The Washington Post’s digital opinions editor, James Downie, wrote that this year’s election cycle has “altered political journalism” in a way that could lead to journalists taking a more aggressive approach to fact-checking climate denial. In a November 7 column, Downie quoted CNN’s Dylan Byers saying, “The traditional model of ‘he said, she said’ journalism . . . was thrown out the window in favor of a more aggressive journalism that sought to prioritize accuracy over balance.” Downie added that “climate change is an obvious area to apply this new model.”

In the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, Media Matters found that media often failed to fact-check candidates when they denied the science of climate change. But media have since scrutinized Republican nominee Donald Trump’s false claims that “there is no drought” in California, that he will put coal miners “back to work,” that he has not called climate change a “hoax,” and more. 

From Downie's column:

Shifting the discussion is one area where, surprisingly, the 2016 campaign could change the climate debate for the better, even though climate change has been absent from the discussion. The contest has altered political journalism in a important way: As CNN’s Dylan Byers writes, “The traditional model of ‘he said, she said’ journalism . . . was thrown out the window in favor of a more aggressive journalism that sought to prioritize accuracy over balance.” More journalists have seen that the sky won’t fall if they treat falsehoods as falsehoods, and climate change is an obvious area to apply this new model. Senators should not be able to bring snowballs onto the Senate floor to “disprove” climate change without every headline fact-checking them. The realities of climate change are as much objective truth as the murder or unemployment rates. Regarding them as such will be an early test of whether political journalism has rededicated itself to the facts.

The debate over climate change is changing, but not as rapidly as it can or should. We have largely squandered decades that could have been spent heading off the danger, and now the consequences are no longer abstract. Climate change is a perilous threat to the country and the world; we must finally treat it that way.