Sunday News Shows Mostly Silent On March For Science, Perpetuating The Dearth Of Coverage On Climate Change

Most of the Sunday news shows failed to cover the worldwide March for Science protests, an international demonstration partly meant to draw attention to President Donald Trump’s “disregard for evidence-based knowledge” and climate change denial.

Protesters across the world demonstrated on April 22 for Earth Day, many of whom demonstrated against Trump’s “proposal to sharply cut federal science and research budgets and his administration's skepticism about climate change and the need to slow global warming,” according to Reuters. Leading up to the protests, a number of scientists voiced their concerns about the Trump administration’s climate-denying appointments, “politically motivated data deletions” of environmental science citations, and general “woeful ignorance” of science and climate change.

Nonetheless, Sunday news shows generally ignored the events that attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters. ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, and NBC’s Meet the Press failed to mention the March for Science at all, according to a Media Matters review. CNN’s State of the Union only had a brief headline about the demonstrations, and Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday only dedicated about one and a half minutes to the story.

Sunday shows’ lack of coverage of the march is representative of media’s dearth of climate change coverage in general. A recent Media Matters study found that in 2016, the evening newscasts and Sunday shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as Fox News Sunday, collectively decreased their total coverage of climate change by 66 percent compared to 2015.

Methodology

Media Matters searched SnapStream for mentions of “March for Science,” “science,” and “march” on the April 23 editions of CNN’s State of the Union, ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday.