Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Cable channels, especially Fox's, emphasize criticism of EPA's greenhouse-gas regulations

A study by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters says cable-TV news audiences got "a steady stream of attacks" on the Environmental Protection Agency's greenhouse-gas regulations but "relatively few arguments for the greenhouse-gas regulations," Gabriel Nelson of Environment & Energy News reports.

The group says critics outnumbered supporters by four to one on the nine cable channels it studied beginning in December 2009, when EPA issued a finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are a threat to human health and welfare. The study concluded in April.

"Leading the way were the three stations owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- Fox, Fox News and Fox Business -- which featured 129 critics and 19 supporters over the past 18 months," Nelson writes. "The only stations with more supporters than critics were MSNBC and NBC, which had a combined nine guests supporting EPA and two critics. (Read more, subscription required)

Media Matters is campaigning to have advertisers drop Fox, but former TV executive Norman Horowitz, "a raging liberal," writes in Fox's defense on TVWeek.com that the group "has crossed a line by trying to stifle a voice of which they don’t approve. They suggest, in a manner of speaking, that the public destroy the Fox presses by removing the financial support of Fox News that comes from Madison Avenue. . . . their shouting emits a foul odor when they are advocating the suppression of views expressed on Fox News along with the suppression of Fox News itself." (Read more)

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