MRC's Brent Bozell on 'Fox & Friends' to Discuss Networks' Meager Reporting on Climate Scandals

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Brent Bozell joined "Fox & Friends" on the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day to discuss a new Business & Media Institute Special Report about the broadcast networks' distorted coverage of ClimateGate and other climate scandals.

Bozell highlighted the way the networks have barely reported ClimateGate and the other climate science scandals that have eroded the credibility of the global warming alarmism movement. Such stories were ignored because they didn't fit the "narrative" of the network news.

"What's been going on in the press; however, for a number of years is this systematic push to say that we can only have one point of view on this which is that it's settled science and it's over," Bozell told Fox News Channel.

Then ClimateGate and subsequent scandals happened. Bozell called it the "East Anglia eruption," referring to the e-mails and files showing "campaigns to manipulate the data in their favor," to destroy evidence, and to bully journalists to "not listen to critics of this."

But the networks downplayed those scandals and attempted to discredit critics of global warming alarmists as Bozell explained after "Fox & Friends" showed a clip from ABC News (video):

"Note the words Gretchen, ‘naysayers.' They might as well be calling them Flat Earth Society. ‘Stolen data.' Look at the pejorative. No evidence of this, of this -- they simply dismiss it at the end by saying it's settled science. And oh by the way, it took ABC 16 days before they did their first story on this."

BMI found that between Nov. 20, 2009, (the day the ClimateGate e-mails were leaked) and April 1, 2010, less than 10 percent of global warming stories mentioning any of the numerous scandals involving climate science. 

ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening newscasts also aired more than 6 times as many alarmist stories during the same time period.

It took the networks 14 days to even mention the ClimateGate e-mail controversy. When they couldn't get away with ignoring it any longer they downplayed its threat to the credibility of the global warming movement. CBS's Wyatt Andrews defended alarmists against accusations of "fraud" and "deception" saying "if that's true, it's a fraud adopted by most of the world's leading scientists ..."