Originally published in Crikey, September 24 2012
New research out of the US has provided evidence of the “misleading” reporting of climate change by News Corporation. The report, Is News Corp. Failing Science, written by the Union of Concerned Scientists, looked into representations of climate change at Fox News and The Wall Street Journal over a period of six and 12 months respectively.
In their study, stories were investigated and rated “accurate” or “misleading”. Misleading pieces were defined as those that:
- Had a broad dismissal of the scientific evidence that climate change is occurring and is largely due to human activities
- Disparaged climate scientists generally or specifically
- Disparaged or mocked climate science as a body of knowledge
- Cherry-picked individual facts or findings to question overall climate science conclusions
- Engaged in debates or conversations in which misleading claims drowned out accurate ones.
Out of 40 mentions of climate change on Fox News, 37 were determined to be misleading, or 93% of stories. The reporting in The Wall Street Journal (researchers looked at the opinion section) was slightly more accurate; 81% of stories were considered misleading. Disparaging the basic fundamentals of the science was the most common approach at both outlets.