How New York Times, NPR And Wall Street Journal Print Fossil Fuel Talking Points Without Full Disclosure

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/05/15/2016501/new-york-times-wall-street-journal-npr-neglect-fossil-fuel-funding-of-climate-denier-talking-points/

By Rebecca Leber on May 15, 2013

Major news outlets often mislead readers by failing to report the fossil fuel funding of the conservative think tanks they cite and quote, according to a new study from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Journalists commonly cited eight groups with known oil, gas, and coal funding: The American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and Institute for Energy Research (and its arm American Energy Alliance).

In total, they were cited 357 times, but outlets identified their funding from the Koch brothers, American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, or General Motors a mere one-third of the time

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Based on a Nexus search, UCS’s Elliott Negin found the rate of reporting varies widely across outlets: Politico and the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press disclosed funding over 40 percent of the time. The two largest papers in the country, USA Today and Wall Street Journal (owned by Rupert Murdoch), disclosed this information the least. And if Koch Industries succeeds in its bid for the Los Angeles Times, along with seven other major papers, it is possible the average will drop even more.

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