Category: Mainstream_Media_Outlets_CN

2021 was a stand-out year for climate coverage on corporate broadcast TV networks. In our annual analysis of climate coverage, Media Matters found that approximately 1,316 minutes — nearly 22 hours — were spent discussing climate change on morning, evening, and Sunday morning news shows on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox Broadcasting Co., more than a threefold increase from 2020. However, all those hours of climate coverage on corporate broadcast TV networks represented roughly 1% of overall news programming in 2021, a figure that is still far too small in the face of a worsening climate crisis.

The Associated Press announced today it will significantly expand its climate coverage, creating a standalone desk that will enhance the global understanding of climate change and its impact across the world.

his is how long we have ignored warnings of a coming crisis:

It’s been more than half a century since a presidential panel under Lyndon Johnson found that fossil fuel emissions could be warming the earth.

It’s been 40 years since the National Academies of Sciences published a massive landmark study with similar conclusions.

United States news coverage of climate change reached an all-time high in October and November, according to recent data from the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO), an international, multi-university collaboration based at the University of Colorado Boulder.

I’m writing this from New Orleans a little more than a month after Hurricane Ida devastated Southeast Louisiana—after most national TV crews have long since packed up and left. A blue tarp lies atop my parents’ roof, flapping in the occasional sticky breeze. Aside from some cosmetic damage, their home is okay. They’re some of the lucky or blessed ones. Too many others have lost homes and livelihoods and direction; there is a palpable sense of exhaustion in the air.

In his review of Bill Gates’ February 2021 book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” environmental activist Bill McKibben praised the billionaire and Microsoft co-founder for his “affection for his home planet,” but poor interpretation of “the deeper and more critical aspects of the global warming dilemma.”

On Saturday, Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, tweeted that she’d be appearing on CNN to talk to Fareed Zakaria about the record-breaking heat wave gripping the West. The next day, she announced her segment had been cut. “Bumped, due to billionaire going to space,” she wrote.

Less than two weeks after record-breaking temperatures forced California into a state of emergency, a severe heatwave has swept over northwestern US and Canada, shattering records across the region…