CNN: One full year with NO Discussion of Climate Change. This is crazy.

http://blog.ucsusa.org/cnn-just-went-a-full-year-without-debating-the-reality-of-climate-change-727?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=fb

It’s been exactly a year since CNN hosted a misleading debate about established climate science. I hope it was the last one for the network and that CNN and other news outlets can move on to debates about how society is responding to climate risks.

Climate science isn’t a political position

In our 2014 analysis Science or Spin?, we found that 30 percent of CNN’s climate change segments included misleading representations of science. More often than not, inaccurate statements about climate science aired during debates between science communicator Bill Nye and spokespeople from advocacy groups opposed to climate policy, including some with a history of fossil fuel funding. Indeed, the last debate the network aired featured Nye facing off with a Heritage Foundation economist.

f you watch the segment, you’ll see how problematic such televised debates are. The economist makes a number of cherry-picked claims about climate science that Nye isn’t given time to rebut. Indeed, the entire debate format is premised on the idea that discussions about climate science can be reduced to yet another 50 / 50 political dispute. Ironically, that particular debate was premised on the release of a major federal climate science report, which laid out the science as clearly as possible.
Naturally, our first recommendation for CNN in our report was as follows:

The biggest step that CNN could take to increase the accuracy of the information it provides to its viewers is to stop hosting debates about established climate science and instead host debates and discussions about whether and how to respond to climate change through climate policy.