Fox Boss Demanded Skepticism on Global Warming

Liberal watchdog Media Matters has an email that it says shows how the honchos at Fox News order news to be slanted: It comes from Fox exec Bill Sammon, who sent it to news staffers on the subject of global warming: "...we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies."

The email went out after a Fox reporter noted a UN finding that 2000-2009 was going to be "the warmest decade on record," and it had an immediate effect on subsequent reports. At Salon, Alex Pareene writes "even by the low standards of partisan pseudoscience, this memo is horrific." There's debate about whether humans are causing the planet to warm, he writes, but the "warming itself is a proven fact." (More climate change stories.)