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‘I started just connecting the dots’: ==Iowa TV meteorologist hounded off the air over climate change reporting
July 10, 2023
exerpts:
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The harassment started to intensify as TV meteorologist Chris Gloninger did more reporting on climate change during local newscasts — outraged emails and even a threat to show up at his house.
Gloninger said he had been recruited, in part, to “shake things up” at the Iowa station where he worked, but backlash was building. The man who sent him a series of threatening emails was charged with third-degree harassment. The Des Moines station asked him to dial back his coverage, facing what he called an understandable pressure to maintain ratings.
“I started just connecting the dots between extreme weather and climate change, and then the volume of pushback started to increase quite dramatically,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press.
So, on June 21, he announced that he was leaving KCCI-TV — and his 18-year career in broadcast journalism altogether.
Gloninger’s experience is all too common among meteorologists across the country who are encountering reactions from viewers as they tie climate change to extreme temperatures, blizzards, tornadoes and floods in their local weather reports. For on-air meteorologists, the anti-science trend that has emerged in recent years compounds a deepening skepticism of the news media.
Many meteorologists say it’s a reflection of a more hostile political landscape that has also affected workers in a variety of jobs previously seen as nonpartisan, including librarians, school board officials and election workers.
It’s not just a problem in the United States. Meteorologists in Spain, France, Australia and the U.K. also have been subjected to complaintsand harassment, said Jennie King, the London-based head of climate research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Some meteorologists don’t see harassment as a direct result of their reporting on climate change; it’s a pervasive issue in the industry and targets some more than others. TV reporters are more likely than reporters in other mediums to say they have been harassed or threatened, according to Pew Research Center polling in 2022.
The gaps between Republicans’ and Democrats’ confidencein both the scientific community and the news media have been the widest in nearly five decades of polling by the General Society Survey, a long-standing trends survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. But confidence in both declined across the aisle last year.
“Science is under attack in this country,”said Chitra Kumar, managing director of Climate and Energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s this larger trend. It’s really unacceptable from our perspective that anyone should have to fear for their lives for merely stating the facts.”
Sauce/more: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/i-started-just-connecting-the-dots-iowa-tv-meteorologist-hounded-off-the-air-over-climate-change-reporting-ef925139?mod=home-page