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Media bias — ABC, CBS exclude skeptical scientists for 1300 days

The bias is obvious in what they don’t say. Reporters are supposed to seek out and promote the most rational, well argued positions they can find. Instead they elevate themselves to defacto “science judges” and decide which scientists deserve to be heard. It could be called arrogance, or it could be called “lying by omission”.

 COLD SHOULDER: ABC, CBS Exclude Scientists Critical of Global Warming for More Than 1,300 Days | NewsBusters

Like a simple parlor trick, the networks are able to make skeptical scientists vanish, at least from the eyes of their viewers.

In some cases, the broadcast networks have failed to include such scientists for years, while including alarmist scientists within the past six months. ABC, CBS and NBC’s lengthy omission of scientists critical of global warming alarmism propped up the myth of a scientific consensus, despite the fact that many scientists and thousands of peer-reviewed studies disagree.

Neither CBS nor ABC have included a skeptical scientist in their news shows within the past 1,300 days, but both networks included alarmists within the past 160 days — CBS as recently as 22 days ago. When the networks did include other viewpoints, the experts were dismissed as “out of the scientific mainstream” or backed by “oil and coal companies.”

CBS was the worst, ignoring skeptical scientists for 1,391 days, ever since the May 15, 2010,  “Evening News.” That night, CBS interviewed former NASA climatologist, Dr. Roy Spencer during an extensive profile of alarmist meteorologist, and non-Ph.D., Dan Satterfield.

It was just 22 days ago, on Feb. 12, 2014, that CBS included an alarmist physicist, Dr. Michio Kaku on “This Morning.” Kaku is a contributor to “This Morning” and that day he warned of the “heating up of the North Pole” which “could cause gigantic storms of historic proportions.”

ABC last included a skeptical scientist 1,383 days ago. During the May 23, 2010, segment of “World News,” ABC played a brief, 23-second clip of Princeton-educated Dr. Fred Singer expressing his skepticism over man-made climate change, along with clips of two alarmist scientists. Singer’s was the only opposing view in that report and his views were actually taken from a much earlier interview aired on ABC March 23, 2008.

The ABC referred too here is the American one, not the Australian ABC. (Has anyone analyzed the local highly influential mass-media outlet?)

For those choosing networks in the US, NBC did better than either the ABC or the CBS. Of course, the evil Fox out-rates them all. Could it be those viewers hate being told what to think?

Fox News topped the cable news ratings race for the 12th consecutive year in 2013, with more total viewers than MSNBC and CNN combined. Meanwhile, MSNBC slid to third place in total-day viewership while CNN hit a 20-year low in prime time.  — politico

Cue the commenters who will claim news ought to reflect the consensus. Meaning that journalists should decide who goes to air, not by reason and evidence, but because key-word surveys on specialty magazine publications suggest that there are more scientists who believe a particular, unlikely, idea. Rent out your brain, you “investigative journalists”. Government funding pays for magazine subscriptions, just like it pays for repeated irrelevant press releases. Since when was this science?

The tally of grants is an accurate proxy for political views — but it doesn’t tell us anything about the Earth’s climate.

Read more: newsbusters.org/

h/t Derek. Thanks.

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