Satirical Ad Shows News Anchor Slowly Submerged While Reporting Weather Disasters

The ad was to debut on Fox News during the Republican Convention. It shows a female mock Fox News anchor slowly submerged under rising waters as she reports on the kind of weather disasters that will become more frequent from man-made climate change. The ad then asks, “What Will it Take for Fox News to Admit that Humans are Changing the Climate?”

Friends of the Earth and Fenton Communications produced the ad. “We want to call out the nefarious role Fox News plays by keeping its audience confused about the climate threat to the country and world,” explained Friends of the Earth U.S. President Erich Pica. “Of course Fox News climate distortion is a big part of why Donald Trump and Republican elected officials also deny climate change, to the nation’s physical and economic peril.”

A number of studies have documented the persistent pattern of bias and distortion in Fox News climate reporting — and those of other Rupert Murdoch broadcast properties around the world — including the Wall Street Journal. Fox News and Fox Business anchors repeatedly call climate change a hoax, claiming that CO2 does not cause global warming and the earth hasn’t warmed from human activities.

“We call on James Murdoch to demand that his father and Fox News chief Roger Ailes stop distorting climate science,” Pica added. “We know James Murdoch agrees that climate change is real and caused by humans. It’s time for him to take a stand, as the heir-apparent head of Fox.”

The ad will be widely distributed on social media using #FOXFoolsOnClimate given that it will not play on Fox News.