Leaked Email Reveals Fox News Editor Instructed Correspondents to Ignore Factual Truths on Global Warming and Pass Them off as Lies!

A leaked email reveals that a Fox News editor told his staffers to refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed or cooled in any given period without immediately pointing out that such theories are based upon questionable data. Critics say such a directive mis-characterizes the issue of global warming as an even-sided scientific debate when in fact the global warming concept is accepted by a vast majority of researchers.

The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record." Sammon's orders for Fox journalists to cast doubt on climate science came amid the network's relentless promotion of the fabricated "Climategate" scandal, which revolved around misrepresentations of emails sent to and from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

"Fox News has consistently delivered false and misleading information to its viewers about the climate crisis," Al Gore, former vice president and Academy Award winner for his documentary on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," wrote in his blog.

A new study from the University of Maryland (PDF) found that while in general folks who watched news were better informed about issues, but there was an exception:

"…they found that regular viewers of the Fox News Channel, which tilts to the right in prime time, were significantly more likely to believe untruths about the Democratic health care overhaul, climate change, and other subjects."

And how did Fox News respond to this critique of the way it is misleading a vast swath of the American public? In a statement, Michael Clemente, who is the senior vice president of news editorial for the network, said:

"The latest Princeton Review ranked the University of Maryland among the top schools for having ‘Students Who Study The Least’ and being the ‘Best Party School’ – given these fine academic distinctions, we’ll regard the study with the same level of veracity it was ‘researched’ with."