Integrity Score 2097
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Fox News is launching a 24-hour weather channel as a streaming service. Given the conservative stance of the Fox platform and its record of doubting scientific understanding of climate change, the new venture may only end up politicizing weather.
Launch announcement:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=4880892025255918&t=0
It will mostly cover weather – local, regional and national, but weather these days is linked with climate change. Freak weather events are increasing because of global warming. Thus, while newscasters, meteorologists and guest experts will discuss rains, storms and heat waves, the climate question will be lurking in the background. If the Fox brand continues its traditional line, its explanations will remain dubious.
Public Citizens, a nonprofit activist group, has documented Fox News Network’s “dangerous climate denial”: https://www.citizen.org/article/foxic-fox-news-networks-dangerous-climate-denial-2019/ It has alleged that it “is still promoting climate misinformation and deploying tactics to distract from the urgency of the climate crisis, ensuring that its viewers’ understanding of the issue is based on deliberately distorted facts and distractions.”
Last month, during a discussion on recent heat waves and wild fires, Joe Bastardi, an expert who regularly appears on Fox News, was asked if human activity was a factor. He replied, “You can’t tell what CO2 is doing.” That goes against the gist of what a large body of evidence accumulated over decades has concluded.
For record, an executive has said that climate change is part of our lives and the new channel will not ignore it. “We will be reporting facts”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/10/22/fox-weather-channel-climate-streaming/
The Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox empire has a good reason to keep the new channel neutral. Fox News is perceived as divisive, which keeps many sponsors and advertisers away from it. Fox Weather can bring them back. Reports suggest that it has hired a large number of reputed experts from across the country who are expected to stick to scientific facts and add nuance to reporting and analysis.
But there’s a dilemma: If Fox Weather sticks to facts, it may end up alienating viewers loyal to the Fox brand of journalism who could be their core audience, when the weather news arena has become highly competitive with established players like AccuWeather, Weather Channel and WeatherNation.