Scientific American editor: Fox News wouldn't let me talk about climate change
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When Michael Moyer, an editor at Scientific American magazine, went on Fox and Friends this morning, he was asked to talk about "trends in the future." Before the taping, Moyer put together a list of trends, which included climate change. "The only interesting thing that the scientific community is sure will happen ... is that climate change is going to get worse. So I put that as one of my talking points," Moyer wrote in a blog post about his TV appearance.
But, a producer at the network "politely and matter-of-factly" asked him replace climate change "with something else." Moyer obliged and talked about discovering life on other planets instead. His tweet about the topic change, however, sparked outrage on social media, especially in light of a recent survey that found Fox's climate-change coverage to be only 28 percent accurate.
Moyer, however, says the incident was blown way out of proportion. "To be honest I'm surprised this is garnering as much interest as it seems to be," he wrote. "We all understand that Fox comes with a political point of view, one which has served them well in the ratings hunt."
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Jordan Valinsky is the lead writer for Speed Reads. Before joining The Week, he wrote for New York Observer's tech blog, Betabeat, and tracked the intersection between popular culture and the internet for The Daily Dot. He graduated with a degree in online journalism from Ohio University.