According to the Freakonomics blog, Al Gore has blamed the media for global warming inaction. It points to an article explaining that journalists tend to work too hard on providing both points of view in the name of balance, while not explaining the degree of scientific consensus on this matter. A study found that 53% of news articles disagreed with the global warming premise.
Frankly, this explains a lot of why so many people don’t believe in global warming. Plenty of people rely on the sound bites in television news and the short articles in newspapers to get their opinions. They are the most convenient sources, after all.
But in a case like this, you also get problems such as with Fox News, where they claim to be keeping things balanced, which really means that they slant it primarily toward their conservative bases opinions, and give occasional, very small nods to the other side, generally while making it clear they don’t really believe it. Continue reading →