Is Fox News pushing climate change skepticism?

The "FoxLeaks" continue at the liberal site Media Matters. The latest: An internal email reportedly distributed by Fox News Washington bureau chief Bill Sammon in December 2009, during the height of the "Climategate" furor. The memo suggests that reporters "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed... without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question." Is this proof of top-down bias at FNC favoring climate-change "skepticism"? (Watch a discussion about the memo)

Can we stop pretending Fox is "balanced"? This memo is "horrific" even by Fox's "low standards of partisan pseudoscience," says Alex Pareene in Salon. What drove Sammon to urge "Fox's supposed 'straight news' anchors and reporters to adopt right-wing spin" this time? A report that 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record. That's just a "true fact," accepted by even those "paid to deny" the "scientific consensus" on manmade global warming.

"Fox News chief again caught demanding conservative spin"

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Fox isn't the one revealing a bias: "Fortunately for mankind, science is not democracy," says Lachlan Markay in NewsBusters. Plenty of "credible and accomplished scientists" are skeptical about the climate change "consensus." So Sammon is just promoting "the most basic tenets of science and journalism — skepticism and political neutrality." If "Fox haters" have a problem with that, they're the ones with a bias, not Fox.

"Far Left attacks FNC for telling reporters not to take sides..."

Fox should worry about its leak: That would be a fair point if not for the "worrisome" all-caps "IMMEDIATELY," says Jon Bershad in Mediaite. "Climategate" hadn't been "officially debunked" when Sammon wrote his memo, but it was clear that the "controversy" was overblown, especially at Fox News. In that way, these Media Matters leaks are like the WikiLeaks: They mostly confirm what we already knew... and there are more to come.

"Newly leaked memo over global warming raises questions..."