ABC News and Climate Emergency: A Public Forum
The climate emergency is here. Has ABC News been reporting like it?
For years, the country’s most-watched TV news outlet stayed mostly silent on climate change. And when it did break its silence, it ran lackluster, incomplete coverage.
However, ABC News recently created a dedicated climate unit and committed to tell a variety of climate stories this November as COP26 got underway. Has it been enough to undo the ignorance and confusion caused by its past silence? Is ABC News now treating the climate crisis like the biggest national and global emergency of our times?
Join our virtual public forum for a discussion on ABC News’ climate coverage. We will dive into what is needed from media organizations at the 11th hour of this climate emergency, and how we can push organizations to report on climate with more accountability, with our featured panelists:
- David Fenton, founder of Fenton: The Social Change Agency (one of the country’s leading progressive communications firms)
- Hanna E. Morris, PhD, researcher of media, culture, and the climate crisis and current postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
- Ben Franta, PhD, JD, researcher of climate accountability and current PhD student at Stanford
- Amy Westervelt, founder and executive producer of the Critical Frequency podcast network and the Drilled podcast, and co-host/co-author of the Hot Take podcast and newsletter
We have also invited executives and producers from ABC News and Disney (ABC News’ parent company) to our speaker line-up. We hope that they can join us and present their perspectives and plans on climate coverage.
Inhofe Calls for Criminal Investigation into Why EPA 'Suppressed' a Global Warming Denier
From the Wonk Room.
Fox News Channel’s Gregg Jarrett introduced a “very big story” that the Environmental Protection Agency “intentionally buried a study challenging some of Uncle Sam’s global warming research.” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) claimed the report, written by economist Alan Carlin of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, vindicates his belief that man-made global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”:The thing is phony. I feel so good about being redeemed after all of these years, because they have been throwing this thing in my face since 1998 when we realized that all of those scientists that Al Gore had lined up – and I’m talking about Claude Allegre in France, David Bellamy in UK, and Nir Shaviv in Israel – all of them used to be on his side. They all said, “Wait a minute, this science is not right.” That’s exactly what Allen Carlin said. We’ve already started a investigation.Watch it:
When asked if there should be a criminal investigation, Inhofe replied, “There could be and there probably should be.” Continuing his attack, he claimed that the EPA “have been suppressing science and coming out with what they want people to say. You might remember – I talked to you about it on this station. When I first realized that this thing was a hoax and I made the statement that the notion that man-made gases, anthropogenic gases, CO2 cause global warming, it is probably the greatest hoax ever perpetrated.”
What Fox News, Inhofe, and right-wing bloggers are promoting as a suppressed EPA report is nothing of the kind. Carlin’s paper, released by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (“CO2: they call it pollution, we call it Life“), is a hodgepodge of widely discredited pseudoscience. Carlin was given permission by the NCEE to cobble the paper together even though he is not a climate researcher, and “the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists.”
The Carlin document cites the usual array of global warming deniers, including Joe D’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, William Gray, Christopher Monckton, Fred Singer, and Roy Spencer – all of whom worked with Sen. Inhofe’s former aide Marc Morano to disseminate denials of climate science. Carlin’s references come from denier blogs such as ICECAP.us and Watts Up With That, and plagiarizes publications from the Heartland Institute, the Science & Environmental Policy Project, and the Friends of Science Society, all conservative front groups. RealClimate’s Gavin Schmidt summarizes the paper as “a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at.”
Similarly, although the 76-year-old botanist David Bellamy, 72-year-old geochemist Claude Allegre, and 32-year-old astrophysicist Nir Shaviv publicly question man-made global warming, they represent a steadily dwindling number of scientists, few of any of which actively study climate change, that argue fossil fuel emissions are not warming the planet.
Inhofe Environmental Communications Director Marc Morano to Leave Senate Post
From the Wonk Room.
Marc Morano
Marc Morano, the spokesman for Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.), will leave the committee later this month to become executive director and chief correspondent for a fledgling Web site that will serve as a “clearinghouse and one-stop shopping” for climate and environmental news.
Morano joined the Senate, with a $134,000 a year salary, from the rightwing website Cybercast News Service (CNS), where he launched the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in 2004 and attacked the war record of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) in 2006. Morano was Rush Limbaugh’s “Man in Washington” in the 1990s.
Both CNS – a subsidiary of Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center – and CFACT are part of the Scaife network of conservative front groups, supported by the Richard Mellon Scaife family fortune and corporations like Exxon Mobil. CFACT and the Media Research Center are co-sponsors of the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, a global warming denier conference that begins Sunday, March 8.
“Vulnerability Exposed” Micro-Documentary Film Contest
In August 2008, the Social Development Department of the World Bank launched a world-wide micro-documentary film contest on the social aspects of climate change. The goal of this initiative was to inspire people around the world to communicate how climate change was affecting their lives and livelihoods.
The Special Film Screening and Award Ceremony will provide an exciting opportunity for the winning filmmakers to showcase their films to the wider public.
Opening Remarks:- Katherine Sierra, Vice President, Sustainable Development, World Bank
- His Excellency Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Republic of Maldives
Cocktail Reception will immediately follow the Award Ceremony.
If you wish to attend the Film Screening and Award Ceremony, You MUST RSVP by sending an email to Megumi Makisaka ([email protected]) by Noon on Thursday, January 15, 2009. Please be advised, you must present a valid ID when entering the building.
If you will be attending the film screening and award ceremony, you may enter through the main entrance where H St. and Pennsylvania Ave. meet, between 18th and 19th Streets NW.
Location:
World Bank Headquarters, MC2-800
1818 H Street NW
Communicating the Social Dimensions of Climate Change
This afternoon seminar tied to the Social Dimensions of Climate Change Film Contest will examine, through lively discussion, various opportunities for and challenges of effectively communicating climate change from the perspectives of a varied panel of film-makers, journalists, academics and World Bank Group staff. Box lunches will be provided on a first-come, first-serve basis.
If you wish to attend the Seminar, You MUST RSVP by sending an email to Megumi Makisaka ([email protected]) by Noon on Thursday, January 15, 2009. Please be advised, you must present a valid ID when entering the building.
If attending the seminar please use the Visitor’s Entrance at 18th Street NW, between Pennsylvania Ave. and G St. NW.
Location:
World Bank Headquarters, MC2-800
1818 H Street NW