Fox News anchor Bret Baier lashed out against a local newspaper for refusing to publish denial of the basic fact that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change.
Arizona Daily Sun editor Randy Wilson recently committed to reporting the facts on climate change. In a June 8 op-ed, titled “It's not censorship by ignoring those denying climate change,” Wilson -- whose paper serves the residents of Flagstaff, Arizona -- wrote that while there is “room to debate the extreme predictions by some scientists,” the “basic idea that human activities are accelerating the pace of global warming in an unsustainable way enjoys the same scientific consensus as the finding that smoking causes cancer.” He asserted that debating the basic premise of climate change is actually harmful, acting as “a diversion from finding a solution to the problems raised by the answer to the question.”
On the June 16 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, Baier declared that the newspaper, by choosing to omit climate denial, does not “have room for balance”:
The Daily Sun op-ed falls in line with what is becoming a ubiquitous media norm that runs counter to what Fox News interprets as “fair and balanced.” As the evidence becomes even more certain that humans are unequivocally driving catastrophic climate change (nearly 200 scientific organizations worldwide acknowledge man-made climate change), media outlets are taking a stance against false balance on global warming. The Los Angeles Times' letters editor similarly stated that the newspaper would not print letters with "an untrue basis" such as those "that say there's no sign humans have caused climate change." The New York Times' public editor Margaret Sullivan spoke out against false equivalence in their newspaper, and blogger Andrew Revkin expanded that false balance serves to “convey a state of confusion even as consensus on warming has built.” And several CNN hosts have denounced media for presenting global warming as up for debate and for providing a stage to the vocal minority of climate change deniers (even though others on the channel occasionally violate this norm).
Comedian John Oliver recently mocked the idea that climate change is up for question by hosting a “balanced” climate change debate. On his HBO show Last Week Tonight, Oliver pitted 97 climate scientists that agree with the consensus on manmade climate change against three that deny it. The result was predictably absurd: the three deniers could not make their voices heard over the consensus -- as it should be in the media.