Climate Uncovered: Media Fail to Connect Hurricane Florence to Climate Change
Hurricane Florence Media Report
Public Citizen analysis shows that U.S. media have largely failed to connect Hurricane Florence to climate change – even despite an attribution study quantify the impact of climate change on the storm.
Summary
In eight days of coverage, climate change was mentioned in just 7.5 percent of pieces on Florence in the top 50 U.S. newspapers by circulation, and 4.3 percent of major broadcast segments. ABC and 19 of the papers failed to mention climate change at all in connection with Florence.
When outlets fail to connect these events to global warming, audiences are left uninformed about some of the most critical decisions we face. We need a serious national discussion about the urgent, existential threat from climate change and how we are going to fix it – and it’s very difficult to have that conversation when media won’t talk about the topic.David Arkush, managing director of Public Citizen’s Climate Program