How Cable News Covered the Landmark Climate Change Report

On Tuesday, the federal government released the National Climate Assessment (NCA), the definitive account of climate change’s already-occurring impacts on the U.S., and of how those impacts will only be felt more acutely as time goes on.

So, how did the cable news networks cover it?

Al Jazeera America was the clear leader in coverage.  Besides reporting directly on the assessment and its contents, AJAM had reporters in San Francisco and South Florida to cover the impacts of sea level rise on coastal communities, one in the West looking at drastically low snowpack and drought, and featured NCA authors, climate scientists, and others explaining the assessment’s findings in-depth.  AJAM’s 8pm News hosted by John Seigenthaler devoted over half of its hour-long running time to the climate assessment and its implications, more than Fox News spent over the course of the day.

Both CNN and MSNBC covered the landmark report in depth, looking into the impacts the U.S. is already seeing from the changing climate, breaking them down region-by-region, and inviting experts on to discuss.

How Cable News Covered the Landmark Climate Change Report