.

CBS was the only network to mention Environmental Protection Agency administrators in the context of climate change. Climate regulations came up during an interview that CBS correspondent Major Garrett conducted with then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on the January 17 episode of CBS Evening News, and on the July 5 episode, Garrett reported on Pruitt’s resignation and noted that his successor, Andrew Wheeler, had previously worked for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), a “well-known climate change skeptic.”

Broadcast networks gave too little attention to how climate change affects national security and public health

Climate change affects society, human health, and the natural world in many different ways -- some of which got more coverage than others from the broadcast TV networks.

National security threats posed by climate change -- which have been well-documented -- got very little attention in 2018: just one mention on NBC. During a roundtable discussion on the December 30 episode of Meet the Press, former Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy said, “I think there is a very strong consensus, in the U.S. military and in the national security community, that climate change is real. This is a sort of pragmatic, clear-eyed view. And for the military, they see this as leading to a change in their mission, more humanitarian assistance, disaster-relief missions abroad and at home.” Neither ABC nor CBS aired any segments that mentioned the national security issues related to climate change.

The threats climate change poses to public health also got little attention, despite being highlighted in the National Climate Assessment.

All three networks did give some coverage to the economic effects, often while discussing the National Climate Assessment, which warned that climate change could take a serious toll on the U.S. economy. Economic impacts were covered in a few other segments too, like one on NBC Nightly News on November 10 about warming sea temperatures pushing Maine’s lobsters north toward Canada.

All three networks also mentioned how climate change causes abnormal weather trends like rising global average temperatures, often in the context of reporting on the IPCC report or National Climate Assessment. And all three gave at least some coverage to the impact of climate change on plants and wildlife, such as an October 10 segment on NBC Nightly News linking the warming of the oceans to worsening algae blooms in Florida that kill vast quantities of marine life. ABC alone failed to mention sea-level rise.

Solutions to climate change were mentioned in only a fifth of climate coverage

When the broadcast TV networks' news programs did cover climate change, they rarely mentioned potential solutions to climate-related problems or actions to fight or prepare for climate change. Out of 75 total climate segments aired on ABC, CBS, and NBC in 2018, just 15 of them -- 20 percent -- made any mention of solutions or responses to climate change.

NBC aired eight segments that addressed solutions or action, more than the other two major networks combined. Four of these segments came on Meet the Press’ climate change episode on December 30, including an eight-minute roundtable discussion dedicated to solutions and responses to climate change such as carbon taxes and lawsuits against fossil fuel companies.

CBS aired four segments that included mention of climate solutions, while ABC aired three. (Fox News Sunday did not mention climate solutions or responses in any of its five segments on climate change.)

Still, most of these segments merely mentioned solutions or responses in passing rather than exploring them in any depth.

Research suggests that media coverage of climate solutions can lead to more engagement from the public, as Media Matters noted in a recent study of solutions coverage in 2017 and 2018.

PBS aired far more climate change segments than the corporate broadcast networks

In addition to analyzing climate change coverage on the corporate broadcast networks, we examined coverage on public broadcaster PBS' weekday nightly news show, PBS NewsHour.

PBS NewsHour has traditionally outpaced its broadcast counterparts in climate reporting and in the scope and depth of its coverage. Those trends continued in 2018. PBS NewsHour aired 72 segments that addressed climate change in 2018, up from 69 segments in 2017.

PBS NewsHour did a better job than the corporate networks of covering how climate change drives extreme weather. It aired six segments last year that discussed the links between climate change and the major hurricanes that hit the U.S., Florence and Michael. The show also aired seven segments on the links between climate change and wildfires, and three on climate change affecting extreme weather in other countries, including drought in Afghanistan and Somalia.

PBS NewsHour aired 23 segments that mentioned climate solutions -- more than all of the corporate networks combined. And the show's solutions coverage was typically more in-depth than that of its broadcast counterparts, including segments focusing on local moves to fight climate change and on efforts to adapt to climate change. PBS NewsHour also aired nine segments on the Trump administration's rollbacks of climate protections, again more than the corporate networks combined.

Evlondo Cooper contributed research to this study. Charts by Melissa Joskow.

Methodology

This report analyzes coverage of climate change from January 1, 2018, to December 31, 2018, on four nightly news programs (ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and PBS NewsHour) and four Sunday morning political shows (ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos, CBS' Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday) based on transcripts from the Nexis database.

To identify news segments that discussed climate change, we searched for derivations of the following terms in Nexis: climate change, global warming, changing climate, climate warms, climate warming, warming climate, warmer climate, warming planet, warmer planet, warming globe, warmer globe, global temperatures, rising temperatures, hotter temperatures, climate science, climate scientist, paris climate, climate accord, paris accord, climate agreement, paris agreement, and climate deal. In some instances, Nexis categorized a segment that did not mention one of our search terms as being about climate change, and if the segment provided other clear indications that it was indeed about climate change, it was included.

Our analysis included any segment devoted to climate change, as well as any substantial mention of climate change (more than one paragraph of a news transcript or a definitive statement by a person employed by the network). The study does not include instances in which a guest brought up climate change without being prompted to do so by a network employee unless the network employee subsequently addressed climate change. We defined network employees as hosts, anchors, and correspondents. When counting guests, we included network employees if they appeared as part of a roundtable discussion on a Sunday morning political show, but we excluded Sunday show hosts. We did not include teasers if they were for segments that aired later on the same program. We acquired time stamps from iQ Media. If a significant portion of a segment was not related to climate change, such as a report on a politician giving a speech about climate change, immigration, voting rights, and the economy, only the portions of the segment that discussed climate change were counted. For the Sunday morning political shows, which often feature wide-ranging discussions on multiple topics, we counted only the relevant portion of such conversations. In the text of this report, most time counts have been rounded to the nearest minute.

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Here’s how confessional morning news shows fail us

Melanie McFarland / SalonFebruary 22, 2019

More often morning news shows are treating celebrity controversies with an Oprah touch. That’s not their role.

not just 80-90's still goes on:

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/12/company-that-owns-your-local-news-might-also-influence-federal-politics/

Dec. 3, it was announced that Tribune Media would be acquired by Nexstar Media Group for over $4 billion. The resulting company will own over 200 television stations, giving it incredible access to American homes across the country through their local news programming.

Although less overtly political than their cousins on cable, local news stations have come under increased scrutiny after the viral controversy aroused in early 2018 by a “must-run” segment on stations owned by Sinclair Media. In the segment, news anchors read from a script decrying “biased and false news” on social media and other news outlets. The script was passed down from Sinclair’s corporate office in Maryland.

“Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think’” said the script. “This is extremely dangerous to a democracy.”

Many Americans rely on stations owned by companies like Sinclair, Tribune Media and Nexstar Media Group to stay informed on local politics. But, aside from their reporting, these organizations dabble directly in politics and elections more than one might expect.

Nexstar Media Group’s PAC, for instance, has steadily ramped up its spending on political causes from 2014, with $27,100 spent that year, $95,700 spent in 2016 and $196,500 in 2018. The PAC favors Republicans, but only slightly. (They gave $5,000 to Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) in the 2018 cycle, but also gave $2,500 to Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.))

The PAC gave $10,000 to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and the same amount to committees associated with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-K.Y.) and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in 2018. They also gave $5,000 to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

As the PAC distributed its funds, stations owned by Nexstar were covering politics and political races across the country. One segment, run by Nexstar-owned WATE in Knoxville, Tennessee, focused on an anti-Phil Bredesen ad that was “censored” by Facebook. (Bredeson was Blackburn’s opponent in the 2018 Tennessee Senate race.) A Memphis station owned by Nexstar also ran a version of this story. Another WATE story featured anti-Blackburn protestors demonstrating during a moment of silence for the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting victims at a campaign event.

KTSM, an El Paso, Texas station owned by Nexstar, re-ran an article from the Texas Tribune exploring the effect of “Hispanic identity” on the Senatorial race that pitted Beto O’Rourke against Cruz. El Paso is O’Rourke’s hometown.

A July segmentin Centex Proud, a Fox-affiliated, Nexstar owned, Waco-area station, covered a Cruz event saying “(Cruz) is excited to see the current economy and business boom – with the lowest unemployment rate for Hispanics and African-Americans in a decade. He says Texas is prospering because of this, and now says it’s time to complete the jobs underway.”

Yourcentralvalley.com, a Nexstar site affiliated with NBC covering Fresno, California, ran a storyabout Kevin McCarthy’s claims that California Democrats had fallen out of touch with voters. In addition to its station in Fresno, Nexstar owns a station in Bakersfield. Fresno and Bakersfield are a stone’s throw from the 23rd congressional district where McCarthy has his seat.

They also own a station in San Francisco where Nancy Pelosi is the congressperson for the 12th district and where Dianne Feinstein was mayor in the 80s. The San Francisco station, KRON4, has run stories on both Pelosi and Feinstein. Pelosi even gave the station an exclusive interview.

Perry Sook, Nexstar’s CEO, gave $5,000 to the company’s PAC in the 2014, 2016 and 2018 election cycles. Thomas Carter, the CFO, did the same. So did Timothy Busch, the president of the company’s broadcasting subsidy.

The Chief Technology Officer, Brett Jenkins, gave $5,000 to the PAC, but only in 2018. Gregory Raifman, president of Nexstar Digital, gave $2,500 that year. Executive Vice President Elizabeth Ryder gave $2,500 in 2014 and 2016, then beefed up her contribution to $5,000 in 2018.

The company also spent $390,000 lobbying during this period and employed a former chief counsel to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and a former deputy staff director for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as lobbyists.

After its merger with Tribune, Nexstar will be the largest owner of local broadcast stations in the U.S. Nexstar and the Illinois-based media company already have political activism in common.

Political spending at Tribune peaked around 2000 when they gave $123,280, the majority of that to Republicans. Their political giving has since plummeted to $13,034 by 2018, all but $500 of which went to Democrats.

In 2008, Tribune gave $11,450 to then-Senator Barack Obama. (Compare that to Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign when they gave him just $1,475.)  Using the Wayback Machine to return to October 2008, one can see Tribune’s official endorsement of Obama for president on the WGN-TV website. The same banner rotates between the endorsement of Obama, a banner advertising Decision 2008 coverage and links to other stories.

Tribune has another connection to Obama in Edward Lazarus, Tribune’s Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. Lazarus is a former chief of staff to the chairman of the FCC. The FCC Chairman Lazarus served under, Julius Genachowski, was nominated to the position by Obama in March 2009.

By the 2016 cycle, Tribune was throwing $4,963 behind Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. Another $2,000 went to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and $1000 went to Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).

Between the 2002 and 2018 cycles, Tribune gave generously to Michigan Republican Rep. Fred Upton, climbing from $1,000 in 2002, to $4,000 in 2008, then spiked again to $5,500 in 2012. Upton represents Michigan’s sixth congressional district in the Southeast of the state. WGN-TV quoted Upton’s criticisms of the Affordable Care Actand its rollout in 2013.

Before Nexstar sealed the deal to acquire Tribune, Sinclair tried to make the same purchase. Their attempt was scuttled by regulators, but Sinclair already owns a huge swath of local television stations, 191 by their count.

After flirting with bankruptcy in 2009, Sinclair was saved in part thanks to Citizens United and the ensuing influx of political ad spending. Their giving has increased dramatically since 2010 when they contributed just $8,100 to political causes. In 2014, they contributed $263,587 and in 2016 they contributed $429,504 before dipping back down to $186,648 in 2018. In each of those cycles since 2010, they gave at least two-thirds of the money to Republicans.

Sinclair is based out of Maryland and owns twelve Baltimore-area television stations. They have given generously to Maryland politicians over the years, including Rep. Andy Harris, Sen. Barbara Mikulskiand Nancy Jacobs, a Republican state Senator who lost a race for Maryland’s second congressional district in 2012.

In 2014, Sinclair gave Mikulski $25,000. They gave another $17,600 to John Boehner and $7,900 to Paul Ryan.

In a 2015 articleon the announcement that then-Senator Mikulski would receive the presidential medal of freedom, the Fox45 site included a transcript of Mikulski’s full reaction from the floor of the Senate. Mikulski also gave the Fox station an interview on receiving the medal.

South Dakota Senator John Thune received the biggest haul from Sinclair in 2016 (over $30,000). Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen (Md.) meanwhile received $9,100.

Van Hollen gave Fox45 (the first ever Sinclair station) an exclusive interview on gun control and government spending during the same election cycle. In the days before the 2016 election, Van Hollen appeared on a Fox 45 news segment called “Your Voice” where he talked about the ease of early voting and pitched his plans to accelerate job growth in Maryland.

“Good luck on Tuesday!” the host said as he concluded the interview.

“Thanks,” Van Hollen said. “Everyone get out to vote!”

Van Hollen appeared on another Your Voice segment in April 2018. Later that summer, Fox45 covered Van Hollen’s visit to a Texas border patrol processing center.

Sinclair’s top three recipients for 2018 were Republican Senators Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Deb Fischer(R-Neb.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), all of whom received $15,000 or more. They also gave $5,700 to Rep. Greg Gianforte, who became well known nationally after physically assaulting a reporter. Blackburn got $5,700 and Arizona Senate candidate Joe Arpaio got $2,000. Both Blackburn and Arpaiohave received lavish praise from President Trump.

Sinclair’s name recognition spiked after a Deadspin compilation synchronizing the “biased news” must-run segment went viral, but Sinclair has been distributing corporate speech through local news stations for years. Segments like “News Central” and the “Terrorism Alert Desk” have been aired as must-runs at Sinclair-owned stations. Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump staffer, has a. Sinclair was even accused of trying to influence the 2004 election by airing a documentary (Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal) that accused John Kerry of fabricating parts of his military service.

In the 2000s, Sinclair had a similar a must-run segment called The Point, hosted by a Sinclair lobbyist and ex-Navy intelligence officer. The host would criticize other media outlets for their coverage of then-President Bush, once going so far as to say that “terrorist leaders would dearly love to see President Bush replaced with Senator (John) Kerry.”

Sinclair-affiliated PACs and individuals supported Donald Trump for president in 2016 with $3,804. According to the Washington Post, Sinclair stations ran fifteen exclusive interviews with Trump and did none with Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps the most explicitly pro-Trump company in local television is Minnesota-based Hubbard Broadcasting. Hubbard’s CEO, Stanley Hubbard, is on the advisory board for a pro-Trump Super PAC.

“We ended up with one guy standing. His name is Trump. And I’m a team player,” said Hubbard, who was initially skeptical of the President, in an interview with NPR. “Our country is very important. We got to get rid of all these regulations, give the little guy a chance to get ahead and stop all this government interference in our lives.”

Hubbard Broadcasting gave $350,000 to Freedom Partners Action Fund, a Koch-network Super PAC, in the 2016 election cycle. Of that sum, $200,000 came from the company itself, $150,000 from individuals within the company. In 2014, the Hubbard Broadcasting gave the Super PAC $450,000, $300,000 from the company and $150,000 from individuals.

Hubbard Broadcasting’s political contributions peaked in 2016 when they gave over $1 million to Republicans. That year they gave $18,500 to Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and $16,300 to Ted Cruz.

In 2018, their top four recipients were all Minnesota politicians: Republican Senate candidate Karin Housley, Rep. Erik Paulsen, Emmer and Rep. Jason Lewis. Each of the candidates received tens of thousands from Hubbard.

ABC 5, a Hubbard-owned station, reported on 2009 Facebook comments made by Housley in which she likened Michelle Obama to a chimpanzee. The article includes a quote from a political scientist who says, though the statement is distasteful, they “don’t think it shows she’s a virulent racist…”

On the other hand, ABC 5 gave a “D-” to an ad run by Paulsen that attempted to tie his opponent to a sexual assault. The grade was part of a segment called “Truth Test” in which political ads are rated on their factual accuracy.

Hubbard Broadcasting owns the radio station that ran the Jason Lewis Show before Lewis became a congressman. Lewis infamously used the platform to vent his frustrations with modern gender politics.

“It used to be that women were held to a little bit of a higher standard,” Lewis said on the show according to CNN. “We required modesty from women. Now, are we beyond those days where a woman can behave as a slut, but you can’t call her a slut?”

Both Lewis and Paulsen lost their seats in 2018.

Since Americans have a significantly greater level of trust in their local news stations than they do in national news outlets or in web-only publications, this level of political activity from media companies is especially significant.

In most cases, it is difficult to say whether these companies’ political activities cross-pollinate with their journalism and business dealings, but future controversies akin to the Sinclair must-run scandal could continue to increase the visibility of the companies behind these local stations and erode Americans’ faith in yet another source of news.

Note: Due to errors with CRP data obtained from the FEC that triple-counted contributions, it was originally reported that Sen. Chris Van Hollen received $28,000 from Sinclair affiliates and its PAC. That number has been corrected to $9,100.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/17/60-minutes-trump-says-not-denying-climate-change

Davies, Climate Investigations Center. Originally posted on Climate Investigations Center.

Climate change is coming at Trump even as he tries like hell to avoid the subject. Record-setting hurricanes, Florence and Michael, have caused devastation across the southeast United States. Meanwhile, the grim UN IPCC “1.5 degree” report pushed climate scientists into the headlines last week while Trump was out and about, apparently unleashed, talking to media.

LStahl of 60 Minutes, got the first big sit down interview and went at climate change right off the bat.Pivoting off Hurricane Michael and the IPCC report, Stahl pressed Trump to answer straight questions about climate change.

U.S.

Overall, Trump responds to Stahl’s questions with the typical denier tropes, which he likely learned from Rush Limbaugh, Myron Ebell, Marc Morano, and the Heartland Institute:

“

“

“We have scientists that disagree with that [anthropogenic climate change].”

“But it [climate change] could very well go back.”

“

“

“

Trump also deployed a empty economic argument against taking action, one commonly used by deniers:

“

Read the full 60 Minutes interview transcript.

Deniers Would Rather Trump Said Nothing

Trump said a couple of things the deniers don’t really want him to say, including:

“

CEO

“The President has done a great job by not talking about global warming. The less the President talks about it, the less often it appears in news stories and on TV, the less often its going to be an issue. So, this is how big issues disappear.'  Trump Questioned on Climate by Reporters in Georgia While Touring Hurricane Damage

Predictions for Hurricane Michael went from a predicted Category 1 on October 7 to making landfall at just below Category 5 three days later, surprising meteorologists and foiling predictive computer models.

While touring areas damaged by the massive storm in Georgia on Monday,reporters continued to press Trump on climate change and he continued trying to change the subject and inform us that he has “the cleanest air on the planet.”

...

==

7/18 fail

heat wave that just swept the United States was no joke. 227 U.S. records were broken for highest temperature in a week alone. The heat wave killed at least five people in the United States and 70 more in Canada. And while the news was happy to talk about the heat wave, there was barely any mention of climate change.

Climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of these heat waves. And yet, it gets almost no mention. ABC and NBC ignored the link to climate change entirely, while both PBS and CBS aired one segment linking the heat wave to climate change. If this sounds familiar, it is because we found a similar problem with heat waves in 2012 and 2017. The link to climate change also regularly gets ignored with wildfires, hurricanes, floods, polar bear deaths, and sea-level rise. Climate change is also ignored during elections and when millions of people march take to the streets. Fox News does cover climate change when it's cold outside, so that's something.

Climate change is getting worse, and yet the media can't connect the obvious dots for how that is affecting the lives of its audiences.

==

National Rifle Association’s news outlet NRATVspun former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to the Senate intelligence committee to President Donald Trump’s advantage by flatly lying about what Comey said.

Comey testified in an open hearing before the Senate intelligence committee on June 8, almost a month after Trump abruptly fired him. Trump’s public statements on the firing have caused numerous legal experts to warn that Trump may have obstructed justice by improperly interfering with an FBI investigation.

NRATV was quick to jump to Trump’s defense before and during Comey’s appearance. During the 11 a.m. edition of its program Stinchfield, which provides live news updates at the top of the hour from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. EST, host Grant Stinchfield said the hearing came down to one question: “Did [Trump] ever try to obstruct justice in any way?" He said Comey answered, "No":

[vid]

GRANT STINCHFIELD (HOST): Now as I look and listen to this hearing, what I see is James Comey being questioned. One, being led by the Democrats to try to sink Donald Trump, and two, by the Republicans trying to get to the heart of what this hearing is all about. Did Donald Trump try to obstruct justice when it came to this Russian investigation in any way? A direct quote when he was asked about this by the chairman of the committee, a Republican, “Did Donald Trump ever ask you to stop the Russian investigation?” James Comey’s answer, “No.” “Did he ever try to obstruct justice in any way?” James Comey’s answer, “No.”

In actuality, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), chairman of the intelligence committee, asked Comey whether the president was trying to find a way for former national security adviser Mike Flynn to “save face” after having been fired, or whether he was trying to “obstruct justice” when he said he hoped Comey could “let [the investigation] go.” At the time, Flynn was under investigation for his ties to Russia. Comey didn’t respond “no,” but instead said, “I don't think it's for me to say whether the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct. I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning, but that's a conclusion I'm sure the special counsel will work towards to try and understand what the intention was there and whether that's an offense”:

bernie DN media ignored his rural rallies?

Now, one of the problems I think we have as a nation, I think media—and, by the way, at the back of the book, one of the important chapters—if you get tired, skip to the back. If you don’t like taxation or immigration reform, go to the back, last chapter, which deals with—it’s entitled "Corporate Media, a Threat to Democracy." And it talks about the role of corporate media in our society and in politics, in particular. But what is going on in this country is that we live in a pretty siloized nation. That’s a kind of a inside-the-Beltway term; I don’t know if it’s expanded to Pennsylvania. But what it means is we all live in our own worlds, basically. We associate with people who think the same as we do. I guess there was somebody who said, "How could Trump have won? Nobody I knew voted for Trump!" Well, you don’t know people in different walks of life than your own. And one of the things that a lot of middle-class people, upper-middle-class people don’t know is that, yes, we are better off economically today than we were eight years ago, when Bush left office—there’s no debate on that—but for 40 years in this country, under Democratic and Republican administrations, we have seen a shrinking of the American middle class, we have seen more and more income and wealth inequality, so that today the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, and today we have 43 million people living in poverty, some in really dire straits.

Now, one of the things that I did in the campaign—what I wanted to do, and I did—was to go into parts of the country where media very rarely goes, and I wanted to be talking to people, and I wanted to see if we can get some national exposure. And in a sense, I failed. We had media following me all over the place, what they call embedded media, from all the networks and major newspapers, but basically they did not write about what we were seeing in various parts of the country.

And let me just talk a little bit about that. We talked—and again, these are facts; some of you know it, some of you don’t. But I want you to understand the pain and the hurt that millions of people are experiencing. You’re a single mom in Philadelphia...

http://wwwwww.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bernie-sanders-warns-corporate-media-threatens-democracy

==

==

There was also a heavier dose of conspiracy on the new networks. Newsmax TV has aired "Roswell Top Secret," and it features Dick Morris, author of the 2012 book Here Comes the Black Helicopters!. Fox was no longer the only place for the grassroots right to turn, nor the only channel where would-be conservative personalities could go to make a name for themselves.

==

wow tracking:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2015310/

==

The Tyndall Report, a non-partisan media monitoring firm that has been tracking the nightly news broadcasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC, found that Trump is tromp, tromp, tromping over the airtime of everyone else.

From last January through November, these dominant flagship news shows devoted 234 minutes of prime-time coverage to the incessant chirping of the yellow-crested birdbrain, with no other contender getting even a fourth of that.

Take Bernie Sanders, who’s stunning the political establishment with a fiery populist campaign that’s drawing record crowds. Indeed, Sanders’ upstart campaign is commanding a comparable share of support within the Democratic Party’s voting base to what Trump is enjoying from the Republican electorate.

And — get this — polls also show Bernie trouncing The Donald if they face each other in November’s presidential showdown. So surely he’s getting a proportional level of media coverage by the networks on our public airwaves, right?

Ha, just kidding! The big networks’ devotion of 234 minutes to all-things-Trump was “balanced” by less than 10 minutes for Sanders. Most egregious was ABC, the Disney-owned network. ABC’s World News Tonight awarded 81 minutes of national showtime to Trump last year — and for Bernie: 20 seconds.

How self-serving of the media moguls. The one candidate who is effectively rallying large numbers of voters to oppose the rise of corporate oligarchy — including in the media — has the plug pulled on him.

Of course, this only amplifies the truth of what Sanders is saying about the villainy of corporate profiteers, and it fuels a greater determination by his millions of grassroots supporters to end the reign of greed in America.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.

busted

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/11/13/network-evening-news-programs-yet-to-address-wh/206839

In recent months, media investigations have revealed that Exxon Mobil peddled climate science denial for years after its scientists recognized that burning fossil fuels causes global warming, prompting New York's Attorney General to issue a subpoena to Exxon and all three Democratic presidential candidates to call for a federal probe of the company. But despite these developments, the nightly news programs of all three major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- have failed to air a single segment addressing the evidence that Exxon knowingly deceived its shareholders and the public about climate change.

Media Reports Revealed Exxon's Acceptance Of Climate Science Pre-Dated Its Funding Of Climate Denial, Prompting Calls For Investigations

Media Report: Email Shows"Exxon Knew Of Climate Change In 1981 ... But It Funded Deniers For 27 More Years."On July 8, InsideClimate News and The Guardian reported on an email from a former Exxon employee that was highlighted by the Union of Concerned Scientists. InsideClimate News noted that the email showed "Exxon scientists studied the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on global warming as far back as 1981," and that "company's early awareness of climate change and willingness to factor it into business decisions starkly contrasts with the path it took a decade later, when it led efforts to cloud public understanding of climate science and delay action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide." The Guardian similarly reported that ExxonMobil "knew as early as 1981 of climate change -- seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm's own scientists. Despite this, the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial." The Guardian further reported:

==

==

As if to prove there are new depths to be plumbed in the world of reality television (because who knew?), CBS just debuted The Briefcase,a show which takes poverty porn, class anxiety, emotional manipulation and exploitation and packages them all neatly into a pretty despicable hour of primetime television. Kicking off each episode with the question, “What would you do with $101,000?” the show then deep-dives into a competition that asks two unwitting, financially strapped families to choose between two no-win options: being financially solvent yet appearing heartless and greedy, or drowning in debt yet having audiences recognize them as selfless and giving.

It’s hard to imagine a network executive didn’t get the idea for this show from the “Button, Button” episode of the Twilight Zone. The Briefcasefocuses on two “middle-class” families—a questionable but highly American take on the phrase, since both are debt saddled, with one primary breadwinner, and essentially living on the edge of financial ruin. Both are told they’ll be participating in a documentary about money. Instead, a producer from the show unexpectedly comes to their house with a suitcase full of cold, hard cash: $101,000 to be exact. That could be a life-changing – and in the case of families so near the financial cliff, nearly life-saving – sum of money. But this being reality TV, instead of just giving them the cash, there’s a major catch.

Both families are informed that somewhere out there, there’s another family “who’s also in need,” and are given a choice: “You can keep all of the money, you can keep some of the money, or you can give it all away.” Neither family knows that the other family also has a suitcase full of cash and is debating how much, if any, they’ll share. And since both families were originally told they were merely going to be the subjects of a documentary, neither of them really signed up for this exercise in televised torture.

What follows, predictably, is a gut-wrenching look at the two families being guilted this way and that over whether to choose charity or financial survival.

Network TV Continues Giving Climate Change Cold Shoulder

By Miles Grant [1] / FAIR [2]

March 10, 2015

In recent weeks, network television news has understandably focused extensively on the extreme cold and snow in the Northeast and upper Midwest. But a new FAIR study shows they’ve almost completely ignored a related and even more dangerous phenomenon out West: record-shattering winter warmth. And they've overwhelmingly failed to discuss what connects the two sets of strange weather phenomena: human-caused climate disruption.

The study, while only covering newspapers and only looking at two short time periods, shows that American climate denial is unique and more prevalent than in other countries, and that ideology does influence how the topic is covered. From the report’s conclusion:

There is some evidence for arguing that there is a strong correspondence between the political leaning of a newspaper and its willingness to quote or use uncontested skeptical voices in opinion pieces.��The distinction between news pages and opinion pages is important as much of the skepticism in found in the latter category. In right-leaning newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and the Telegraph, there is very little uncontested skepticism in their news reporting.

There is also evidence for seeing a greater presence in the US media of the sort of skepticism which strongly attacks the scientific legitimacy of climate change policy proposals compared to all the other five countries (with the notable exception of the U.K.).

Along with the U.K., Australia is another country seeing American-style climate denial in the press. A��recent analysis from the Australian Center for Independent Journalism found that 73 percent of articles and opinion pieces published in 2011 on a proposed carbon price were negative.

����Some of Australia’s leading newspapers have been so negative in their reporting of the Gillard government’s carbon policy it’s fair to say they’ve campaigned against it rather than covered it,” concluded the author of the report.

Stephen Lacey is a reporter with Climate Progress covering clean energy issues. He formerly worked as a producer/editor at RenewableEnergyWorld.com.

http://grist.org/climate-energy/were-no-1-in-climate-denier-coverage/

WSJ does not disclose Rove (col) connections

��

The Wall Street Journal's failure to disclose op-ed columnist Karl Rove's ties to political organizations raising hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat President Obama and other Democratic candidates is drawing harsh criticism from editorial page editors at America's top newspapers.

Even as he writes regular columns on the 2012 election for the Journal, Rove serves as what *Vanity Fair* calls "the defacto leader of the Republican Party." As the co-founder��of the super PAC American Crossroads and its related organization Crossroads GPS, Rove is helping to assemble a massive war chest to run attack ads against Democrats this fall -- an obvious conflict of interest.

��

also

Respected economists like Brad DeLong and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman noted gross factual inaccuracies in Niall Ferguson'sNewsweek cover story. Newsweek took no responsibility for any inaccuracies though, casually admitting that they don't even fact check the articles they publish. Against a backdrop of shrinking newsrooms and layoffs, I explained how the conservative echo chamber exploits such vulnerabilities:   http://mm4a.org/RAlguR

...

Meanwhile, Newsweek's avoidance of fact-checking is just one example of a larger erosion of journalism, led by shrinking newsrooms, layoffs, and more. The erosion of the structures of journalism in turn fuels a growing lack of credibility for the media in general, and offers an opportunity for the conservative echo chamber to fill the gap. This trend is incredibly hard to reverse, largely because of what Julian Sanchez has labeled epistemic closure.

fox dan rarher std: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2009/09/16/will-fox-news-hold-beck-to-its-dan-rather-stand/154643

==

Note the irony here that Heartland Institute – one of the major mouthpieces behind the debunked ‘Climategate’ email theft who harped about the suppression of denier voices in peer-reviewed literature – now defending its turf in the unscientific business magazine realm.

-Interesting mentions of Andrew Revkin as a potential ally worth “cultivating,�� along with Judith Curry.[cf cointelpro atrazine flip attempts]

“Efforts might also include cultivating more neutral voices with big audiences (such as Revkin at DotEarth/NYTimes, who has a well-known antipathy for some of the more extreme AGW communicators such as Romm, Trenberth, and Hansen) or Curry (who has become popular with our supporters).”

gore ...

Continuing on our current course would be suicidal for global civilization. But the key question is: How do we drive home that fact in a democratic society when questions of truth have been converted into questions of power? When the distinction between what is true and what is false is being attacked relentlessly, and when the referee in the contest between truth and falsehood has become an entertainer selling tickets to a phony wrestling match?

The "wrestling ring" in this metaphor is the conversation of democracy. It used to be called the "public square." In ancient Athens, it was the Agora. In the Roman Republic, it was the Forum. In the Egypt of the recent Arab Spring, "Tahrir Square" was both real and metaphorical — encompassing Facebook, Twitter, Al-Jazeera and texting.

In the America of the late-18th century, the conversation that led to our own "Spring" took place in printed words: pamphlets, newsprint, books, the "Republic of Letters." It represented the fullest flower of the Enlightenment, during which the oligarchic power of the monarchies, the feudal lords and the Medieval Church was overthrown and replaced with a new sovereign: the Rule of Reason.

The public square that gave birth to the new consciousness of the Enlightenment emerged in the dozen generations following the invention of the printing press — "the Gutenberg Galaxy," the scholar Marshall McLuhan called it — a space in which the conversation of democracy was almost equally accessible to every literate person. Individuals could both find the knowledge that had previously been restricted to elites and contribute their own ideas.

Ideas that found resonance with others rose in prominence much the way Google searches do today, finding an ever larger audience and becoming a source of political power for individuals with neither wealth nor force of arms. Thomas Paine, to take one example, emigrated from England to Philadelphia with no wealth, no family connections and no power other than that which came from his ability to think and write clearly — yet his Common Sense became the Harry Potter of Revolutionary America. The "public interest" mattered, was actively discussed and pursued.

But the "public square" that gave birth to America has been transformed beyond all recognition. The conversation that matters most to the shaping of the "public mind" now takes place on television. Newspapers and magazines are in decline. The Internet, still in its early days, will one day support business models that make true journalism profitable — but up until now, the only successful news websites aggregate content from struggling print publications. Web versions of the newspapers themselves are, with few exceptions, not yet making money. They bring to mind the classic image of Wile E. Coyote running furiously in midair just beyond the edge of the cliff, before plummeting to the desert floor far beneath him.

The average American, meanwhile, is watching television an astonishing five hours a day. In the average household, at least one television set is turned on more than eight hours a day. Moreover, approximately 75 percent of those using the Internet frequently watch television at the same time that they are online.

Unlike access to the "public square" of early America, access to television requires large amounts of money. Thomas Paine could walk out of his front door in Philadelphia and find a dozen competing, low-cost print shops within blocks of his home. Today, if he traveled to the nearest TV station, or to the headquarters of nearby Comcast �� the dominant television provider in America — and tried to deliver his new ideas to the American people, he would be laughed off the premises. The public square that used to be a commons has been refeudalized, and the gatekeepers charge large rents for the privilege of communicating to the American people over the only medium that really affects their thinking. "Citizens" are now referred to more commonly as "consumers" or "the audience."

That is why up to 80 percent of the campaign budgets for candidates in both major political parties is devoted to the purchase of 30-second TV ads. Since the rates charged for these commercials increase each year, the candidates are forced to raise more and more money in each two-year campaign cycle....

In the same way, because the banks had their way with Congress when it came to gambling on unregulated derivatives and recklessly endangering credit markets with subprime mortgages, we still have almost double-digit unemployment, historic deficits, Greece and possibly other European countries teetering on the edge of default, and the threat of a double-dip recession. Even the potential default of the United States of America is now being treated by many politicians and too many in the media as yet another phony wrestling match, a political game. Are the potential economic consequences of a U.S. default "real"? Of course they are! Have we gone completely nuts?

We haven't gone nuts — but the "conversation of democracy" has become so deeply dysfunctional that our ability to make intelligent collective decisions has been seriously impaired. Throughout American history, we relied on the vibrancy of our public square — and the quality of our democratic discourse — to make better decisions than most nations in the history of the world. But we are now routinely making really bad decisions that completely ignore the best available evidence of what is true and what is false. When the distinction between truth and falsehood is systematically attacked without shame or consequence — when a great nation makes crucially important decisions on the basis of completely false information that is no longer adequately filtered through the fact-checking function of a healthy and honest public discussion — the public interest is severely damaged.

That is exactly what is happening with U.S. decisions regarding the climate crisis. The best available evidence demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that the reckless spewing of global-warming pollution in obscene quantities into the atmospheric commons is having exactly the consequences long predicted by scientists who have analyzed the known facts according to the laws of physics.

The emergence of the climate crisis seems sudden only because of a relatively recent discontinuity in the relationship between human civilization and the planet's ecological system. In the past century, we have quadrupled global population while relying on the burning of carbon-based fuels — coal, oil and gas — for 85 percent of the world's energy. We are also cutting and burning forests that would otherwise help remove some of the added CO2 from the atmosphere, and have converted agriculture to an industrial model that also runs on carbon-based fuels and strip-mines carbon-rich soils.

��

The cumulative result is a radically new reality — and since human nature makes us vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable, it naturally seems difficult to accept. Moreover, since this new reality is painful to contemplate, and requires big changes in policy and behavior that are at the outer limit of our ability, it is all too easy to fall into the psychological state of denial. As with financial issues like subprime mortgages and credit default swaps, the climate crisis can seem too complex to worry about, especially when the shills for the polluters constantly claim it's all a hoax anyway. And since the early impacts of climatic disruption are distributed globally, they masquerade as an abstraction that is safe to ignore.

These vulnerabilities, rooted in our human nature, are being manipulated by the tag-team of Polluters and Ideologues who are trying to deceive us. And the referee — the news media ��� is once again distracted. As with the invasion of Iraq, some are hyperactive cheerleaders for the deception, while others are intimidated into complicity, timidity and silence by the astonishing vitriol heaped upon those who dare to present the best evidence in a professional manner. Just as TV networks who beat the drums of war prior to the Iraq invasion were rewarded with higher ratings, networks now seem reluctant to present the truth about the link between carbon pollution and global warming out of fear that conservative viewers will change the channel — and fear that they will receive a torrent of flame e-mails from deniers.

gore  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/climate-of-denial-20110622?print=true

http://mediamatters.org/print/blog/2012/08/06/study-media-begin-to-connect-the-dots-between-c/189144

aug 6 A Media Matters analysis of wildfire coverage in July finds that nearly 14 percent of articles and segments mentioned climate change -- over four times more than in previous months.

twilight of the elites says he learned jrnlism at chic Reader (alt) that now gone; Nation to MSNBC chris hedges

...Instead of covering one of the largest banking scandals in history, American television news outlets have focused on the divorce of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, shark sightings, and a chimpanzee attack.

Last week, we documented how television news outlets are practically ignoring an emerging controversy over whether major financial institutions have been manipulating the LIBOR, a key interest rate banks use to borrow money from each other that is "used as a benchmark to set payments on about $800 trillion worth of financial instruments."��MIT professor of finance Andrew Lo told��CNN Money that the LIBOR-manipulation story "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scams in the history of markets."

In the fifteen days after news broke that U.S. and U.K. regulators had fined British multinational bank Barclays $450 million for its role in trying to rig the LIBOR, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC spent only 12 minutes combined reporting on the story during their evening newscasts and opinion programming.

With few exceptions -- notably MSNBC's Up with Chris Hayes and Current TV's Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer-- the scandal has been largely relegated to financial outlets. In a post chiding ABC and NBC for ignoring LIBOR entirely during their flagship nightly news programs, Washington Postmedia writer Erik Wemple joked that ABC "[c]an't bump complicated, clunky old LIBOR for fins protruding from the ocean."

Wemple's suggestion that the networks' failure to cover LIBOR was not caused by their preference for other important hard news stories is depressingly accurate. The same outlets that found only 12 minutes of time to report on LIBOR from June 27 to July 12 during their evening programming devoted nearly 65 minutes to stories about sharks during that same time period.

The numbers are even worse when comparing LIBOR coverage to��coverage of the divorce of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC devoted almost 91 minutes to stories related to the celebrity divorce, which is more than seven times longer than they spent on LIBOR��during the same period. Only CBS' Evening News, which was the only network newscast to cover LIBOR during the time of this study, ignored the divorce.

Similarly, a story about chimpanzees attacking an American student at an animal sanctuary in Africa received more than 20 minutes of primetime coverage.

CBS was the only network to devote more coverage to LIBOR than to these trivial stories during the study.

Results

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/07/19/report-media-prioritize-animal-attacks-tom-crui/187238

mojo sum of climategate:

But climate scientists don't tend to be adept at politics, and most of them didn't enter the field expecting to land in the middle of a controversy over the future of industrial society. Accustomed to the slow-moving peer-review process, they were utterly unprepared to deal with the real-time, 24/7 news circus.

The press gave the think tanks and pundits a bully pulpit in the form of airtime and headlines—without bothering to dig into the hacked emails and figure out what the fuss was about. While journalists were quick to quote email snippets that were causing a ruckus, it wasn't until December 12—nearly a month after the initial release—that a team of Associated Press reporters finally parsed [23] the entire set of emails and published a more accurate picture of their contents.

Still, you can't completely blame journalists, says Tom Rosenstiel [123], director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism [124]. "That's the typical arc of any story," he says. "Allegations and accusations can move more quickly through the media ecosystem than sorting out what's really true." What's more, for years, the press had become accustomed to the refrain that the "science is settled" on global warming, and that it was now time to figure out how to deal with it. The "science is settled" mantra [125] downplayed the many uncertainties that remain about the impacts and implications of climate change and the hard-fought battles over every conclusion. So when the debates about data were laid bare, the scandal was much easier to report than the science.

http://www.motherjones.com/print/106101

2nd try // durban; again press does not come off well:

To read Kate Sheppard's story on the first Climategate scandal, click**here**.

The new round of hacked emails from climate scientists floating around the internet hasn't generated the same buzz as the last iteration—at least not yet. But in certain circles, it's playing out much like the first batch of emails did in 2009. In addition to the tranche of emails, the poster included a list of "greatest hits"—short quotes from the emails taken out of their context that are intended to paint scientists as scheming or lying. The entire batch was quickly posted in searchable format on another site.

As with the first "Climategate," a link to the emails was first noticed on several skeptic blogs, to which their commenters have responded with glee.  Climate Depot, the denial site run by Marc Morano, quickly jumped all over it, boasting headlines claiming the emails confirm a "pattern of deception and collusion by alarmists" and a comic that that reads "Same cast, same story, same secrets … Will they survive this time?" Morano's page is also touted over on the National Review's Planet Gore blog, along with a bunch of other coverage of "Climategate 2.0."

It's since also traveled up line to conservative commentators at the UK's *Telegraph* and Hot Air. And of course, it's getting covered at Fox News, which declared that the emails were "certainly eye-opening" before listing some of the quotes selected by the original poster.

More interesting to me is whether mainstream journalists will tread more cautiously this time than they did last in covering the emails. In 2009, most reporters just ignored it, and then, when they did bother writing about it, used the out-of-context quotes without taking the time to read the entire exchange or understand the science discussed therein. So, has the press done better this time? Not quite.

ABC News just rehashed a bunch of he-said, she-said about it, rather than actually reporting. Media Matters took several reporters to task for unquestioningly repeating the out-of-context lines. That includes the Washington Post's story, which mentions an email from Peter Thorne, a scientist now with NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. Thorne expressed concern about the science behind a portion of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on temperatures in the lower atmosphere. The Post'soriginal story online Tuesday did not mention that the email is from February 2005 and referred to an early draft of the IPCC report, nor that the final version of that report was changed to reflect Thorne's feedback when it was released in 2007. (I sent an email to Thorne to get more context on the exchange and its resolution, but got an out-of-office message from him.) The Postdid correct the print story to include the dates, but the piece still quotes Morano and Congressional climate skeptic Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) gloating over the fact this proves scientists are all a bunch of liars who can't be trusted.

The Associated Press story on the new emails was particularly atrocious, noting that they "threatened to cause similar embarrassment" to the 2009 version which "caught prominent scientists stonewalling skeptics and attacking opponents in vitriolic terms." A longer version of that story that has appeared online also states that, while the reporter hadn't read the full emails, "the excerpts appeared to show climate scientists talking in conspiratorial tones about ways to promote their agenda and freeze out those they disagree with."

The *New York Times* piece dinged scientists for "catty remarks" and included a quote from the well-known Competitive Enterprise Institute skeptic Myron Ebell claiming that these emails are further proof that scientists "engaged in a conspiracy to provide a scientifically misleading assessment." But at least the Times bothered to try to learn the context for some of the emails and talk to the scientists involved, and notes the numerous exonerations of the science and scientists following the first release.

The Guardian probably did the best job, making it clear that the quotes are "cherry-picked." But like the first go-around, a lot of the coverage falls back on the "scientists say this … but skeptics say this" model of coverage that the press is so happy to follow, rather than actual reporting. We'll be following the story as it continues to develop. But given the fact that the subject of climate change is getting less coverage in general these days, I'm guessing it won't get the traction it did two years ago.http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2011/11/climategate-20-will-media-do-its-job-time

Network News Coverage of Climate Change Collapsed in 2011

By Joe Romm on Jan 9, 2012 at 12:41 pm

Last week Climate Progress reported on the loss of interest in the story of the century by the major print media — see Silence of the Lambs 2: Media Herd’s Coverage of Climate Change Drops Sharply — Again.

Robert Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University in Philadelphia, put together similarly stunning data on the coverage in the past 15 years by NBC, ABC, and CBS on the night news.

Brulle explains in an email what he has to say on what happened and why:

As far as coverage of climate change on the evening broadcast news (NBC, CBS, and ABC), this year there were a total of 14 stories, for a total of 32 minutes and 20 seconds of coverage on the three evening news broadcasts.  This is down from 32 stories with 90 minutes and 28 seconds of coverage last  year, and way off from the peak in 2007, with 147 stories and over 386 minutes of coverage.�� The nearest year with this low of TV coverage of climate change was 2003, with only 10 stories and 29 minutes and 30  seconds of coverage.

If last  year was titled the year coverage fell off the map — then the headline  this year might be WHAT COVERAGE?

What drove this?  We know that media coverage reacts to political events and elite cues.�� So from that perspective, we can identify three factors:

1)      Failure of the political elite to focus on this issue (Elite Cues)  The Obama administration has not discussed this issue at all, as you have previously blogged.

2)  Crowding out by other issues (unemployment and economic issue – i.e. macro-economic factors), and

3)  No significant change in political equation (no big political events).

Actual news on the climate — including record-smashing extreme weather and its severe consequences — simply can’t compete with the silence of essentially the entire progressive political establishment in terms of driving coverage.

As I have written, the continued self-destructive failure of the nation and the world to reverse greenhouse gas emission trends deserves to be the top story pretty much every year — and how boring is that?!

Stories that might be of interest to future generations, though apparently not our own:

• Biggest Jump Ever in Global Warming Pollution in 2010, Chinese CO2 Emissions Now Exceed U.S.’s By 50%
• IEA���s Bombshell Warning: We’re Headed Toward 11°F Global Warming and “Delaying Action Is a False Economy”
• An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces

• Climate Story of the Year: Warming-Driven Drought and Extreme Weather Emerge as Key Threat to Global Food Security
• Oxfam: Extreme Weather Has Helped Push Tens of Millions into “Hunger and Poverty” in “Grim Foretaste” of Warmed World.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/01/09/400795/network-news-coverage-of-climate-change-collapsed-in-2011/

Climate Coverage Dips Again in 2011

01-06-2012

The Daily Climate

By Douglas Fischer

Media coverage of climate change continued to tumble in 2011, declining roughly 20 percent from 2010′s levels and nearly 42 percent from 2009′s peak, according to analysis of DailyClimate.org’sarchive of global media.

The declining coverage came amid bouts of extreme weather across the globe—historic wildfires in Arizona, drought in Texas, famine in the Horn of Africa���and flashes of political frenzy. Australia’s approval of a carbon tax, the U.S. presidential election, a Congressional inquiry into the failed solar startup Solyndra all generated significant coverage within the mainstream press, but it was not enough to stem the larger trend.

“If you thought last year��was the year that media coverage collapsed, the headline this year would be ‘What coverage?’” said Robert Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

19,000 stories in 2011

Last year, at least 7,140 journalists and opinion writers published some 19,000 stories on climate change, compared to more than 11,100 reporters who filed 32,400 stories in 2009, according to DailyClimate.org.

The decline was seen across almost all benchmarks measured by the news service—20 percent fewer reporters covered the issue in 2011 than in 2010, 20 percent fewer outlets published stories, and the most prolific reporters on the climate change beat published 20 percent fewer stories.

Particularly noticeable was the silence from the nation’s editorial boards—In 2009, newspapers published 1,229 editorials on the topic. Last year, they published less than 580—half as many, according to DailyClimate.org’s archives.

==

http://grist.org/list/why-is-the-discovery-channel-ignoring-climate-change-science/

The Discovery Channel isn’t a climate change denier, but it’s certainly shaping up to be an equally formidable foe — a climate change avoider.

Media outlets and activists are lambasting the network for failing to adequately address climate change in its recent series,Frozen Planet. The seven-part series, which was jointly produced with the BBC, explores life in the North and South poles. The series’ final episode, “On Thin Ice,” depicts how decreasing ice cover impacts polar habitat and wildlife, but fails to acknowledge the fact that human activities are spurring global warming.

--

Coincidentally, Discovery Communications — which owns the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, the Science Channel and others — announced in early April that it was shutting down Planet Green, a four-year-old channel that featured environmental programming. The channel floundered with low ratings and what executives said were a lack of entertaining eco-themed shows

right wing talk on radio and TV

TV weathermen

700 Club

South Park

"South Park Republican" was a term that first circulated in weblogs and articles on the Internet between the years circa 2001 and 2002, used to describe what some modern authors claimed to be a "new wave" or generation of young adults and teenagers who hold center-right political beliefs that are, in general, aligned with those portrayed in the popular American animated television program South Park.

The phrase was coined by commentator Andrew Sullivan^[1] in 2001. Sullivan identified himself as a South Park Republican after hearing that the program's creators had "outed" themselves as Republicans at an awards ceremony.

South Park co-creator Trey Parker is actually a registered member of the Libertarian Party.^[2] Fellow co-creator Matt Stone sums up their views with the comment "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals."^[3]

[edit] Creator's Views

In an online forum (South Park Studios Chat, 10 May 2001)[1], Parker and Stone responded to a participant's question:

Q: Are you two guys liberal or conservative? Me and my friends have had debates about this.TREY: We avoid extremes but we hate liberals more than conservatives and we hate them [conservatives].MATT: I hate conservatives but I really fucking hate liberals.

In August 2006 Parker, Stone and Sullivan headlined a conference in Amsterdam hosted by the libertarianmonthly magazine Reason. During an on-stage interview with Reason editors Nick Gillespie and Jesse Walker, Stone and Parker reaffirmed their discomfort with labels while acknowledging that their political views could be described most accurately as libertarian and rejected the direction of the Republican Party that they described as "more government and more Jesus".^[4] John Tierney documented the declaration on the pages of The New York Times a few days later in a column called "South Park Refugees".^[5] "South Park Libertarians," an edited version of the interview, appeared in the December 2006 issue of Reason.^[4][5]

Trey Parker was asked about the term "South Park Republican" in an interview for his feature film Team America: World Police, and what he thought about it:[2]

Q: I don't know if you've heard about this, but there have been essays written about the concept of the "South Park Republican."TREY: Yeah, we have seen that. What we're sick of—and it's getting even worse—is: you either like Michael Moore or you wanna fuckin' go overseas and shoot Iraqis. There can't be a middle ground. Basically, if you think Michael Moore's full of shit, then you are a super-Christian right-wing whatever. And we're both just pretty middle-ground guys. We find just as many things to rip on on the left as we do on the right. People on the far left and the far right are the same exact person to us.

In another exchange from the same interview:

Q: You seem to feel free to roast everybody equally.TREY: Everybody needs a good roasting.MATT: It's been pretty funny on both sides.TREY: And it comes from an honest belief we have, which is... George Bush doesn't know what's going on. Michael Moore does not know what's going on. And Alec Baldwin definitely does not know what's going on. Basically, this shit is gigantically complicated.

[edit] See also

• South Park Conservatives
• Culture war
• Republican Liberty Caucus

[edit] References

1. ^ Anderson, Brian C. (Autumn 2003). *We're Not Losing the Culture Wars Anymore*. http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_4_were_not_losing.html. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
2. ^ Winter, Bill. "Trey Parker — Libertarian". Advocates for Self-Government. http://www.theadvocates.org/celebrities/trey-parker.html. Retrieved 2008-04-26.
3. ^ Tierney, John (2006-08-29). "South Park Refugees: Republicans can't count on the votes of "Team America"". New York Times. http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_4_were_not_losing.html. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
4. ^ ^a(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican#cite_ref-Grigoriadis_3-0) ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican#cite_ref-Grigoriadis_3-1) Grigoriadis, Vanessa (2007-03-08). "Still Sick, Still Wrong". Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/south_park_still_sick_still_wrong/page/3. Retrieved 2007-11-09. Earlier source where the South Park creators disagree with the term.
5. ^ ^a b Nick Gillespie; Jesse Walker (December 2006). "South Park Libertarians: Trey Parker and Matt Stone on liberals, conservatives, censorship, and religion.". Reason magazine. http://reason.com/news/show/36838.html. Retrieved 2007-11-09.