It has been almost a
month since Inside Climate News and a partnership of the Los Angeles Times and
Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism began publishing their
findings that, while Exxon’s scientists had determined decades ago that the burning
fossil fuels caused global warming, the large company funded groups like the
Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute who dealt in the business of casting
doubt on the science of climate change.
This
is possibly one of the greatest scandals of our time; so it is maddening to
observe the lack of press coverage of this story. A Proquest search of Donald
Trump, only one of the GOP presidential candidates, for the month of October
brings up 2043 newspaper stories. A Proquest search of Exxon and climate change
brought up 84 results.[1]
That is Donald Trump receiving 2,332% more coverage than one of the world’s
largest corporations knowing that they are propelling the whole planet into a
climate crisis and covering it up. If you like pie charts, here’s a pie chart of
the respective press coverage.
You say, OK, but
that’s Donald Trump, a headline magnet. A similar search on Carly Fiorina
brought up 185 results, still way more than Exxon and their cover-up. Why is
there such silence from the press on this? Tell me what you think.
[1] For the Donald Trump search, I searched on the
term “Trump” and restricted the search to headlines in the last 30 days. For
the Exxon search, I searched for both the term “Exxon” and “climate change”
occurring anywhere in the news story.
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