By the Numbers: How Mainstream Media Ignores Global Warming Hoax
- Tuesday, May 20, 2008, 21:16
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I set out on a journey to see if the mainstream press takes an active role in shoving the skeptical view of the global warming hoax under the rug. Using Google News, some search algorithms and a few hours of my time, I came up with a rather interesting revelation.
My first task was quite simple: narrow down news articles from Google News from various mainstream media sites that have corresponding print newspapers. I chose to search for “global warming” on all of the major print news outlets and record the results. Here’s what I found:
Search Term: “global warming”
New York Times: 27,800 records
Washington Post: 4,510 records
Wall Street Journal: 1,720 records
USA Today: 1,800 records
New York Post: 348 records
Now that I established my baseline for global warming articles, I wanted to see if any of those made mention of a “global warming hoax”, “global warming myth”, “myth of global warming” or “climate change myth”. Here are the results:
Search Term: “global warming hoax”
New York Times: 0 records
Washington Post: 3 records
Wall Street Journal: 0 records
USA Today: 0 records
New York Post: 0 articles
Hmm. Maybe I’m not using the right search term. Let me try “global warming myth”:
Search Term: “global warming myth”
New York Times: 0 records
Washington Post: 3 records
Wall Street Journal: 0 records
USA Today: 0 records
New York Post: 0 articles
Still nothing of significance. Let me try “myth of global warming”:
Search Term: “myth of global warming”
New York Times: 0 records
Washington Post: 0 records
Wall Street Journal: 0 records
USA Today: 0 records
New York Post: 0 articles
Zero. Zilch. Nada. Alright. Let’s go for “climate change myth”:
Search Term: “climate change myth”
New York Times: 0 records
Washington Post: 0 records
Wall Street Journal: 0 records
USA Today: 0 records
New York Post: 0 articles
This is getting frustrating. Let’s change it up a bit. How about we look for articles that contain the search phrase “global warming” and the word “hoax” anywhere in the result:
Search Term: “global warming” +hoax
New York Times: 50 records
Washington Post: 61 records
Wall Street Journal: 8 records
USA Today: 9 records
New York Post: 6 articles
Getting warming, but I’m still not convinced there’s a contrived effort by the mainstream media to distort their reporting on global warming. Let’s drop “hoax” and add in “myth”:
Search Term: “global warming” +myth
New York Times: 86 records
Washington Post: 90 records
Wall Street Journal: 20 records
USA Today: 11 records
New York Post: 5 articles
While I am seeing some progress, I’m curious to know if the mainstream media relates “global warming” to the word “debate”. Let’s see:
Search Term: “global warming” +debate
New York Times: 1820 records
Washington Post: 681 records
Wall Street Journal: 338 records
USA Today: 242 records
New York Post: 28 articles
Let’s do a few calculations and see what we come up with. To recap, here are the record counts for results from the five mainstream print media sites that had the term “global warming” in each result:
Search Term: “global warming”
New York Times: 27,800 records
Washington Post: 4,510 records
Wall Street Journal: 1,720 records
USA Today: 1,800 records
New York Post: 348 records
Only one of those also had results with the phrase “global warming hoax”, which was the Washington Post with three. I’d call that a percentage too low to report. Next, we tried “global warming myth”, which yielded the exact same results and, again, it’s such a small number that it’s insignificant. “Myth of global warming” returned even fewer results as did “climate change myth”. A search for “global warming” +hoax yielded some results, with the Washington Post (1.5%) and New York Post (2%) leading the pack. Next, the search for “global warming” +myth gave us a 2% return for the Washington Post and an almost 2% return for the New York Post. And while a search for “global warming” +debate shows us that the media continues to call the global warming hoax a debate with numbers reaching into the double-digits in some cases, it’s clear from their lack of words like myth or hoax that they truly don’t think there is any true debate over climate change - especially when a large portion of people that search for this site explicitly use those same words to describe global warming. Maybe the mainstream media just doesn’t use or understand the vocabulary used by general population to describe something that isn’t true. Thankfully Al Gore understands those words, referring to us skeptics as “moon landing hoaxers” during an interview with 60 Minutes in March.
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About the Author
Skeptic has written 1663 stories on this site.
A social and fiscal conservative, I scour the news for information that disputes the current man-made global warming indoctrination that takes place around the world. I take a rather sarcastic approach to reporting on the nonsense being spewed by the talking heads in the media and the governments around the world.
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