According to a recent article by Kevin Killough, the "monoculture of perspectives" on climate change and energy is due to the regular funding received by major media outlets directly or indirectly from billionaire foundations and global elites who are steering the world away from fossil fuels. Killough cited the Washington Post as an example of a news outlet "colluding" with "climate alarmists" and green tyrants. It announced back in 2020 that it was partnering with the Rockefeller Foundation to advance "a major paradigm shift" in its coverage of food systems, public health, capitalism and climate change.
The Rockefeller Foundation is a philanthropic foundation that aggressively advocates for the elimination of fossil fuels and for them to be replaced with wind and solar energy. As per the non-profit information service Guidestar, the foundation has nearly $4.5 billion in gross receipts and $7.5 billion in assets. It is also one of the most vocal proponents of the fossil fuel divestment and environment, social and governance (ESG) movements. Furthermore, it also pledged $8 million over three years to the Associated Press to cover "climate issues," which funded about 20 climate reporter positions at the outlet. There were also reports that the Guardian has received grants from Rockefeller.
Meanwhile, it is also one of the funders for Covering Climate Now (CCN), a global group co-founded by the Columbia Journalism Review and the far-left publication The Nation, in association with the Guardian. "More than 500 news and media outlets partner with the organization, which represents an audience of two billion people in 57 countries. Its partners include big media names like ABC News, CBS News, Reuters, the Boston Globe, the Miami Herald and the San Francisco Chronicle," Killough reported. This was supported by an article on the CCN website that said the organization "collaborates with journalists and newsrooms to produce more informed and urgent climate stories, to make climate a part of every beat in the newsroom."
"CCN is really a grassroots advocacy group for journalists," Dan Schneider, vice president of Free Speech America (FSA), told Cowboy State Daily. FSA is an organization that is a part of the Media Research Center. It aims to counter left-wing bias in the news media and popular culture.
In the CCN's resource site, an article titled "10 Climate Change Myths Debunked" listed each "myth" that it disputed. It also included languages that reporters should use to counter any comments or information that the organization deems unacceptable. "What this really reflects is the death of journalism. It used to be that reporters followed certain ethics rules. Now, reporters have adopted the agenda of the left, for the most part," Schneider lamented.
Moreover, Dr. Roger Piekle Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said that the globalist organization is controlled by billionaires who "coordinate and direct how climate should be covered and many media outlets simply repeat what this organization tells them to write."
For Schneider, CCN is a symptom of a much larger problem in the media. "There's a collusion between Big Media, Big Tech and Big Government," he said. "This cabal is threatening the very purpose of our nation's founding. Our country was founded on the idea that individuals could participate in self-government."
Meanwhile, Pielke said he often hears from readers of his Substack articles who are surprised to learn that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific data don't support much of the alarmist tone on climate change that they read in the media. "Why climate reporters play a role more like climate campaigners rather than journalists is puzzling," he said.
Also, influential climate journalist Emily Atkin was among the many climate alarmists who attacked the publication for daring to suggest that climate change wasn't the cause of the fires. Eventually, ABC News caved and updated the headline to suggest that climate change amplified the event. However, the public already knew that climate change had almost nothing to do with the fires. (Related: Thousands of scientists unite to end CLIMATE EMERGENCY hysteria.)
Pielke said that reporting on climate often departs significantly from the consensus assessment of the scientific community, most notably those of the IPCC, the World Meteorological Organization and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). How CCN encourages reporters to connect every extreme weather event to climate change is an example of this.
While climate change is not ruled out entirely as an influence in every extreme weather event, the articles demonstrate that there's a lot of uncertainty and nuance about the relationship between greenhouse gasses and extreme weather. Despite the uncertainty about the connection between human-caused climate change and hurricanes, CCN also insisted that reporters make a connection between the two. "Climate change intensifies … hurricanes, making them more severe," the organization explains in an article on extreme weather, which asserts that "scientists overwhelmingly agree that human-caused climate change makes weather more extreme."
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