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Fox going green …

May 9th, 2007 · No Comments

The tide is coming in fast with companies ‘jumping on’ the green bandwagon. Grist got an advance copy of Rupert Murdoch’s speech where he announced that a News Corporation (parent of Fox News, 20th Century Fox, HarperCollins, MySpace.com, etc…) climate change plan to reduce the News Corporation’s emissions and, even more importantly, “to weave climate messaging into the content and programming of News Corp.’s many holdings.” (quoting Grist)

“The challenge is to revolutionize the [climate change] message,” Murdoch told the crowd. He emphasized the need to “make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.”

The News Corporation plan is to cut its carbon footprint by 10 percent by 2012 — not revolutionary, but something. But, as Murdoch pointed out, that isn’t the key:

“Our audience’s carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours … Imagine if we succeed in inspiring our audiences to reduce their own impacts on climate change by just 1 percent. That would be like turning the state of California off for almost two months.”

What now will be interesting to see is how this plays out in the actual direction of News Corporation programming.

  • Will Fox stop peddling junk science and featuring Skeptics?
  • Will Fox no longer favor politicians who embrace skeptics?
  • Will Fox challenge the Administration’s denial of Global Warming’s impacts and the need to take serious action?
  • Will Fox execute a 180 on the politics it has been supporting since its inception?

And, well, Walmart and Kohl’ s in dueling huge solar announcements. News Corporation announcing a major change. What will be next on the Corporate Front in the war against Global Warming?

Tags: business practice · Global Warming

0 responses so far ↓

  • 1 jimmy // May 10, 2007 at 7:19 am

    You can get global warming cheerleaders and zombies anywhere on the dial… now we have to suffer it at Fox too? Geezzz…

  • 2 Doug Snodgrass // May 10, 2007 at 8:48 am

    Did someone say

    cheerleaders

    and zombies?

    Sorry, that was too easy. 😉

  • 3 Steve Caratzas // May 10, 2007 at 10:47 am

    Ahem: “Fair and balanced.”

    Unquote.

  • 4 A Siegel // May 10, 2007 at 10:48 am

    Jimmy — Perhaps Fox has chosen to make you work to get your disinformation. Perhaps Fox is tired of having polls consistently showing that their viewers are, factually, the least informed people who claim to care about “news”. Well, you always will have Rush …

  • 5 jimmy // May 11, 2007 at 10:05 am

    The six news sources cited most often by people who knew the most about current events were: “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” (counted as one), tied with Web sites of major newspapers; next came “News Hour With Jim Lehrer”; then “The O’Reilly Factor,” which was tied with National Public Radio; and Rush Limbaugh’s radio program.

  • 6 jimmy // May 11, 2007 at 10:20 am

    Here’s the Pew Quiz

    I got 7 of 9 putting me in the 77th percentile.

    I missed that the Senate had passed the minimum wage increase. I thought only the House had. I also didn’t see the question about the minimum wage amount… I knew that one too.

  • 7 Doug Snodgrass // May 11, 2007 at 10:27 am

    This kind of supports the idea that Fox’s audience is not very well informed about current events, and given the size of Fox’s viewing audience, Jimmy’s reference doesn’t paint a flattering picture of the Fox viewer.

  • 8 A Siegel // May 11, 2007 at 11:43 am

    Jimmy: I don’t think you are typical in terms of knowledge levels. Do you?

  • 9 A Siegel // May 11, 2007 at 11:49 am

    Jimmy — Take a look at the PIPA polling re “Misperceptions, The Media, and the Iraq War” (http://65.109.167.118/pipa/pdf/oct03/IraqMedia_Oct03_rpt.pdf). From page 12:

    The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR or PBS are less likely to have misperceptions. These variations cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographic characteristics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the demographic subgroups of each audience.

    Hmmmm ….

    Wonder if PIPA specifically polled on Global Warming whether the results would be any different.

  • 10 Doug Snodgrass // May 11, 2007 at 11:52 am

    Personally speaking, I’ll never dispute that Jimmy is not typical in terms of knowledge levels or intelligence. Though we frequently find ourselves with differing views, I believe him to be very intelligent.

  • 11 jimmy // May 11, 2007 at 12:21 pm

    I usually listen to NPR for daily news on the radio… A.T.C. and Marketplace in particular. I’ll usually flip Rush on; on my way to lunch but that’s mostly entertainment.

    I go to Google News to read the headlines about once a day… I hit Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit for national politics and Bill Hobbs for state and local news/politics.

    I get my Green fill here at Ecotality and over at greenoptions.com.

    I’ve also got some Google Alerts for Cellulosic Ethanol, etc…

    Very seldom do I watch any news on TV news but when I do it’s usually either local news or Fox (I never watch any of the talking heads… they annoy the hell out of me). When something big happens like Katrina or a Presidential debate I’ll usually flip back and forth between Foxnews and CNN.

    I try to either watch or read every major presidential address because I believe that’s important too.

    I think the NPR news is good but they’ve got a hard tilt left. Fox news caters to its audience a bit and obviously focuses right on editorial views with the likes of Hannity and ORiely (niether of which I can stand).