Will Fox News stop peddling "Junk Science?"

onMay 9, 2007 @ 10:57 PDT

With the announcement today by News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch that the media conglomerate is joining the battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the big question here at DeSmogBlog is whether this means Fox News will end its peddling in global warming junk science.

Steve Milloy (aka. “The Junkman”) is a regular Fox News columnist and tireless campaigner in the war against climate science. A quick read of Milloy’s website and you will find the usual laundry list of long-held global warming denier arguments.

Milloy was at one point the director of an organization called the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), which by many is considered the grand-daddy of modern industry front groups. TASCC cut its teeth on the war against tobacco smoke and later expanded into other areas like global warming.

At today’s announcement, Murdoch stated that “Our audience’s carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours … Imagine if we succeed in inspiring our audiences to reduce their own impacts on climate change by just 1 percent. That would be like turning the state of California off for almost two months.”

I would suggest one of the first big steps would be to ensure quality coverage of science issues like global warming. Offer viewers the real scientific story. That is not to say that other scientific opinions should be somehow censored, but instead there should be effort put into ensuring that these other opinions represent the current scientific thinking on the issue of global warming.

In other words, throw out the “junk science.”

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.