Fox News and the Wall Street Journal is wrong about science, how shocking!
The Union of Concerned Scientists published one of the best (in my opinion) studies looking at how science is portrayed in popular news. The research showd that the main focus was consistently knocking down that there is a concensus and using such words as hoax and myth. It is interesting in that cherry picking data was one of the least popular choices, as mocking the science was the most popular. Sometimes poisoning people's minds and planting doubt is even more powerful than telling straight lies.
Two million people watch Fox news every night, this proves how strong of influence one corporation or even person can have, as Rupert Murdoch's media company owns both... Nonetheless, as an influential participant in American democracy, News Corp. has an obligation to improve its representations of
climate science" (UCS).
“I thought we were getting warmer. But in the ‘70s, it was, look out,
we’re all going to freeze” (Fox News Channel, 4/11/12)
It’s been warmer and warmer before there were SUVs
(Fox News Channel, 4/11/2012).
It definitely does not help when you have politicians (who went to university for political science, not you know, climate science) announce their error filled opinions. These are very influential figures who have the ability to reach large audiences of public and governmental bodies and misrepresent data or just plain lie. Take former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum or congresswoman Michele Bachmann, whom both don’t understand carbon dioxide and human emissions and essentially claim all CO2 is good CO2 and "life on planet Earth can't even exist without carbon dioxide
Huertas, A and Adler, D. 2012. Is News Corporation Failing Science?: Representations of Climate Science on Fox News Channel and in the Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages. Union of Concerned Scientists. http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/Is-News-Corp-Failing-Science.pdf
Pappas,S. August 2012.Six Politicians Who got the Science Wrong. Live Science. Last Accessed Dec 2013. http://www.livescience.com/22640-politicians-science-wrong.html
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