The Associated Press took $8 million in donations to fund climate coverage in 2022, with the news cooperative and several other major media publications engaged in dubious claims about climate change, according to a new, exclusive year-end report. [emphasis, links added]
The “Climate Fact Check 2022″ report, presented by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Heartland Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), stated that “climate alarmists” and members of the media engaged in claims about the relationship between man-made emissions and natural disasters, claims that clashed with “reality and science.”
In February, the Associated Press admitted that they would assign more than 24 journalists across the globe to cover “climate issues” after receiving more than $8 million over three years from various organizations.
The organizations contributing to the “philanthropy-funded news” via a “climate grant” are the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.
AP News Vice President Brian Carovillano only accepts money “without strings attached” and asserted that funders do not influence the stories conducted.
Similarly, in March 2021 high-ranking State Department officials discussed a proposal to sponsor foreign journalists to “have experiences that educate them on reporting on climate change,” according to emails obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) and shared with Fox News Digital.
Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, told Fox News Digital that the Associated Press has essentially become a “propaganda outfit” for liberal organizations with climate agendas.
“It’s hard to claim it’s news when you’re being paid to report only one side of the climate discourse,” he said.
The report pointed to a recent article from the Associated Press by reporter Seth Borenstein called “New Abnormal: Climate Disaster Damage ‘Down’ To $268 Billion,” as proof of bias.
The article attributed flooding in Pakistan, Hurricane Ian, droughts in Europe, China, and Africa, as well as deadly heat waves across the world to climate change.
“Weather disasters, many but not all of them turbocharged by human-caused climate change, are happening so frequently that this year’s onslaught, which 20 years ago would have smashed records by far, now in some financial measures seems a bit of a break from recent years,” Borenstein wrote.
The Climate Fact Check report questioned whether climate activists and “media mouthpieces” could legitimately attribute disaster damages to climate change or if they were merely trying to “surf human tragedy” to advance a political agenda.
The report also highlighted several other climate claims from major media corporations, providing fact-checks for articles written by the Washington Post, New York Times, and more.
In August, Times reporter Derrick Bryson Taylor claimed that Britain’s brief heatwaves this summer were worsened by climate change.
A fact-check from the report noted that heat waves have dramatically declined in duration and frequency in the U.S. over the past 90 years, according to the National Climate Assessment.
Furthermore, the report claimed it was “unlikely” that emissions are increasing heat waves in Britain because hotter temperatures in the U.K. were offset by cooling elsewhere.
Additionally, meteorologist Cliff Mass said that while heat waves may bring temperatures 30 to 40 degrees above the norm, global warming is only in the noise level of 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Washington Post in November published a piece by Barry Svrluga with the headline “In This World Cup Ski Season, Climate Change Is Winning.”
The piece claimed that climate change had led to shorter winters and made it so warm that only one of eight races was able to be held as of mid-November.
A fact-check of the claim found that when World Cup skiing started in the 1960s, the season began in January. However, now it begins in October.
“If the competition began in the winter, everything would likely be okay because wintertime snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has been increasing since the 1960s, the report claimed.
Milloy said that such claims have long been a part of the 30 years of “climate hysteria” cultivated by liberal media networks and have little to show for their dire predictions.
“Instead of moving on to something else, they’re doubling down on this, and they’re making themselves look worse at the same time,” he added.
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