Media Bias & Surveys  by Roger King  

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Surveys

3. Media Bias

4. Outrageous Actions

5. Recommended Coverage

Introduction

Survey’s

54% Say Media Hype Global Warming Dangers  February 6, 2009 More bad news for the media.  Fifty-four percent (54%) of U.S. voters say the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is. Only 21% say the media present an accurate picture, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Renowned Scientist Defects From Belief in Global Warming  by Marc Morano  October 17, 2006   The global warming alarmists may have significantly overplayed their hand in the climate debate. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll this August found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of any recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe that climate change is due to natural variability has increased over 50% in the last five years.  Link

Environmental Reality  by Investor's Business Daily  September 07, 2007   Credit Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte with exposing the lie that the global warming alarmists have traded in for years. Schulte, a surgeon and researcher at King's College Hospital in London, recently reviewed 528 climate change papers published from 2004 to February of this year and found that a mere 38, or 7%, explicitly support the consensus. Daily Tech, an online magazine, says the ratio goes to 45% "if one considers 'implicit' endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement)." While only 32, or 6%, of the papers reject the consensus outright, Daily Tech blogger Michael Asher reports that the "largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no 'consensus.' " 

Read the sunspots  by R. Timothy Patterson at Financial Post  June 20, 2007   In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all. 

1. Fifty-six percent of poll respondents said the phenomenon of global warming has been proven, and can be largely blamed on human endeavors, such as power plants and factories, according to the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll.
2. In comparison, 21 percent of those surveyed claimed global warming problems are caused either by natural changes or are unproven.
3. Sixty-six percent of Americans believe the United States should do what it can to reduce global warming, even if other nations ignore it. This compares with 52 percent of respondents who believed that way in 2001.
4. In 2001, 34 percent thought the United States needed to reduce harmful gases only if other nations did. A much smaller proportion, 16 percent, responded that way in 2007.

Global Warming Seen as a Problem That Needs to be Addressed Globally  by Harris Pole November 7, 2007  

1. Those who think we have too little government regulation (53%) “in the area of environmental protection” greatly outnumbers those who think we have too much (21%);
2. Those who now think we have too little regulation (53%) have increased from 47 percent in 2005 and 39 percent in 2000. However, they are far fewer than those who felt that way in the early 1990s;
3. Republicans are split more or less equally between those who believe we have too much (34%) and too little (36%) regulation. Most Democrats (68%) and half of Independents (51%) believe we have too little regulation; 
4. A 71 percent to 23 percent majority believes that current trends will lead to global warming and an increase in average temperatures. This substantial majority who believe in global warming has not changed much in the last ten years (in 1997 a 67 percent to 21 percent believed this to be true). The same proportion (71%) of the public believes that we are already experiencing global warming;  A very large majority (87%) of all adults agrees with the statement that “since emerging countries such as India and China will soon pass the United States as the largest contributor of greenhouse gases, whatever is done to control these gases should be undertaken by almost all industrial countries”; 
5. At the same time an almost equally large 81 percent majority believes that “the United States needs to set the lead when it comes to controlling greenhouse gases and pollution”.

Lifting the global warming gag order by Vin Suprynowicz  Feb. 25, 2007  A 2003 poll of 530 climatologists in 27 countries showed  

1. 34.7 percent endorsed the notion that a substantial part of the current global warming trend is caused by man's industrial activities (driving cars and the like).
2. 20.5 percent rejected this "anthropogenic hypothesis."
3. The rest (two-thirds) were undecided.
4. The skeptics now include the 85 climate experts who signed the 1995 Leipzig Declaration; the 4,000 scientists from around the world (including 70 Nobel laureates) who signed the Heidelberg Appeal, and the 17,000 American scientists who signed the Oregon Petition. (Find these all through www.sepp.org  or www.globalwarminghysteria.com .)

Rasmussen Survey’s

Americans Divided on Cause of Global Warming  from Rasmussen Reports  December 19, 2006   Likely Voters found that 45% consider Global Warming a “very serious” problem while another 28% say it is “somewhat serious.”  Forty-six percent (46%) of American voters believe that Global Warming is caused primarily by human activities. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it is the result of long-term planetary trends. Eight percent (8%) say there is some other cause while 11% are not sure. 

Support Grows for Nuclear Power Plants  August 16, 2005   Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Americans believe it is somewhat or very important for the U.S. to reduce its reliance on imported oil. That's essentially unchanged from the earlier survey.  Also unchanged is the belief that energy conservation is not a lasting solution. Sixty-four percent (64%) say that, in the long run, developing new sources of energy is more important than conserving energy. Just 26% take the opposite view. 

Media Bias

ClimateGater Jones' Stunning Global Warming Revelations Ignored By Noel Sheppard  02/16/2010  As NewsBusters reported Saturday, Phil Jones, the head of the British Climatic Research Unit at the heart of ClimateGate, told the BBC: the recent warming trend that began in 1975 is not at all different than two other planetary warming phases since 1850; there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and; it is possible the Medieval Warm Period was indeed a global phenomenon thereby making the temperatures seen in the latter part of the 20th century by no means unprecedented.

Jones also admitted that he and his fellow scientists manipulated figures to hide a decline in crucial tree-ring data thereby questioning the validity of the entire global warming theory.

Despite the seriousness of these revelations, much as what happened when the ClimateGate scandal first broke, with the exception of Fox News -- and a lone report by CNN -- America's media have almost totally boycotted this amazing story:

• No mention by the New York Times
• No mention by the Washington Post
• No mention by USA Today
• No mention by ANY major U.S. newspaper EXCEPT the Washington Times
• No mention by the Associated Press
• No mention by Reuters
• No mention by UPI
• No mention by ABC News
• No mention by CBS News
• No mention by NBC News
• No mention by MSNBC 

Fire and Ice - Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can’t decide weather we face an ice age or warming by The Business and Media Institute  May 17, 2006

“Hot & Cold Media Spin: A Challenge To Journalists Who Cover Global Warming”  September 25, 2006   The media have missed the big pieces of the puzzle when it comes to the Earth’s temperatures and mankind’s carbon dioxide (C02) emissions. It is very simplistic to feign horror and say the one degree Fahrenheit temperature increase during the 20th century means we are all doomed. First of all, the one degree Fahrenheit rise coincided with the greatest advancement of living standards, life expectancy, food production and human health in the history of our planet. So it is hard to argue that the global warming we experienced in the 20th century was somehow negative or part of a catastrophic trend.

Second, what the climate alarmists and their advocates in the media have continued to ignore is the fact that the Little Ice Age, which resulted in harsh winters which froze New York Harbor and caused untold deaths, ended about 1850. So trying to prove man-made global warming by comparing the well-known fact that today's temperatures are warmer than during the Little Ice Age is akin to comparing summer to winter to show a catastrophic temperature trend.

In addition, something that the media almost never addresses are the holes in the theory that C02 has been the driving force in global warming. Alarmists fail to adequately explain why temperatures began warming at the end of the Little Ice Age in about 1850, long before man-made CO2 emissions could have impacted the climate. Then about 1940, just as man-made CO2 emissions rose sharply, the temperatures began a decline that lasted until the 1970’s, prompting the media and many scientists to fear a coming ice age.   

In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm   by John Tierney  of the New York Times January 1, 2008   Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.

Calm Sun, Cold Earth! by Alan Caruba (February 2008) Up to now, the mainstream media has ignored the cold reality of the Earth’s known cooling cycles. They have been in complete thrall to the howling of Al Gore with his endless lies about an imminent warming. Given the accolade of a Nobel Prize and even a Hollywood Oscar, why should people unschooled in science believe otherwise?

Global Warming Censored  by Julia A. Seymour, Assistant Editor and Dan Gainor, Vice President  2008  ...  there are hundreds of scientists from around the world who question the global warming “consensus” – but in the news the latter half of 2007 you had to look hard to find them.

     On the three networks, 80 percent of stories (167 out of 205) didn’t mention skepticism or anyone at all who dissented from global warming alarmism. CBS did the absolute worst job. Ninety-seven percent of its stories (34 out of 35) ignored other opinions. Williams’ own network, NBC, came in a close second with 85 percent (76 out of 89) excluding skepticism. ABC was the most balanced network, but still censored dissent from 64 percent of its stories (34 out of 53).

     But dissent flourishes. The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee released a list on Dec. 20, 2007, of more than 400 skeptical scientists from different fields – astrophysics, geology, climatology, meteorology and others. The release didn’t even earn a news brief from one of the three networks as of Dec. 31, 2007.

Crude Coverage   2008   Despite economists’ reminders that supply and demand are at work – that oil companies don’t set gas prices – the networks have hammered away at that point. But Roberts wasn’t urging OPEC leaders to “cut back a bit” on their profits.

     In fact, network reporters covered oil companies’ profits 14 times as often as they covered the profits of OPEC – an actual cartel that controls supply and directly affects prices, according to experts like Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who wrote in June 2005 that OPEC “facilitates” high oil prices.

     Many Americans still remember the cartel’s embargo against the United States in 1973. It caused record prices at the pump and led to gasoline rationing and long lines at service stations. Record prices have returned, but journalists now depict OPEC as a market follower instead of a market manipulator.

Destroying America To Save The World  by Dan Gainor   Patricia Sabga at NBC Nightly News (Aug. 6, 2003):   “Europe is burning, sweltering in one of the hottest summers in memory. Temperatures topping 104 degrees from Lisbon to Berlin. Searing heat, high winds and drought sparking forest fires throughout the continent. In Portugal, officials asked NATO for water-dropping planes to battle blazes that have killed a dozen people. The French nuclear reactor was hosed down to keep it from overheating. Rail service in parts of Britain slowed or suspended for fear the train tracks will buckle in the heat. Across Europe, crop damages from drought estimated in the billions of dollars. “

Destroying America To Save The World  by Dan Gainor   ABC’s World News Tonight reporter Terry Moran provides a fine example. On June 3, 2002, after Moran listed several possible impacts from global warming, including lost snow packs in mountains and sinking islands in the Atlantic, he then reported, “The scientists note these kinds of projections are iffy, but the basic science, as you say, they are certain of, and that is that global warming exists, and humans help make it.”  

Destroying America To Save The World  by Dan Gainor   The networks cited President Bush as blocking or pulling out of Kyoto about one-third of the time (30 percent or 49 stories). That’s only partially true. Bush was only one of many opponents, including the U.S. Senate, which must vote on all treaties. The networks only made that point once in all 165 stories. They blamed Bush for U.S. actions on the treaty 49 times more often than on the one story that discussed how the Senate had voted unanimously 95-0 against Kyoto. That unanimous vote included Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), although that is never discussed in any of the 165 reports.   

Human-Caused Global Warming McCarthyism, intimidation, press bias, censorship, policy-advice corruption and propaganda by Robert M. Carter   December 6, 2006   A startling insight into the way that modern “documentary” films are prepared for cable TV channels - such as Discovery Science Channel, History Channel and National Geographic Channel - is provided by Chuck Doswell. As a weather scientist who has participated many times in programmes on severe weather issues, Mr. Doswell comments that the production companies that he has aided invariably: “have the story written before their research even begins. They’ve decided the “angle” the story is going to follow, and nothing I say or do seems capable of swaying their determination to produce the story that way. They are definitely and consistently not seeking to understand the story first on the basis of what they learn by interviewing me. I’m simply there to give credibility to their story”.  TV is obviously all about putting eyeballs in front of the advertisements, and has little or nothing to do with public education or offering information to the viewers, whatever pious proclamations they might offer”.   Part of the challenge the news media has had in covering this story is the old habit of taking the "on the one hand, on the other hand" approach. There are still people who believe that the earth is flat. But when you're reporting on a story like the one you're covering today, where you have people all around the world, you don't take, you don't search out, for someone who still believes the earth is flat and give them equal time.

Morning TV’s One-Sided Climate Crusade  by Colleen O’Boyle   April 19, 2007  MRC analysts examined all 115 news stories that dealt with global warming from January 1 through April 15 on NBC’s Today, ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’s The Early Show. These morning news programs had a combined audience of more than 13 million during the first three months of 2007. Unlike the networks’ evening newscasts, the two- and three-hour morning shows have longer segments that should (in theory) make it easier to include multiple points of view on controversial topics. But MRC’s analysts found just four stories out of 115 (just over 3%) contained any mention of dissent from Gore’s approach to global warming — and even those stories were heavily stacked in favor of his "climate crisis" position.

Inhofe slams DiCaprio and Laurie David for scaring kids by Marc Morano October 26, 2008  Hollywood activist Laurie David, Gore's co-producer of "An Inconvenient Truth" recently co-authored a children's global warming book with Cambria Gordon for Scholastic Books titled, “The Down-To-Earth Guide to Global Warming”.  According to a Science and Public Policy Institute release on September 13:  "The authors [David and Gordon] present unsuspecting children with an altered temperature and CO2 graph that reverses the relationship found in the scientific literature. The manipulation is critical because David's central premise posits that CO2 drives temperature, yet the peer-reviewed literature is unanimous that CO2 changes have historically followed temperature changes."    Link    David has now been forced to publicly admit this significant scientific error in her book.    Link

Inhofe slams DiCaprio and Laurie David for scaring kids by Marc Morano October 26, 2008   The Hollywood global-warming documentary "Arctic Tale" ends with a child actor telling kids: "If your mom and dad buy a hybrid car, you'll make it easier for polar bears to get around."   Link  Unfortunately, children are hearing the scientifically unfounded doomsday message loud and clear. But the message kids are receiving is not a scientific one, it is a political message designed to create fear, nervousness and ultimately recruit them to liberal activism. 

Climate Change: Get Over Objectivity, Newspapers  by Steve Outing  August 28, 2007   “I’ve also been thinking about the newspaper industry and global warming,” wrote Outing. “And, frankly, I don’t think newspapers are doing enough. Indeed, newspapers’ fabled commitment to ‘objectivity’ has been a detriment to efforts to combat global warming.” 

Journalists, Global Warming, and the Truth   by Alan Caruba   October 5, 2007   Outing assumes

1. that “global warming” as meaning a dramatic rise in Earth’s overall temperatures is actually occurring,
2. humans are to blame
3. journalists have an obligation to influence readers to do something about it.  Indeed, he says, “How about if newspapers abandon their old way of doing things when it comes to the issue of global warming, and turn their influence to good? Editors, he wrote, “are shirking their responsibility to improve our world, in my view, so let’s change that.” This is the first demand of all totalitarian governments.  

Media Darling James Hansen Hypes Alarmism

1. As all of this new data debunking climate alarmism mounts, the mainstream media chooses to ignore it and instead focus on the dire predictions of the number-one global warming media darling, NASA’s James Hansen. The increasingly alarmist Hansen is featured frequently in the media to bolster sky-is-falling climate scare reports. His recent claim that the Earth is nearing its hottest point in one million years has been challenged by many scientists.   Link
2. Hansen’s increasingly frightening climate predictions follow his 2003 concession that the use of “extreme scenarios” was an appropriate tactic to drive the public’s attention to the urgency of global warming.   Link  
3. Hansen also received a $250,000 grant form Teresa Heinz’s Foundation and then subsequently endorsed her husband John Kerry for President and worked closely with Al Gore to promote his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.”  Link1    Link2 
4. None of the CO2 has been as potent as the greenhouse computer models claimed it would be. Climate modeler James Hansen of NASA told Congress in 1988 that by the year 2000 the Earth would have warmed another 0.3 degrees C and sea levels would have risen several feet. Reality has been much more moderate. The temperatures in 2000 were only 0.1 degree warmer, and the sea levels had risen just one inch!   Link

Neil Boortz Nuze February 02, 2007  Why did a reporter from National Public Radio refuse to interview David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma studying global warming, after his testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unless Deming would state that global warming was being caused by man? 

CNN Predicts Possible 'Century of Fires' Due to Global Warming   by Paul Detrick  Business & Media Institute 10/24/2007   Anderson Cooper and Tom Foreman warn that global warming may be to blame for Southern California fires. CNN exploited a national tragedy on October 23 by finding a way to blame global warming for wildfires in California.  During the October 23 “Anderson Cooper 360: In the Line of Fire,” Cooper reported from Southern California saying, “People are wondering if these fires are a result of global warming in some way.”  "Climatologists say, while we can't blame on fire on climate change, we can say that these factors are combining in that area [Southern California] to set up what could be a century of fires just like what we're seeing now," said Foreman.  Foreman cautioned viewers that, “greater periods of rain” that fuel “increased vegetation growth” over the next century may provide a “potential link between these fires and global warming.”

Destroying America To Save The World  at Business Media Org  November 9, 2004 

1. NBC, CBS and CNN Ignore Specific Cost of Kyoto: The cost to American taxpayers of adopting the Kyoto provisions have been estimated as high as $440 billion annually. ABC and the Fox News Channel were the only two networks that told viewers about the potentially crippling price tag.

2. Bipartisan Opposition to Treaty Unreported: Only one of 165 news stories mentioned that the Senate had voted unanimously 95-0 against Kyoto. Forty-nine stories on all five news programs cited President Bush’s blocking or pulling out of Kyoto without mentioning the unanimous vote.

ABC website tells kids when they should die  by Karlis Salna   May 26, 2008   AN ABC website has been accused of portraying farmers and forestry workers as evil and telling kids how much carbon they can produce before they die.    The Planet Slayer website, which can be accessed via the science section on the ABC home page, also demonises people who eat meat and those involved in the nuclear industry, a Senate estimates committee heard.  

Taking Us Back To Mud Huts And Loincloths   by Investor's Business Daily   July 07, 2008   Time's Joe Klein probably thought he was being clever when he wrote his late June essay on the evils of cooling headlined "Kill Your Air Conditioner." Instead, he wrote yet another chapter in the left's book of environmental silliness.  "The unnecessary refrigeration of America has become a chronic disease," said Klein. "Air conditioning is bad for the planet, and for national security, and for our balance-of-payments deficit."  

ABC: Global Warming to Force Humans to Flee Destroyed Earth?   by Scott Whitlock | February 8, 2008  "Good Morning America" weatherman and resident environmental alarmist Sam Champion wondered on Friday if global warming could cause "the ultimate climate disaster" and force humanity to abandon Earth and live in space. (Throughout the day's themed program, various GMA hosts filed reports on space and astronauts.) 

Outrageous Actions

Failing to frighten adult masses to submission, global warming alarmists become bogeymen of children  by Judi McLeod  June 18, 2008

1. In Canada, you have Global Warming warrior numero uno, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) poster boy David Suzuki encouraging children to rat out their own parents in a treehouse setting televised advertisement (The David Suzuki Foundation YouTube)
2. In Australia, the state-run Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) targets 9-year-old children in Planet Slayer, which includes “Prof. Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator.  Find out when you should die”.  Planet Slayer’s when you should die option comes for kiddies whose don’t use only their “fair” share of the Earth.  (Parents can view Planet Slayer here).
    

Recommended Coverage

Destroying America To Save The World  by Dan Gainor   Here are a few recommendations for better and less-biased coverage in the future:

1. Give some Balance: Cover major issues in depth from both sides. Those reports should include experts from all aspects of an issue and lay out the potential benefits and detriments of each perspective. They should make a point of appropriately labeling each expert as well. Had that been done in this case, every network would have touched on salient points at least once during the three-and-a-half years of this study.

2. Follow the Money: The American public needs essential financial information so it can make decisions. The lack of this information leads to choices based on emotion, not fact. No nation has unlimited funds, so tough choices have to be made. Those choices require facts. The networks need to press Kyoto treaty advocates for hard numbers.

3. Be Skeptical of Environmentalists: The news media have no trouble being skeptical of big business, but they seldom apply the same principles to the environmental movement. And, rarely, do journalists investigate these so-called experts’ agenda. They should. News reporters should ask them the same questions about built-in biases, funding and conflicts of interest.

4. Track Balance Long Term: It is impossible to ensure that every story is perfectly balanced. News events drive agendas back and forth across the political spectrum. It is essential that the media find ways of tracking their performance on major issues as a check against an ongoing bias on different topics.