As catastrophic wildfires rage across southern California, the corporate liberal media are engaged in all of their nastiest habits at once in their coverage of the disaster. From fevered shrieking about climate change, to blind defense of inept Democratic officials, to obligatory fits of Trump-bashing, their reporting on of the California wildfires perfectly highlights everything that makes our leftist media so terrible.
As we’ve seen with how they cover hurricanes, they regard every environmental disaster imaginable as an opportunity to pontificate about climate change. During the January 8 edition of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, host Stephanie Ruhle announced: “Wildfires raging in L.A. are highlighting the risk of climate change — yes, climate change!”
That same evening, CBS anchor Lindsey Reiser claimed on the network’s streaming service: “The wildfires in California are the latest in a string of natural disaster made worse by climate change.”
This refrain persisted through to the weekend until, on Monday, January 13, CNN number cruncher Harry Enten delivered some devastating news to CNN News Central co-host John Berman: “Despite all these extreme weather events, Americans are really no more worried about climate change than they were nearly 35 years ago. I mean, there’s just no real trend line here, Mr. Berman.”
In other words, despite practically 35 years of journalists shrieking about climate change, Americans are no more concerned about it now than they were in the 1980s.
Journalists also made sure to shield California officials from any and all scrutiny, particularly when that scrutiny came from President-elect Trump. On January 8, notorious climate alarmist Michael Mann called Trump’s criticism of President Biden and California Governor Gavin Newsom “classic deflection,” adding, “[it’s] because he doesn’t want to talk about climate change.” Meanwhile, the network displayed a chyron which read: “TRUMP FALSELY BLAMES BIDEN, NEWSOM FOR WILDFIRES.”
On January 13, PBS NewsHour co-host Geoff Bennett scoffed: “As we continue covering these destructive wildfires out west, the State’s Governor, L.A.’s Mayor, they are really fending off attacks from Donald Trump and his allies.”
Of course, it takes a whole mess of factors for a wildfire to grow to such a massive scale. But there is absolutely no disputing the role that mismanagement and ineptitude played in allowing this disaster to occur. The gross incompetence of California and Los Angeles officials has been detailed thoroughly by numerous other outlets, so here are just two examples:
- In 2022, Newsom announced a plan to clear 400,000 acres annually with controlled or “prescribed” burning (which is among the most important wildfire prevention practices). But according to National Interagency Fire Center data through October of 2024, California burned only 28,000 acres in 2024. Not only is that a pathetic seven percent of what Newsom pledged, it’s also several orders of magnitude less than the acreage burned in significantly smaller states like Alabama (602,000 acres burned), Arkansas (285,000 acres), and Georgia (1,396,000 acres).
- In addition to cutting the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) budget by $17.6 million, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appointed a Fire Chief who is significantly more interested in DEI than she is in anything to do with fire prevention or suppression. The Federalist’s Beth Brelje recently went through the LAFD’s strategic plan, where she found some woefully misplaced priorities: “[T]ogether, the words ‘diverse’ and ‘diversity’ appear 16 times; the word ‘water’ appears just twice, and the word ‘hydrant’ does not appear at all.”
There’s plenty more blame to go around, but the point is that not only did these talking heads avoid discussing any of these egregious missteps by California officials, they outright denied the notion that these officials might have mishandled anything to begin with.
