When Fox News Media announced plans for a 24-hour weather channel, the company could hardly have predicted it would debut in a week marked by a bomb cyclone, several tornadoes and severe flooding across the north-east.Yet that’s exactly what happened when Fox Weather launched on Monday last week, to much fanfare from its owners, but to serious trepidation from people concerned that the channel could match the infamous climate change scepticism of its sister channel Fox News.Hosts on Fox News have spent years rubbishing or undermining the idea of human-caused climate breakdown, and the fact that two Fox News-linked executives were behind the Fox Weather launch meant the worries might be well-founded.In its first few days, Fox Weather is yet to play host to guests who have suggested that climate change is a hoax or not serious. But that’s not to say the nascent TV channel has been championing environmental reform.“Fox Weather Doesn’t Deny Climate Change. They Just Ignore It,” ran a headline in the New Republic on Wednesday.Over several hours spent watching Fox Weather, the Guardian heard plenty of detail – much of it genuinely informative – about how tornadoes form, and how storms can be observed in 3D maps. There were public advisories too: don’t drive around in floods, viewers were told, while people in the path of a storm were advised to shelter in a bathroom or hallway.But as the meteorologists, from their cream-and-red set based in New York City, giddily dissected the unusual number of storms for this time of year, there was little mention of the climate crisis even as world leaders prepare to gather at Cop26 in Glasgow this week to try to tackle the problem.To be fair, a side-by-side analysis of the midday output of the Weather Channel, seen as the gold standard of live meteorological news, yielded similar results. Neither channel is devoted to the broader topic of weather and climate, exactly; instead they play out more as weather dramas, where breaking events are covered breathlessly in the moment, with little time for reflection.The reason for the concerns about Fox Weather, though, are clear. In 2020 Fox News’ most-watched host, Tucker Carlson, rubbished the idea that forest fires on the west coast were a result of climate crisis – serious climate scientists, however, agree that the fires are very much linked to the breakdown – and suggested environmental hazards were a liberal conspiracy.The Fox Weather anchors Jason Frazer, Britta Merwin and Stephen Morgan: focusing on weather dramas, with little time for reflection. Photograph: Richard Drew/APCarlson’s colleague Laura Ingraham has insisted, contrary to experts’ findings, that the planet is in a “natural” cycle of warming, and suggested that environmental activists like Greta Thunberg had been “brainwashed”, while Sean Hannity said the left’s “obsession” with the climate was a “political tool”.In the first half of 2019, to take one sample, Public Citizen found that Fox News devoted 247 segments to the climate crisis. Of those, “212 (86%) were dismissive of the climate crisis, cast warming and its consequences in doubt or employed fearmongering when discussing climate solutions,” Public Citizen said.There have been no overt examples of denialism on Fox Weather, and the channel has been at pains to state its climate change bona fides. A Fox News Media spokeswoman pointed to statements by executives and its meteorologists addressing the issue of climate change.“If you’re asking about climate change, climate change is part of our lives. It’s how we live. It’s not going to be ignored,” Sharri Berg, formerly the executive vice-president of news operations for the Fox News channel, and currently one of the people in charge of the Fox Weather launch, told Variety on October 21.“We will be reporting facts,” Berg said.There have, however, been a number of missed opportunities to mention the climate crisis, particularly in the articles published to Fox Weather’s website.A piece “7 facts about heat waves” notes that “heat waves occur more often than they used to”, but makes no mention of the changing climate. Another article says that Louisiana “has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of wetlands” over the last 90 years but does not mention the climate crisis responsible for stronger storms and rising seas.A piece about fall foliage being delayed in Tennessee because of warmer temperatures makes no mention of rising temperatures globally, while an article about a shortage of roses notes that the weather in South America, where many roses are grown, had been “unseasonably cold”, and mentions that “Parts of Columbia [sic] and Ecuador have received upwards of 400 percent of above-average rainfall”. But the climate crisis is not mentioned.On Friday a piece about coastal flooding did cite the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as saying sea-level rise, caused by climate change, was responsible for flooding.It would appear that in stories where other news outlets would almost certainly mention the planet’s changing climate, Fox Weather pieces can shy away from the topic.Despite Berg assigning a reporter to cover the impending Cop26 climate crisis conference in Glasgow, as of Thursday there was not a single mention of Cop26 on its website.It may be too soon, less than a week after its launch, to draw a full assessment of the channel’s overarching direction on climate.But so far, while Fox Weather isn’t denying the climate crisis, it isn’t exploring it either.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/oct/31/fox-weather-24-hour-channel-climate-crisis
