CNN has in the past given reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change significantly more coverage than it did
the latest report. After the IPCC released the report on impacts Sunday, CNN provided a paltry less-than-two minutes of coverage,
according to Shauna Theel at Media Matters. The average for the other cable news networks was 22 minutes. That's still far less than the subject deserves, but CNN's performance ought to have brought blushes at HQ.
Not that there is any evidence anyone at the network can blush. CNN's fevered coverage of the lost Malaysian passenger jet got approximately a quadzillion times more coverage. Maybe the IPCC should have scattered its report in the Indian Ocean:
On March 31, NBC Nightly News led with the IPCC report, featuring an interview with two climate scientists who contributed to the report. NBC devoted more time to the study than either ABC World News or CBS Evening News. This coverage was consistent with an improving trend in NBC's climate coverage. In 2013, NBC Nightly News covered climate change four times more than it had in 2012 and gave greater time to scientists, according to an analysis by Media Matters. [...]
Al Jazeera And MSNBC Devote Far More Time To Climate Report Than CNN. CNN largely ignored the report in its daytime and primetime coverage. According to a search of internal TV archives, CNN devoted just 1 minute and 37 seconds to the report between 4 a.m. and 11 p.m. on March 31 and between 4 a.m. and 10 a.m. on April 1. In these news briefs, CNN did not host any guests on the topic. By contrast, MSNBC devoted nearly 27 minutes of coverage to the report, including a discussion with climate scientist Michael Mann on The Reid Report, and Al Jazeera devoted over 35 minutes to the report.
Foxaganda did better than CNN, too, if we're talking about the number of minutes. Of course, Fox devoted many of those minutes to its usual denier crap:
On Your World with Neil Cavuto, Claudia Rosett, a frequent U.N. critic, falsely suggested that the organization wanted to tax people for exhaling. Later, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly suggested that "nobody really knows" whether climate change is a threat. The next day, Fox & Friends First highlighted that an outlier climate economist withdrew from the report.
Enterprising cable news (and regular news) networks could be coming up with a story every day or at least one day a week describing the already happening and upcoming impacts of climate change. Examples aren't exactly hard to find. Nor is there a dearth of climate scientists able to discuss the matter. With all their resources, there is no excuse for lack of coverage or sloppy coverage or he said/she said coverage.
One might be led to think that the media powers-that-be don't take climate change seriously. Or that the agenda of their string-pullers depends on maintaining as much ignorance on the subject as they can for as long as they can.
Nah. Couldn't be. Purely coincidence.