The liberal group Media Matters is claiming cable news outlets “mostly marginalized people of color” by not having enough black, Latino, Asian or Middle Eastern people on TV to talk about President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.
The group’s study “found that cable news outlets mostly marginalized people of color from discussions about climate change and the Paris accord following President Donald Trump’s June 1 announcement that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.”
“This trend is particularly problematic in discussions of climate change because studies show that climate change disproportionately affects black and Hispanic communities,” Media Matters researcher Dina Radtke wrote.
Media Matters was founded by Clinton political operative David Brock in 2004 for the purpose of “comprehensively monitoring, analyzing and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,” according to its website.
Climate change disproportionately impacts people of color but minority voices are largely excluded from discussions: https://t.co/fuxYDrK7eg pic.twitter.com/URu0QzIYSu
— Media Matters (@mmfa) June 9, 2017
Radtke wrote that Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN had 286 guests on to talk about the Paris accord between June 1 and June 2. Out of those “only about 17 percent were people of color — 9 percent were black, 3 percent were Hispanic, 4 percent were of Asian descent, and less than 1 percent were of Middle Eastern descent,” she wrote.
“The lack of representation is striking because studies show that climate change disproportionately affects minorities,” she wrote, citing research from political activist groups, like the NAACP and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Environmentalists often argue minority groups are the most “vulnerable” to global warming because they tend to be poorer than white Americans. So, extreme weather events that scientists claim will get worse with more global warming will disproportionately affect minorities.
But on the flip side those groups are also disproportionately harmed by increases to their energy bills that come with policies pushing green energy production.
A 2014 Pacific Research Institute report estimated black families in Ohio would see a $408 increase to their yearly electricity bills due to the Clean Power Plan — a regulation on power plants imposed by the Obama administration.
The Trump administration is in the process of reviewing the Clean Power Plan, and is expected to end up scrapping the rule altogether.
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