Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Monday, September 24, 2012

Fox News Misleads Audience on Climate Change

Brace yourself for some shocking news: a new study on Friday found that the two major publications of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation greatly mislead their audiences about climate change. The Union of Concerned Scientists combed six months of Fox News broadcasting and a year's worth of Wall Street Journal editorial pages for mentions of the science of "climate change" and "global warming," then compared each claim to "mainstream scientific understanding" of the topic at hand. Here's what they found:

Data from Union of Concerned ScientistsData from Union of Concerned Scientists

"Everywhere I go, what I hear quoted back to me as scientific fact is often wrong," said Brenda Ekwurzel, a UCS staff scientist who presented the study to an audience gathered to discuss the state of climate communication with TIME environment editor Bryan Walsh and Harvard oceanographer James McCarthy. "That, to me, is so discouraging."

What's especially creepy about the study is how low the bar is for what constitutes "accurate." From the study:
Citations deemed to be misleading questioned either the reality of climate change or the fact that recent climate change is largely due human activities, or they advanced other arguments that dismissed established climate science.
In other words, this is quantitative proof that the climate change debate in America is still mired in bickering over whether the problem even exists or not. Here's the breakdown on the shapes misleading statements took between the two outlets, which together reach an audience of nearly four million:

 UCSUCS
UCSUCS After releasing the study, Ekwurzel led a group from the New York Public Library science branch to Bryant Park, to stage a mark-up of all the errors in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, which was roundly rebuffed by the very scientists it quoted. News Corporation has a history of blantantly misrepresenting science, of course. But since, as McCarthy reminded the crowd, "most of the public doesn't have the opportunity to have a conversation with a scientist on climate change," findings like these go a long way toward explaining why many elected officials are completely intransigent on climate action.

Original Article
Source: mother jones
Author: Tim McDonnell

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