We learned earlier this year that Fox was planning to expand into the weather forecast arena. The right-wing propaganda machine is set to launch Fox Weather later this year as a 24-hour streaming service. Yes, it seems the media corporation that has dedicated so much of itself to aggressively denying the reality of climate change is now going to have a special service dedicated to doing so full-time. And according to a report from the New York Times, the “granddaddy of television meteorology” the Weather Channel isn’t thrilled.
The Weather Channel is already planning for Fox Weather’s launch by creating their own streaming service, Weather Channel Plus. They are also, as the Times puts it, “already throwing some shade.”
“They couldn’t even get a headline right about Tropical Storm Bill,” said Nora Zimmett, the network’s chief content officer, referring to a FoxNews.com article that some meteorologists criticized because it claimed that a relatively benign storm posed a “massive” risk to the Eastern Seaboard.
“I applaud Fox getting into the weather space, but they should certainly leave the lifesaving information to the experts,” said Ms. Zimmett, who worked at Fox News in the 2000s. She called climate change “a topic that is too important to politicize, and if they do that, they will be doing Americans a disservice.”
A Fox Weather spokesperson responded to that very valid criticism by saying, “While the Weather Channel is focused on trolling FoxNews.com for unrelated stories, Fox Weather is busy preparing the debut of our innovative platform to deliver critical coverage to an incredibly underserved market.”
Weather mommy and weather daddy are fighting.
While Fox Weather appears to be attracting decent talent—from the sound of it, even trying to poach experts from the Weather Channel itself—I don’t know how much we’re supposed to trust their expertise while working under the same umbrella that hosts rabid climate deniers like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.
(via NYT, image: Fox News via Media Matters)
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