Bozell: Nets Cover ClimateGate, But Load Story with Bias

December 7th, 2009 1:48 PM

"Well, NBC, ABC and CBS finally got around to reporting on ClimateGate" but it "wasn’t worth the wait," Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell said in a statement today. [Click here for the full press release]

"NBC and ABC’s reports were so biased, they left their audiences as ill-informed afterwards as they were before.  And CBS came about as close to blacking out their own coverage as possible," Bozell added, referring to how the network reported the story on a program blacked out in much of the country in favor of college football.

ABC finally reported on ClimateGate on Sunday.  But they provided no specifics from the reams of emails and data from East Anglia University that caused the scandal, and concluded their report with the flatly incorrect assertion: “The science is solid, according to a vast majority of researchers, with hotter temperatures, melting glaciers, and rising sea level providing the proof.” 

NBC reported on ClimateGate on both Friday and Sunday.  On Friday they fretted that the scandal may end up "giving politicians from coal and oil-producing states another reason to delay taking action to reduce emissions."  And on Sunday they assured viewers "the evidence is overwhelming that man is behind climate change." 

Neither ABC nor NBC noted that many of the "vast majority of researchers" to which they refer are at the heart of the ClimateGate data distortions and cover-up, and the "overwhelming" "evidence" they cite may very well have been tampered with by these researchers.

CBS did a decent report on Saturday, but aired it on a show they knew their college football coverage blackout would prevent most Americans from seeing.

"ClimateGate is a huge story that is only just beginning to unfold.... This is a story that cries out for an investigation, the networks haven’t even scratched the surface, and they’re now done with it.  So much for news from the broadcast 'news' networks," Bozell complained.