The separation between advocacy and unbiased, independent journalism at a network news operation is being called into question by CBS News’s use of a climate change group as a “partner” in its reporting.
The network has disclosed in recent weeks in both on-air and online reports its coordination with Climate Central, a nonprofit that calls itself “policy-neutral,” though it clearly promotes the notion that mankind is headed for certain disaster because of human impact on the environment.
Fox Digital reported:
CBS News has cited Climate Central research dozens of times since 2021, according to Grabien transcripts. But it wasn’t until July that the network began consistently referring to “our partners at Climate Central” on air.
Last month, CBS News published a story about melting glaciers that also aired on “Sunday Morning.” Ben Tracy was the correspondent on the segment, with his byline at the top of the article. A disclaimer at the bottom read, “Story produced by Chris Spinder, in partnership with Climate Central. Editor: Chris Jolly.”
However, according to Fox’s story on the practice, Tracy and Spinder no longer work for CBS News, but for Climate Central. Only Jolly is a network staffer, according to his LinkedIn page.
Climate Central’s website promotes its “Partnership Journalism” program, which it says contributes “guidance” to reporting and presenting “joint features” about climate to news outlets.
CBS is not its only partner. Fox says Climate Central’s website explains the “Partnership Journalism” program like this:
A partner outlet contributes local reporting, including field reporting, photography and some editing for a story. We contribute data and charts plus a science reporter and an editor. For a text story, we help craft a feature in a way that puts climate change in appropriate and accurate context. For broadcast media, we provide story and interview suggestions and help develop and review scripts. Climate Central’s researchers assist with fact-checking.
The nonprofit’s website says it has garnered more than 50,000 mentions in more than 170 countries with “[a]rticles, stories, and segments using Climate Central content to communicate climate change impacts and solutions reach local audiences nearly every day.”
The organization has been busy for nearly two decades disseminating climate change examples and theories that now routinely show up everywhere from network reporting to comments by local weather forecasters.
Trends and repetition in mainstream news often don’t happen by accident. Often there’s an organization or lobby group seeding the narrative. By its own admission, Climate Central is one of those organizations.
In the organization’s timeline, it reports that in 2010 launched a plan “to bring climate change to TV weather.”
In 2015 it pushed that extreme weather events were “tied to climate change” and worked to “eliminate the false public narrative” that they were not.
In 2019, it launched its partnership journalism program “collaborating with local newsrooms nationwide to produce in-depth science-backed stories.”
On its website, Climate Central describes its approach to news, saying scientists warn the planet faces “a climate emergency that could alter life on earth for the foreseeable future,” and using the usual language of climate alarmism, though they claim to simply state facts in an unbiased way.
While the group maintains it is a “non-advocacy organization,” the text in many of its statements incorporates the language of the left and they tout an emphasis on “equity,” and refer to climate change as an “engine of inequity.”
“In the United States, historically marginalized groups at special risk include Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities,” that section states.
Fox Digital reached out to Shari Bell, the group’s vice president for content creation. She told the news site that Climate Central “works with many news organizations.”
However, she declined to elaborate on what goes into the editorial process in its collaboration with CBS News.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
