2014/04/07/Assessing the Accuracy of Cable News Coverage of Climate Science
- when: 2014/04/07 (2014/04/07)
- source: Union of Concerned Scientists
- topics: global warming Fox News MSNBC CNN
- link: http://www.ucsusa.org/global warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/cable-news-coverage-climate-change-science.html
- title: Science or Spin?: Assessing the Accuracy of Cable News Coverage of Climate Science
- summary: «Accuracy varies significantly across major cable news outlets. All of them can take steps to improve their coverage of climate science.» Fox News was worst (misleading 70% of the time), and MSNBC was best (completely accurate 92% of the time); when inaccurate, Fox tended to disparage global warming while MSNBC tended to overstate the case for it. CNN's misrepresentations were mainly along the lines of representing the issue as still being under serious debate.
Excerpt
CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC are the most widely watched cable news networks in the U.S. Their coverage of climate change is an influential source of information for the public and policy makers alike.
To gauge how accurately these networks inform their audiences about climate change, UCS analyzed the networks' climate science coverage in 2013 and found that each network treated climate science very differently.
Fox News was the least accurate; 72 percent of its 2013 climate science-related segments contained misleading statements. CNN was in the middle, with about a third of segments featuring misleading statements. MSNBC was the most accurate, with only eight percent of segments containing misleading statements.
Reports on this study: Mother Jones