{"id":298485,"date":"2017-03-10T21:51:03","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T20:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/with-white-house-embracing-climate-denial-will-corporate-media-treat-it-as-science\/"},"modified":"2017-03-10T21:51:03","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T20:51:03","slug":"with-white-house-embracing-climate-denial-will-corporate-media-treat-it-as-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/with-white-house-embracing-climate-denial-will-corporate-media-treat-it-as-science\/","title":{"rendered":"With White House Embracing Climate Denial, Will Corporate Media Treat It as Science?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"CNBC:<\/a><\/p>\n

CNBC<\/strong>‘s Joe Kernan interviewing climate denialist EPA chief Scott Pruitt.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If the public rollout of the Trump administration\u2019s new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, is any indication, the Earth\u2019s climate will suffer even greater, irreversible damage during the next four years. And the corporate media\u2019s coverage of it may only make it worse.<\/p>\n

For example, in one of his first public appearances, on CNBC<\/b>\u2019s morning show (Squawk Box<\/b>, 3\/9\/17<\/a>), Pruitt set an ominous precedent for the Trump administration\u2019s climate change policy by outright lying. In response to host Joe Kernan\u2019s question about the role of human-generated carbon dioxide in warming the planet, Pruitt responded:<\/p>\n

\n

I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Pruitt added: \u201cWe need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”<\/p>\n

Pruitt\u2019s comments are, by now, recognized as among the standard rhetorical tools of climate deniers (Guardian, <\/b>9\/15\/13<\/a>). He boldly mischaracterizes as \u201ctremendous disagreement\u201d what is, in fact, an overwhelming scientific consensus<\/a> about the link between humanity\u2019s greenhouse gases and global warming. Then he disingenuously calls for more \u201cdebate\u201d and \u201canalysis\u201d of the topic, while at the same time the Trump administration is proposing massive budget cuts<\/a> of the federal agencies that would conduct this research and analysis.<\/p>\n

That this White House would embrace climate change denial, of course, comes as no surprise. The current president has a well-documented history of promoting right-wing conspiracy theories about climate change, calling it on numerous occasions an \u201cexpensive hoax\u201d<\/a> that was \u201ccreated by the Chinese.\u201d<\/a> During the 2016 campaign, Trump told a right-wing radio host, \u201cI\u2019m not a big believer in man-made climate change,\u201d<\/a> promising to abandon the landmark Paris Agreement on climate action President Obama signed in 2016. During the first presidential debate<\/a>, Trump did deny having ever called climate change a hoax, but the public record obviously proves otherwise.<\/p>\n

Pruitt, a dogged opponent of the EPA while Oklahoma attorney general, is cut from the same climate denial cloth, minus the outrageous tweets. A trove of 6,000 emails released via court order by an Oklahoma judge last month (New York Times, <\/b>2\/22\/17<\/a>) revealed that Pruitt had colluded for years with oil and gas companies, as well as the Koch brothers\u2019 political arm, to lobby against EPA greenhouse gas regulations. He even \u00a0secretly used drafts of oil company talking points in his correspondence to the federal government.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the selection in December of a hard-right climate denier like Pruitt to run the agency upset a phony media narrative<\/a> that had begun just a few weeks after the election. Thanks to a few casual comments<\/a> by Trump to the Times<\/b> editorial staff in November, much of the pundit class had convinced itself that the new president was pivoting to a more moderate position. The prospect of four more years of this same media credulity and deference to power does not bode well for future climate change coverage.<\/p>\n

CNBC<\/b>\u2019s Kernan, in his interview with Pruitt, provided a sneak preview of what this next four years of media obsequiousness may look like. Not satisfied with merely letting Pruitt lie unchallenged, Kernan felt compelled to back him up. \u201cThat\u2019s the whole point of science, is to keep asking questions,\u201d Kernan disingenuously added in his wrap-up. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be called a denier, it scares me. It\u2019s a terrible thing. Administrator Pruitt, I know you don\u2019t want to be called it either.\u201d Before throwing the segment back to a studio host, Kernan didn\u2019t give time for Pruitt to agree. Then again, why even bother?<\/p>\n

To be fair, CNBC<\/b> is not a cable TV network known for its trenchant climate change reporting. And one can safely assume that Pruitt\u2019s climate change denials on Fox News<\/b> will be met with a \u201cfair and balanced\u201d tongue bath likely to put Kernan\u2019s to shame. But subtle changes in so-called straight reporting and coverage matter too. That\u2019s why the online story (3\/9\/17<\/a>) accompanying Kernan\u2019s interview is a better, more ominous barometer of how the corporate media might respond to the Trump administration\u2019s climate policy.<\/p>\n

Overall, the CNBC<\/b> article, by energy reporter Tom DiChristopher, sanded off almost all of Kernan\u2019s overt sycophancy. However, the story still trafficked in classic false equivalence<\/a>. When comparing Pruitt\u2019s evidence-free claims to the vast amount of climate data and overwhelming scientific consensus supporting anthropogenic climate change, CNBC<\/b> notably chose to characterize the latter as merely \u201cthe opinion\u201d of NASA and NOAA: \u201cPruitt’s view is also at odds with the opinion<\/a> of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recent history offers numerous examples of the corporate media succumbing to the temptation of parroting White House talking points, no matter how disconnected from reality. Recall that, for years, major news organizations, including the New York Times<\/b>, felt compelled to echo the Bush administration\u2019s \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d euphemisms<\/a> for what had previously been recognized as acts of torture (Extra!<\/b>, 5\u20136\/08<\/a>). Now that climate denialism has become de facto US policy, it will become almost impossible for journalists to both maintain traditional \u201cobjectivity<\/a>\u201d while also reporting scientific reality to the public. They have a clear choice to make.<\/p>\n

As the long indictment of flawed climate change coverage by Robert Eshelman (CJR<\/b>, 5\/1\/14<\/a>) can attest, corporate media have not always chosen wisely. Time and again, it has demonstrated that it can be successfully gamed by denialists operating little more than a propaganda campaign. Asks Eshelman in his insightful essay:<\/p>\n

\n

Journalists\u2026wouldn\u2019t have provided “balance” to a debate on gravity, giving equal time to someone asserting that it doesn\u2019t exist; why would they for climate change?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But now that climate change lies have the imprimatur of the president of the United States, we may find that scientific facts and the fundamental laws of physics are subject to even more media distortion.<\/p>\n

\n

Reed Richardson is a media critic and writer whose work has appeared in <\/i>The Nation<\/i><\/b>, <\/i>AlterNet<\/i><\/b>, Harvard University\u2019s <\/i>Nieman Reports<\/i><\/b> and the textbook <\/i>Media Ethics (Current Controversies). You can follow him on <\/i>Twitter<\/i><\/b> at: <\/i>@reedfrich<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

You can send a message to CNBC<\/strong> here<\/a> (or via Twitter<\/strong>: @CNBC<\/a>). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission from FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNBC‘s Joe Kernan interviewing climate denialist EPA chief Scott Pruitt. If the public rollout of the Trump administration\u2019s new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, is any indication, the Earth\u2019s climate will suffer even greater, irreversible damage during the next four years. And the corporate media\u2019s coverage of it may only make it worse. For example, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2521,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-298485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}