Fox News Shelves "Fair and Balanced" Template For Global Warming Special

November 10th, 2005 11:45 AM

Fox News Channel on Sunday will air, albeit with a disclaimer, a one-sided documentary on global warming featuring liberal environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

A Fox News Channel documentary on "global warming," set to air Sunday night, provides only the liberal take on the controversial issue and was approved after environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. reportedly "dragged" Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes to a lecture by former Vice President Al Gore, "kicking and screaming."

Clay Rawson, the Fox News Channel producer of the hour-long special titled "The Heat Is On: The Case of Global Warming," told Cybercast News Service Wednesday that the project "was a little bit different for us.



"Often on Fox News Channel, we present both sides, according to our 'fair and balanced' motto, but this is the global warming story," Rawson said. "We do make it clear that this is one side of the issue through inclusion of a disclaimer," he added. The documentary is said to ignore scientific skeptics who believe that human activity is not responsible for catastrophic climate change.


For more, read this article by Randy Hall and Marc Morano at CNSNews.com.

Robert Kennedy, Jr., you may recall, came under fire with charges of hypocrisy by fellow left-wing environmental activists in August (see link) for opposing a renewable energy project, a wind farm offshore of a Kennedy compound on the island of Nantucket, while generally being an advocate of renewable energy solutions (like solar and wind power). Many environmentalists, like Greenpeace activists, believe global warming is caused and exacerbated by carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants which trap heat in the atmosphere and lead to rising atmospheric and ocean temperature, and hence prefer alternatives like wind power.