Media Issues for America lately released its annual report on how main broadcast networks, together with ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, dealt with local weather change protection. There are some encouraging figures within the report, together with the truth that local weather protection general tripled from 2020 to 2021, together with on morning information exhibits. CBS Mornings led the pack in relation to such programming, working 387 minutes’ price of local weather protection in 2021 that included a complete program dedicated to local weather on Earth Day. The community (the place I used to work) devoted general nine-and-a-half hours to local weather change throughout its exhibits, accounting for 43% of all local weather protection throughout broadcast information networks in 2021. Almost 1 / 4 of these segments could be attributed to Jeff Berardelli and Evelyn Taft, who had been a part of 29 of CBS’ 137 local weather segments final yr.
I had the pleasure of working with Berardelli a bit throughout my tenure with CBS, and, as each a local weather specialist and meteorologist, his experience and keenness for the problem are unparalleled—which is why I’m involved that subsequent yr’s Media Issues numbers will replicate his absence, as he left CBS Information to join WFLA as its chief meteorologist in the beginning of 2022. There are only a few correspondents who strategy local weather change with the rigor and devotion Berardelli displayed, although Media Issues notes that networks clearly had their favorites, together with NBC’s Al Roker and ABC’s Ginger Zee and Rob Marciano. Although Fox’s local weather protection elevated, the information community unsurprisingly did a piss-poor job of devoting any substantial time to local weather change—save for 2 severe-weather-related segments on its Fox Information Sunday present final yr. Fox Information particularly continues to push climate change denial and outright false segments about this disaster.
