Media Matters - Kevin Kalhoefer
In 2016, evening newscasts and Sunday shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as Fox Broadcast Co.'s Fox News Sunday, collectively decreased their total coverage of climate change by 66 percent compared to 2015, even though there were a host of important climate-related stories, including the announcement of 2015 as the hottest year on record, the signing of the Paris climate agreement, and numerous climate-related extreme weather events.
There were also two presidential candidates to cover, and they held diametrically opposed positions on the Clean Power Plan, the Paris climate agreement, and even on whether climate change is a real, human-caused phenomenon.
Apart from PBS, the networks also failed to devote significant coverage to climate-related policies, but they still found the time to uncritically air climate denial -- the majority of which came from now-President Donald Trump and his team.
Total Climate Coverage On Broadcast Networks Cratered In 2016
Combined Climate Coverage On ABC, CBS, NBC, And Fox News Sunday Decreased Significantly From 2015 To 2016, Despite Ample Opportunity To Cover Climate Change.
In 2016, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday* aired a combined 50 minutes of climate coverage on their evening and Sunday news programs, which was 96 minutes less than in 2015 -- a drop of about 66 percent. (*Fox Broadcast Co. does not air a nightly news program.)
As was the case in 2015, ABC aired the least amount of climate coverage in 2016, covering the topic for just six minutes, about seven minutes less than in 2015.
All the other major networks also significantly reduced their coverage from the previous year, with NBC showing the biggest decrease (from 50 minutes in 2015 to 10 minutes in 2016), followed by Fox (39 minutes in 2015 to seven minutes in 2016) and CBS (from 45 minutes in 2015 to 27 minutes in 2016).
Networks Had Ample Opportunity To Cover Climate Change In 2016
Despite the pronounced decline in climate coverage, the networks had ample opportunity to cover climate change in 2016.
As The New York Times reported, in 2016, climate change took on “a prominence it has never before had in a presidential general election” given the stark contrast between the candidates’ views.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had a long track record of climate denial and differed with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on a range of important climate issues, including the Paris climate agreement, the Clean Power Plan, and the continued use of coal as an energy source, with Trump pledging that he would put coal miners “back to work” and Clinton proposing a plan that would help coal communities transition to clean energy.
Additionally, there were also a host of non-election climate stories worthy of coverage in 2016, including extreme weather events tied to climate change, like Hurricane Matthew and the record-breaking rainfall and flooding in Louisiana (which the American Red Cross described as “the worst natural disaster to strike the United States since Superstorm Sandy”); the signing of the Paris climate agreement and the U.N.
climate summit in Morocco; the official announcement from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that 2015 was the hottest year on record by far; and investigations by state attorneys general into whether ExxonMobil committed fraud by misleading the public on climate change.
[
The New York Times,
8/1/16;
Media Matters,
5/26/16; The Huffington Post,
9/8/16; DonaldJTrump.com,
9/15/16;
Media Matters,
3/15/16,
10/7/16,
8/17/16; The Huffington Post,
4/22/16;
The Guardian,
4/22/16; InsideClimate News,
11/3/16;
The New York Times,
1/20/16; InsideClimate News,
12/28/16]
ABC, CBS, NBC, And Fox Failed To Discuss Climate-Related Ramifications Of A Clinton Or Trump Presidency Until After The Election
ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News Sunday did not air a single segment informing viewers of what to expect on climate change and climate-related policies or issues under a Trump or Clinton administration.
While these outlets did devote a significant amount of coverage to Trump’s presidency, airing 25 segments informing viewers about the ramifications or actions of a Trump administration as they relate to climate change, all of these segments aired after the election.
Examples of post-election coverage include a PBS NewsHour segment about Trump’s selection of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Pruitt’s history of climate denial and ties to the fossil fuel industry; a CBS Evening News segment about Trump appointing climate denier Myron Ebell to his EPA transition team; and an NBC Nightly News report on Trump’s promise to roll back President Barack Obama’s executive actions on climate change.
[
PBS NewsHour,
12/7/16;
CBS Evening News, 11/15/16;
NBC Nightly News, 11/9/16**]
**We included citations of specific shows when we described the
content of a segment. We did not include show citations for general
tallies. We linked to episodes that were available online but listed
only the date for those that were not.
PBS NewsHour Was The Only Show To Discuss Climate Ramifications Of A Clinton Or Trump Presidency Prior To The Election
PBS NewsHour***
was the only show in our study that examined what impact a Trump or a
Clinton presidency would have on climate-related issues and policies
before the election. On the September 7 edition of
PBS NewsHour,
correspondent William Brangham discussed “what a Clinton or Trump
administration might mean with regards to climate change” with
The New York Times’ Coral Davenport and
The Washington Post’s
Chris Mooney. And a September 22 segment explored “what the early days
of a Trump presidency might look like” and featured Judy Woodruff
interviewing Evan Osnos of
The New Yorker about whether Trump would renounce the Paris climate agreement. [
PBS NewsHour,
9/22/16,
9/7/16]
***Unlike the nightly news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC that air for a half hour seven days a week,
PBS NewsHour airs five days a week and is a half hour longer.
Tyndall Report Found No Discussion Of Climate Change In Issues Coverage During Campaign
The Tyndall Report, which tracks the broadcast networks'
weeknight newscasts, analyzed election-related issues coverage on the
major networks’ weeknight newscasts and found no issues coverage devoted
to climate change in 2016 up through October 25. The Tyndall Report
defines election-related issues coverage as that which “takes a public
policy, outlines the societal problem that needs to be addressed,
describes the candidates' platform positions and proposed solutions, and
evaluates their efficacy.” [The Intercept,
2/24/17;
Media Matters,
10/26/16; Tyndall Report,
10/25/16]
Networks Aired A Disproportionate Amount Of Climate Coverage After Election Day
In the roughly 45 weeks before the November 8 election, the networks
aired a total of 55 segments about climate change -- roughly one per
week. After the election, the networks aired 32 climate-related segments
over approximately seven weeks till the end of the year -- about five
stories per week.
Networks Ignored Links Between Climate Change And National Security
And Rarely Addressed Economic And Public Health Impacts, But Some
Detailed Impacts On Extreme Weather And Plants And Wildlife
Networks Did Not Air A Single Segment On Link To National Security
Numerous
military and intelligence organizations have sounded the alarm on
climate change’s connection to national security. A September 2016
report prepared by the National Intelligence Council and coordinated
with the U.S. intelligence community stated, “Climate change and its
resulting effects are likely to pose wide-ranging national security
challenges for the United States and other countries over the next 20
years.” And following Trump’s election victory, “a bipartisan group of
defense experts and former military leaders sent Trump’s transition team
a briefing book urging the president-elect to consider climate change
as a grave threat to national security,” E&E News reported. Yet the
national security implications of climate change never came up in any of
the networks’ climate coverage for 2016. [
Media Matters,
1/13/17;
Scientific American,
11/15/16]
PBS Was The Only Network To Address Economic Impacts Of Climate Change
PBS
was the only network to report on the economic impacts of climate
change. Two segments about Washington state’s carbon tax ballot
initiative that aired on the April 21 and October 20 editions of
PBS NewsHour
featured the president of the Washington State Labor Council explaining
that Washington’s shellfish industry “has left the state and gone to
Hawaii because the acid levels in the ocean has risen so much.” And on
the November 17 edition of
PBS NewsHour, correspondent William
Brangham reported that 365 American companies “have written to the
president-elect imploring him to uphold the Paris accords and warning --
quote -- ‘Failure to build a low-carbon economy puts American
prosperity at risk.’” [
PBS NewsHour,
4/21/16,
10/20/16,
11/17/16]
Networks Rarely Addressed How Climate Change Impacts Public Health
The
World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and the National Climate Assessment have all concluded that
climate change has a significant influence on human health and disease.
And as 2016 saw the first local spread of the Zika virus in the
continental United States, Climate Signals found that “climate change
creates new risks for human exposure to vector-borne diseases such as
Zika, particularly in the United States where rising heat and humidity
are increasing the number of days annually in which disease vectors
thrive.” However, only two segments on
NBC Nightly News dealt
with the link between climate change and public health -- no other
network covered the issue. In a January 18 report about the spread of
Zika, correspondent Tom Costello noted, “Researchers are also studying
whether climate change and El Nino are causing certain mosquitoes
populations to grow.” And a July 4 report about a massive algae bloom
creating a toxic emergency in Florida featured correspondent Gabe
Gutierrez explaining, “The debate is raging over what`s to blame for
this latest growth, but scientists say there are many factors including
population growth and climate change.” [World Health Organization,
accessed 3/21/17; CDC.gov, accessed
3/21/17; National Climate Assessment, accessed
3/21/17; Climate Signals,
8/23/16;
NBC Nightly News, 1/18/16, 7/4/16]
CBS And ABC Rarely Covered Climate Link To Extreme Weather, While NBC And Fox Ignored It Completely
2016 saw no shortages of extreme weather events influenced by climate
change, with Hurricane Matthew making landfall on the East Coast;
wildfires -- which have become a consistent threat thanks, in part, to
climate change -- charring more than 100,000 acres in seven states in
the Southeast; and record rainfall and flooding in Louisiana causing
what the American Red Cross called “the worst natural disaster to strike
the United States since Superstorm Sandy.” Yet NBC and Fox never
addressed the link between climate change and extreme weather, while CBS
did so in four segments and ABC did so in just one segment. By
contrast,
PBS NewsHour aired eight segments dealing with the link between climate change and extreme weather. [The Weather Channel,
10/9/16;
Media Matters,
10/6/16;
The New York Times,
11/29/16; Climate Central,
11/23/16;
Media Matters,
8/17/16]
PBS Led The Networks In Stories Detailing Climate Impacts On Plants And Wildlife
PBS
provided the most coverage of climate impacts on plants and wildlife
(six segments), followed by CBS and NBC (three segments each), and ABC
(one segment). Examples of this reporting included a “Climate Diaries”
segment on
CBS Evening News about how climate change is “taking
a toll on endangered mountain gorillas” in Central Africa by making
their food supply less predictable and forcing human populations
searching for water into their territory and an
NBC Nightly News
segment about how Yellowstone grizzlies are threatened because one of
their food sources -- seeds from whitebark pine trees -- has been
decimated by climate change. Another example was a
PBS NewsHour
segment reporting that “two-fifths of bees, butterflies, and related
pollinating species are heading toward extinction” thanks to “a range of
factors, ranging from pesticide use to climate change to habitat loss.”
[
CBS Evening News, 11/17/16;
NBC Nightly News, 5/22/16;
PBS NewsHour,
2/26/16]
Specific Climate-Related Policies Received Sparse Coverage Outside Of PBS
The Clean Power Plan Was Almost Completely Ignored On Sunday Shows And Received Sparse Coverage On Nightly News Shows
The
broadcast networks provided scant coverage of the Clean Power Plan even
though Trump had promised during the campaign to eliminate the policy.
The Clean Power Plan establishes the first-ever federal limits on carbon
pollution from power plants and serves as the linchpin of President
Obama’s program to meet the nation’s emissions reduction obligation
under the Paris agreement.
Fox News Sunday was the only Sunday show to feature a climate-related segment on the Clean Power Plan, in which
Washington Post
editorial writer Charles Lane claimed that the Democrats’ focus on the
plan is an example of how “environmentalism in a crucial way worked
against the Democratic Party this year,” because Trump carried
coal-dependent states in the election. But contrary to Lane’s claim,
numerous polls conducted in the run-up to the election indicated that a
majority of Americans consider climate change an important issue and
favor government action to address it. On nightly news shows, ABC was
the only network that did not air a climate-related segment on the plan,
while
PBS NewsHour covered the Clean Power Plan the most (seven segments), followed by
CBS Evening News (three segments) and
NBC Nightly News (two segments). [DonaldJTrump.com,
9/15/16; The White House,
8/3/15;
The New York Times,
3/2/16;
Fox News Sunday, 11/13/16;
Media Matters,
11/29/16]
PBS Far Outpaced Networks In Coverage Of U.N. Climate Agreement And Summits
In 2016, world leaders met on Earth Day for the signing ceremony of the
Paris climate agreement reached by 195 nations and later again in
Morocco for talks about implementing the climate accord. In Trump’s
first major speech on energy policy, in May, he vowed that he would
“cancel” the Paris climate agreement. But after the election he told
The New York Times,
“I have an open mind to it.” Despite these developments, PBS was the
only network to devote significant coverage to the U.N. climate
agreement and U.N. climate-related summits, doing so in 21 segments,
while CBS aired five segments, NBC and ABC aired just three, and Fox
aired just two. [USA Today,
4/22/16;
The New York Times,
12/12/15; InsideClimate News,
11/3/16; BBC.com,
5/27/16; DonaldJTrump.com,
5/26/16;
The New York Times,
11/23/16]
CBS, NBC, And Fox Addressed The Climate Impacts Of The Keystone XL Pipeline Only Once, While ABC And PBS Failed To Do So At All
During the campaign, Clinton and Trump staked out opposing positions on
whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport tar
sands oil that is 17 percent dirtier than average and would “increase
emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming”
from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Yet there was a dearth of coverage
on Keystone XL’s link to climate change, with CBS, NBC, and Fox each
airing just one segment that connected Keystone XL to climate change and
ABC and PBS ignoring the topic completely. The networks also ignored
Keystone XL more broadly -- airing just four additional
non-climate-related segments on the pipeline. [Business Insider,
9/25/16;
Media Matters,
1/15/15]
Fox Was The Only Network To Cover The Dakota Access Pipeline In A Climate Context
The
Standing Rock Sioux and other Native American tribes, as well as
environmental activists, protested against the construction of the
Dakota Access pipeline in 2016, citing, among other concerns, the impact
a continued buildup of oil infrastructure would have on climate change.
Yet Fox was the sole network to cover the Dakota Access pipeline in a
climate context. On the December 11 edition of
Fox News Sunday,
host Chris Wallace previewed his upcoming interview with Trump by
saying that he would “ask [Trump] to clear up exactly where he stands on
climate change.” After returning from a commercial break, Wallace said
to the Trump, “Let me ask you a couple specific questions. Will you
still pull out of the Paris climate agreement, which has been signed by
more than 100 countries to reduce carbon emissions? Will you restart the
Dakota Access pipeline, which the Army just stopped?” To which Trump
replied that he was “studying” the Paris climate agreement and would
“have [Dakota Access] solved very quickly” when he takes office. ABC,
CBS, NBC, and PBS did air multiple segments on the Dakota Access
pipeline (airing eight, 10, four, and 10 segments, respectively), but
none of these segments linked it to climate change. [MPR News,
12/7/16;
Time,
12/1/16,
10/28/16;
Fox News Sunday, 12/11/16]
Major Networks Completely Ignored The “Exxon Knew” Story
Reports from InsideClimate News and the
Los Angeles Times
revealed that Exxon’s own scientists had confirmed by the early 1980s
that fossil fuel pollution was causing climate change, yet Exxon-funded
organizations helped manufacture doubt about the causes of climate
change for decades afterward in what became known as the “Exxon knew”
scandal. The reports prompted the attorneys general in New York,
California, and Massachusetts to each launch investigations of Exxon, as
well as countersuits from Exxon and subpoenas from members of Congress
in defense of Exxon. Yet none of the networks covered any of these
developments over the course of 2016. [
Media Matters,
9/1/16; InsideClimate News,
12/28/16]
CBS, Fox, And PBS Aired A Combined Five Segments That
Included Unrebutted Climate Science Denial In 2016 -- All From Trump Or
Trump Officials
In 2016,
CBS Evening News,
PBS NewsHour, and
Fox News Sunday aired a combined five segments that misled audiences by featuring climate science denial. Half of
Fox News Sunday’s climate-related segments included climate denial. In every instance, it was Trump or Trump officials promoting denial.
- On the September 27 edition of CBS Evening News,
correspondent Julianna Goldman fact-checked a portion of the September
26 presidential debate in which Clinton stated, “Donald thinks that
climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real,”
and Trump interjected, “I did not. I did not. … I do not say that.”
Goldman noted that Trump had in fact tweeted that climate change is a
hoax, but she did not fact-check the veracity of Trump’s statement that
climate change was a hoax. [CBS Evening News, 9/27/16; Media Matters, 5/26/16]
- On the November 9 edition of PBS NewsHour, during a segment
on world leaders’ reactions to Trump’s election victory, correspondent
Margaret Warner reported, “Also in question is America’s participation
in the Paris climate accord. Trump has called climate change a hoax, and
while it would take four years to formally pull out of the agreement,
there are no sanctions in place for ignoring it.” And in a report on the
ways in which Trump would dismantle environmental policy on the
November 17 edition of PBS NewsHour, correspondent William
Brangham stated, “Trump has repeatedly expressed his own skepticism
about climate change, like in this 2012 tweet, when he said: ‘The
concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to
make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.’ Two years later, he wrote:
‘Global warming is an expensive hoax.’" In neither instance did the
correspondent note that Trump’s statements are at odds with the
scientific consensus that climate change is real and human-caused. [PBS NewsHour, 11/9/16, 11/17/16]
- Shortly after Trump’s interview with The New York Times in which he stated that he had an “open mind” on climate change and the Paris climate agreement, Fox News Sunday’s
Chris Wallace asked Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus,
how flexible Trump would be on his campaign promises. Priebus answered
that as “far as this issue on climate change -- the only thing he was
saying after being asked a few questions about it is, look, he'll have
an open mind about it but he has his default position, which [is that]
most of it is a bunch of bunk, but he'll have an open mind and listen to
people.” Priebus then moved on to discuss the potential nomination of
Jim Mattis as defense secretary before Wallace concluded the interview.
And during Wallace’s interview with Trump on the December 11 edition of Fox News Sunday,
Trump declared that “nobody really knows” whether human-induced climate
change is happening. Wallace didn’t challenge Trump’s claim that
blatantly misrepresents the consensus of the world’s leading scientific
institutions that human activities such as burning fossil fuels are the
main cause of global warming. [The New York Times, 11/23/16; Fox News Sunday, 11/27/16, 12/11/16; NASA.gov, accessed 3/21/17]
Other Nightly News Segments On PBS, CBS, And NBC Also
Included Climate Science Denial, But Reporters Pushed Back On Those
Claims, Noting That They Conflicted With Established Climate Science
Segments on PBS, CBS, and NBC nightly news shows also included climate
denial, but reporters noted that that these statements were at odds with
established climate science.
- In a segment about Trump selecting Scott Pruitt as his nominee
to head the Environmental Protection Agency on the December 8 edition of
PBS NewsHour, anchor Judy Woodruff reported, “Pruitt is in
sync with President-elect Trump on a range of issues, including his
skepticism about man-made global warming. Writing in the National Review
this year, he said: ‘That debate is far from settled. Scientists
continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming.’ In
fact, the vast majority of scientists agree that human activity
contributes to global warming, all of which underscores questions about
whether a Trump administration will refuse to abide by the Paris accords
on greenhouse gas emissions.” And on the December 14 edition of PBS NewsHour,
Woodruff asked Sean Spicer, who was then communications director for
the Republican National Committee, “Does the president-elect still
believe, as he said on the campaign trail, that the science behind
climate change is still not settled, in other words, something that most
climate scientists say is absolutely correct?” Spicer replied by
denying the consensus on human-caused climate change, stating that Trump
“understands that there’s elements of man, mankind, that affect
climate, but the exact impact of it and what has to be done to change
that is something there is some dispute about within the community, not
just science, but within the industry.” [PBS NewsHour, 12/8/16, 12/14/16]
- A November 15 CBS Evening News segment on the appointment
of climate denier Myron Ebell to Trump’s EPA transition team featured
footage of Trump calling climate change a “hoax,” followed by
correspondent Chip Reid stating, “President-elect Donald Trump has left
little doubt where he stands on the issue of climate change. He wants a
dramatic increase in the production of coal and oil, which he says will
create jobs. And his EPA transition team is being led by Myron Ebell, a
leading climate change skeptic. Ebell, who is not a scientist, disagrees
with the overwhelming majority of climate scientists who say the
driving force behind the warming planet is the burning of fossil fuels.”
[CBS Evening News, 11/15/16]
- The December 14 edition of ABC’s World News Tonight
featured footage of Trump transition official Anthony Scaramucci denying
climate change by arguing, “There was overwhelming science that the
Earth was flat. ... We get a lot of things wrong in the scientific
community.” Correspondent Brian Ross introduced Scaramucci’s comments as
“a Trump transition official continu[ing] the public assault on
established science.” [ABC’s World News Tonight, 11/14/16]
Because hosts or correspondents on these programs noted that the
statements in question contradicted mainstream climate science, they
were not counted as denial in our study.
Climate Scientists Were Completely Absent From ABC’s World News Tonight … Again
For The Second Consecutive Year, ABC’s World News Tonight Did Not Feature A Single Scientist In Its Climate Coverage
ABC’s
World News Tonight did not feature a single scientist in its climate coverage for the second year in a row. By contrast,
NBC Nightly News and
CBS Evening News featured five and six scientists, respectively, and
PBS NewsHour featured 18.
Sunday Shows Did Not Feature A Single Scientist In Climate-Related Coverage
After
featuring just two scientists over a five-year period from 2009 to
2013, the Sunday shows featured seven scientists in 2014 alone, and then
backslid in 2015, quoting or interviewing just two scientists (4
percent of all Sunday show guests). In 2016, that backslide continued,
with the Sunday shows featuring no scientists in their climate-related
coverage.
PBS And CBS Frequently Aired Coverage Related To Climate-Related Scientific Research, While NBC And ABC Did So Less Often
PBS
and CBS far outpaced their counterparts in the number of segments
focusing on climate-related scientific research that they aired on
nightly news shows.
PBS NewsHour aired 10 segments on
climate-related scientific research, including a segment that featured
scientists explaining climate change’s influence on wildfires in
Southern California and flooding in Louisiana;
CBS Evening News
aired seven segments on climate-related research, including a segment
featuring interviews with scientists who discovered unprecedented rates
of sea ice melt in the Arctic Circle. Conversely,
NBC Nightly News aired just three segments on climate-related research, and ABC’s
World News Tonight aired just two. None of the Sunday shows featured any segments on climate-related scientific research. [
PBS NewsHour,
8/17/16;
CBS Evening News, 3/4/16]
Every Network’s Sunday Show Significantly Decreased Its Climate Coverage
After
dropping slightly from a high of 81 minutes of coverage in 2014 to 73
minutes in 2015, the Sunday shows’ climate coverage dropped 85 percent
to just 11 minutes of coverage in 2016 -- the third-lowest amount in the
eight-year time frame
Media Matters has examined. Every
network saw significant declines in Sunday show coverage, with Fox
leading the way (down 32 minutes from the previous year), followed by
NBC (down 17 minutes), CBS (down 10 minutes), and ABC (down four
minutes).
Bernie Sanders Brought Up Climate Change Four Times As Much As Hosts Did On ABC, CBS, And NBC Sunday Shows
On every Sunday show except
Fox News Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) brought up climate change significantly more often than the hosts themselves did. ABC’s
This Week, CBS’
Face the Nation, and NBC’s
Meet the Press
aired a combined five segments in which the hosts brought up climate
change, while Bernie Sanders brought up climate change 21 times during
his appearances on those shows. Because our study counted only those
segments where a media figure brought up or discussed climate change,
those 21 segments were not counted in this study's overall network
tallies.
NBC Nightly News And CBS Evening News Significantly Decreased Climate Coverage, And ABC Once Again Lagged Behind Network Counterparts
The
nightly news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC collectively decreased their
climate coverage from approximately 73 minutes in 2015 to just over 39
minutes in 2016 -- a drop of 46 percent.
NBC Nightly News had the biggest drop in climate coverage, decreasing by about 22 minutes, followed by
CBS Evening News, which had a drop of approximately nine minutes. ABC’s
World News Tonight,
which aired significantly less climate coverage than its competitors in
2014 and 2015, once again continued its downward trend, dropping even
further from roughly seven minutes of climate coverage in 2015 to just
four minutes in 2016.
For Second Year In A Row, PBS Aired More Climate Coverage Than All Other Nightly News Programs Combined
For the second consecutive year,
PBS NewsHour aired more segments addressing climate change than the other nightly news shows combined.
PBS NewsHour
aired 46 climate-related segments, while ABC (five), CBS (19), and NBC
(12) aired a combined 36 climate-related nightly news segments. However,
PBS NewsHour’s climate coverage decreased from 2015, when the network aired 58 climate-related segments.
In 2017 So Far, CBS Evening News Has Already Aired More Than Half The Amount Of Climate Coverage It Did In All Of 2016
In the first few months of 2017,
CBS Evening News
has already aired about 17 minutes of climate-related coverage, just
eight minutes less than the show aired for all of 2016. In fact,
CBS Evening News
aired nearly half as much climate coverage as it did in all of 2016 in
just one week of 2017; this coverage was during a series of
climate-related reports from Antarctica for its “Climate Diaries”
series. [
Media Matters,
2/13/17]
In Early Months Of 2017, NBC Nightly News Has Already Aired Nearly Half As Much Climate Coverage As It Did In All Of 2016
In just over two months,
NBC Nightly News has already aired about five minutes of climate-related coverage, roughly half as much as the show aired for all of 2016.
Methodology
This report analyzes coverage of "climate change" or "global warming"
between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2016, on four Sunday news
shows (ABC's
This Week, CBS'
Face the Nation, NBC's
Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s
Fox News Sunday) and four nightly news programs (ABC's
World News Tonight,
CBS Evening News,
NBC Nightly News, and
PBS NewsHour) based on Nexis transcripts. Fox Broadcasting Co. airs
Fox News Sunday but does not air a nightly news equivalent; Fox News is a separate cable channel.
PBS NewsHour
is a half-hour longer than its network nightly news counterparts, but
it airs five days a week, compared to seven days a week for the other
nightly news shows (
PBS NewsHour Weekend was not included in
this analysis). In one instance, Nexis categorized a segment that did
not mention "climate change" or "global warming" as being about climate
change; because the segment provided other clear indications that it was
indeed about climate change, it was included. To identify the number of
segments networks aired on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines,
we used the search terms Keystone w/20 pipe! And Dakota w/20 pipe!
Our analysis includes any segment devoted to climate change, as well
as any substantial mention (more than one paragraph of a news transcript
or a definitive statement by a media figure) about climate change
impacts or actions. The study did not include instances in which a
non-media figure brought up climate change without being prompted to do
so by a media figure unless the media figure subsequently addressed
climate change. We defined media figures as hosts, anchors,
correspondents, and recurring guest panelists. The study also does not
include teasers if they were for segments that aired later on the same
program. We acquired time stamps from iQ media and applied them
generously for nightly news segments when the overall topic was related
to climate change. For instance, if a nightly news segment about an
extreme weather event mentioned climate change briefly, the entire
segment was counted as climate coverage. However, if a significant
portion of the segment was not related to climate change, such as a
report on the pope giving a speech about climate change, immigration,
religious freedom, and outreach to Cuba, only the portions of the
segment that discussed climate change were counted. For the Sunday
shows, which often feature wide-ranging discussions on multiple topics,
we used only the relevant portion of such conversations. All coverage
figures have been rounded to the nearest minute. Because
PBS NewsHour is an hour-long show and the other networks’ nightly news programs are half-hour shows, our analysis compared
PBS NewsHour's
climate coverage to other nightly news programs' coverage in terms of
topics covered and number of segments, but not in terms of number of
minutes.
Links
