NOT FAIR, NOT BALANCED AND WRONG ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Fox editor urged climate skepticism
Keach Hagey, December 13, 2010 (Politico)

"Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon sent an e-mail to staff last December offering guidance on how to handle the climate debate, three weeks after the Climategate scandal broke and in the midst of the Copenhagen climate summit."

[From the Sammons email:] “Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data…we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”

From TYT via YouTube

"The email, leaked to liberal media watchdog and frequent Fox critic Media Matters, was sent on Dec. 8, minutes after Fox White House correspondent Wendell Goler reported that U.N. scientists had issued a report saying that 2000-2009 was ‘expected to turn out to be the warmest decade on record.’ …Neither Sammon nor Fox News responded to requests for comment...Media Matters has embarked on a crusade against Sammon, who it says has pushed Fox’s straight-news daytime reporting rightward...Ari Rabin-Havt, vice president for research and communications at Media Matters, said there were more e-mails coming…

"In the climate e-mail episode, Goler was on the scene in Copenhagen, reporting…When the program’s host, John Scott, asked him about the Climategate e-mails, Goler replied that the affair had raised some questions about the data from the hacked institution, East Anglia University, but that ‘the data also comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and from NASA. And scientists say the data of course across all three sources is pretty consistent.’ …Sammon sent the e-mail to a list of senior executives and producers 15 minutes later. Later that day, …Goler [introduced] his report by saying that as ‘Climategate-fueled skeptics continued to impugn global warming science, researchers today issued new and even more dire warnings about the possible effects of a warmer planet.’ Goler also referred to…Climategate…"

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"The Climategate controversy refers to the hacking of e-mails at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit showing American and British researchers discussing how to combat climate skeptics…[It] was held up as evidence by climate change skeptics that climate scientists had conspired to make the case for human involvement in global warming stronger than it actually was…[A] British panel [evenutally cleared the scientists but] other scientists came forward in the weeks following the scandal saying the affair did nothing to undermine the consensus that human beings are causing climate change."

[Letter from 29 independent scientists to Congress after the Climategate to-do:] “The body of evidence that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming is overwhelming...The content of the stolen e-mails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming.”