Climate Change denial is prevalent in Grand Rapids news reporting

It is been known for years that there are many people and organizations in the US who do not believe that climate change is real. 

Some of those people and organizations have been influenced by the fossil fuel industry, which has paid organizations to publicly deny that climate change is a reality. For example, in Grand Rapids, the Acton Institute, an organization that believes that Christianity and Capitalism are great bedfellows, has taken money from ExxonMobil to promote climate denial.

However, there is also another former of climate denial, one that is more subtle, but just as dangerous.

Since January 1st of this year I have been monitoring MLive, WOODTV8, WZZM 13 and WXMI 17 around several critical issues – the Grand Rapids Public Schools, Public Safety/GRPD, local elections and climate change/climate justice. The data above speaks for itself regarding what the local news focuses.

However, beyond the data, the other major issue with reporting on matters like climate change is how the news frames the issue.

Most of the local news coverage has centered around how mild the winter has been in Michigan, but rarely to they attribute the mild weather to climate change. In fact, in the 20 total stories that have been climate change related, only twice did the coverage actually use the phrase climate change when referring to the cause of the mild winter. 

Other stories have focused winter or tourist businesses, which have been negatively impacted because of climate change, plus numerous stories that have centered on nuclear energy in Michigan, because of the Governor’s energy policy, which will include funding to get the Palisades nuclear power plant back online. However, in climate change is not named in any of these stories.

The most recent climate change story to appear in local news was an MLive story from Tuesday entitled, ‘Excessive heat’ already being highlighted in extended forecast. 

The MLive story provides graphics on upcoming days where excessive heat will occur, along with warnings to people about engaging in strenuous work outdoors. The MLive article goes on to state: 

The heat index forecast for next Tuesday shows a feels-like temperature between 95 degrees and 100 degrees will be widespread across the southern half of Lower Michigan.

The MLive article also admits that we will experience, “an overall warmer-than-normal summer.”

Unfortunately, the MLive reporter never uses the phrase climate change in the story, meaning they never talk about the causes of the hotter than normal weather.

Now, I don’t know if MLive or the other local daily news stations have a formal policy on climate change and I don’t know if there are other internal or external factors that prevents local news from naming climate change or discussing the causes of climate change. Regardless of the reasons, to not name climate change or talk about the causes of one of the most critical issues of our day is nothing short of climate change denial.