Fox News

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History

Executive

Fox News was founded by Australian-American media oligarch Rupert Murdoch in 1996, choosing Republican PR executive Roger Ailes as the company's first CEO and Chairman.

In speaking on the importance of television presentation for the United States' presidential elections, Ailes advised then-candidate Richard Nixon:

This is the beginning of a whole new concept. This is it.

This is the way they’ll be elected forevermore.

The next guys up will have to be performers.[1]

Following Nixon's victory in 1968, Ailes went on to advise and manage the successful campaigns of Hollywood Actor Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and his Vice President George H.W. Bush in 1988, relying heavily on cowboy mythology to develop and present their media persona as the "ideal fighting man" in the image of John Wayne.[2] Nixon, Reagan, and Bush were all serial war criminals who committed genocides in countries including, but not limited to, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Iraq.[3]

After 20 years at the head of Fox News, Ailes resigned in 2016 facing accusations of sexual harassment from numerous women who worked at Fox, including three on-air hosts.[4][5]

Following Ailes' departure, Rupert Murdoch has been the executive chairman since 2016,[6] [7] and Suzanne Scott has been the CEO since 2018.[8]

Climate Denial

Company Policy

On December 15, 2010, MediaMatters released a Dec. 8, 2009 e-mail sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon questioning the "veracity of climate change data" and ordering the network's journalists to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question."[9]

The directive was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record."[10]

That night Fox’s flagship news program featured another report by Goler, quoting Michel Jarraud of the World Meteorological Association explaining the recent finding that 2000-2009 “is likely to be the warmest on the record.” Appearing to echo Sammon’s orders, Goler immediately followed this by saying that climate deniers "say the recordkeeping began about the time a cold period was ending in the mid 1800s and what looks like an increase may just be part of a longer cycle.” After running a clip of American Enterprise Institute scholar Kenneth Green questioning the “historical context” of the WMO’s climate findings, Goler then brought up the climategate emails, saying the "e-mails cast doubt on the basic scientific message."[11]

Later that night, on the same Special Report broadcast, correspondent James Rosen advanced the wildly misleading claim that climate scientists “destroyed more than 150 years worth of raw climate data.” A month after Sammon sent his memo, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies released data confirming that 2009 was the second warmest year on record and marked the end of the warmest decade on record. Special Report never mentioned the NASA report.[12]

Year-By-Year

2012 Coverage

An analysis of Fox primetime climate coverage from February-July 2012 conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that in 37 of 40 instances (over 90%), Fox News programs misled viewers about climate science—mainly, by broadly dismissing it.[13]

2019 Coverage

Climate denial claims dominated 86% of climate change segments on Fox News this year, according to a new Public Citizen analysis.[14]

A review of Fox News programs for the first half of 2019 reveals that the network continues to give ample airtime to long-debunked climate myths and fringe deniers. Of Fox’s 247 segments that involved considerable discussion on the issue, 212 (86%) were dismissive of the climate crisis, cast warming and its consequences in doubt or employed fearmongering when discussing climate solutions.

Fox News programs had 10 contributors who commented on climate-related issues at least twice during the six-month period. None of these contributors is a climate scientist and none has appeared on another network.[15]

2021 Coverage

In 2021, you can turn on Fox News and watch prime-time host Tucker Carlson quip that “not even climate experts understand the climate” or watch Fox contributor Dagen MacDowell suggest that climate change is a hoax because it is cold in April. Other climate deniers such as Marc Morano and Bjorn Lomborg appeared across Fox programming at least six times from January through April. [16]

Proven Impact

2019 Studies

A 2019 Pew study found that “Republicans who watch Fox News are more than twice as likely to deny human-caused climate change than Republican non-viewers, and 62 percent of Republicans watch Fox News.”

Pew’s data also “suggests that the presence of Fox News and other conservative media outlets may be the primary explanation for why climate denial is more prevalent in the United States than in other developed countries.” That data mirrored the findings of a 2013 study, which noted that consuming Fox News and Rush Limbaugh made Americans significantly less likely to trust scientists or believe in climate change.[17]

Earlier in 2019, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported on findings that showed rejection of climate science among ordinary people is higher among U.S. Americans, and Fox News was a pivotal reason.[18]

2022 Studies

A 2022 analysis by the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition found that Fox News remains a significant source of false and misleading information about climate collapse, fueling unfounded doubt and denial in a way that could inspire violence against advocates for mass climate action. [19]

People who watch Fox News on a near-daily basis were far more likely than the general public to believe a host of false climate narratives, including that renewable energy sources are unreliable and cost more to generate electricity than fossil fuels, and that the world’s science community is still debating the cause of global heating.[20]

Political Agenda

Racial Capitalism

Within just a few months in 2019, Another host, Tucker Carlson, referred to the September climate strike as “adults hoping to exploit children for political purposes.” And Laura Ingraham called climate activism by Greta Thunberg and others “globalist” and “socialism in a new mask.”[21]

In 2021, Carlson and far-right commentator Mark Steyn mocked comments made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) linking climate change and racism:

"Even worse than climate science is… the 'idiotic theory that climate change correlates to racism'... when you get to this stage it's not long before the planes start dropping out of the skies."

Yet countless studies prove that racism is “inexorably” linked to climate collapse because it dictates who benefits from activities that produce planet-warming gases and who suffers most from the consequences, let alone the historical causes of the crisis. [22]

Trumpism

Fox News has been alleged to function as state television for former U.S. President Donald Trump, who declared on Twitter in 2012 that global warming was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese:

"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."[23]

This link has been seen with climate denial. In 2019, climate denier Marc Morano declared on Fox & Friends that "the climate crisis... is not only fake news, it's fake science." This lie was subsequently tweeted by Trump to his millions of followers.[24]

Fox Weather

In 2021, Fox News announced its launch of Fox Weather, a new streaming platform aimed at competing with the Weather Channel.[25] Fox’s decision to double down on weather coverage has been cited as a recent example of the network’s accelerating right-wing extremism, [26][27] and a new venue for promoting climate denial.

For example, in 2019 Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity mocked U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for linking the severity of Hurricane Dorion to climate change. [28]

Sources

Pyrolize

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

https://www.mediamatters.org/washington-post/study-media-sowed-doubt-coverage-un-climate-report

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/oct/11/climate-change-political-media-ipcc-coverage

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/oct/23/climate-change-climate-change-scepticism

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/science-or-spin

Cited

  1. ↑ "Democracy for Hire: A History of American Political Consulting," Dennis Johnson, 2017, Chapter 8: The Media Revolution, p. 168
  2. ↑ "Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics" Glenn Greenwald, 2008
  3. ↑ U.S. War Crimes
  4. ↑ https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/08/andrea-tantaros-made-harassment-claims-against-roger-ailes.html
  5. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/business/media/fox-news-roger-ailes-gretchen-carlson-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-settlement.html
  6. ↑ http://time.com/4413767/roger-ailes-fox-news-resigns-rupert-murdoch/
  7. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/21/roger-ailes-leaves-fox-news-sexual-harassment-claims
  8. ↑ https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/suzanne-scott-fox-news-1202813600/
  9. ↑ https://archive.thinkprogress.org/foxgate-leaked-email-reveals-fox-news-boss-bill-sammon-ordered-staff-to-cast-doubt-on-climate-9eb7fdea1a0e/
  10. ↑ http://mediamatters.org/blog/201012150004
  11. ↑ http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/15/leaked-email-fox-news-sammon-cast-doubt-on-climate-science/
  12. ↑ https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fox_News
  13. ↑ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/fox-news-distorts-climate-science/
  14. ↑ https://www.citizen.org/article/foxic-fox-news-networks-dangerous-climate-denial-2019/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=52dbcd4f-2756-4284-973a-7fe06c039cd5
  15. ↑ https://www.citizen.org/news/climate-change-denial-dominates-86-of-fox-news-climate-segments/
  16. ↑ https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/2021-fox-news-still-spreading-dangerous-climate-denial
  17. ↑ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-views-on-climate-and-energy/
  18. ↑ https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2019/12/03/how-fox-news-is-helping-to-destroy-the-planet
  19. ↑ https://caad.info/report/the-impacts-of-climate-disinformation-on-public-perception-2/
  20. ↑ https://insideclimatenews.org/todaysclimate/climate-disinformation-campaigns-threaten-cop27-progress-a-new-report-concludes/
  21. ↑ https://thebulletin.org/2019/05/fox-news-made-the-us-a-hotbed-of-climate-denial-kids-are-the-cure
  22. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/06/29/climate-change-racism/
  23. ↑ https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2019/12/03/how-fox-news-is-helping-to-destroy-the-planet
  24. ↑ https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/2021-fox-news-still-spreading-dangerous-climate-denial
  25. ↑ https://newrepublic.com/article/162923/fox-news-weather-channel-climate-denial
  26. ↑ https://newrepublic.com/article/162923/fox-news-weather-channel-climate-denial
  27. ↑ https://newrepublic.com/article/162693/brian-stelter-hoax-fox-news-big-lie
  28. ↑ https://thebulletin.org/2019/05/fox-news-made-the-us-a-hotbed-of-climate-denial-kids-are-the-cure
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