News Corporation, owner of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and many other media and communication outlets, has been heavily criticized in a report prepared for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Among many findings, the UCS report states that:

• Over a recent six-month period, 93 percent of Fox News Channel’s representations of climate science were misleading (37 out of 40 instances).
•  Similarly, over the past year, 81 percent of the representations of climate science in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section were misleading (39 out of 48 instances).

UCS’s examination finds that the misleading citations include broad dismissals of human-caused climate change, disparaging comments about individual scientists, rejections of climate science as a body of knowledge, and cherry picking of data. Fox News Channel citations also included several discussions in which misleading claims dominated accurate ones.

Much of this coverage denigrated climate science by either promoting distrust in scientists and scientific institutions or placing acceptance of climate change in an ideological, rather than fact-based, context.

One of the basic tenets of a democratic society is an informed electorate. In GallonDaily’s view, intentional spreading of false news is an inherently anti democratic activity.  Companies and organizations that ally themselves with misinformation disseminated by News Corporation media outlets may feel that they are serving worthy shareholder goals but could find themselves the target of a severe customer or regulator reaction at some point in the future.

The Union of Concerned Scientists report can be found at http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/news-corporation-climate-science-coverage.html?utm_source=SP&utm_medium=more&utm_campaign=news%2Bcorp