Flush with enviro cash, AP piled on the climate alarmism

FPI / May 23, 2023

The Associated Press seems certain that a climate catastrophe is on the horizon. It has pumped out at least 64 stories in just over a year warning of environmental calamity, according to a new media study.

What makes the AP so sure that the climate apocalypse is coming?

Could it be the $8 million in grant money the "press service" has recently received from leftist environmental alarmist groups?

Media Research Center (MRC) Business charted the articles and the alarmist language used following the multimillion-dollar grant.

In February 2022, the AP, which feeds news outlets worldwide, received grants totaling $8 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Quadrivium; the Rockefeller Foundation; and the Walton Family Foundation.

Soon after the influx of cash, AP said it would hire 20 new writers to form a climate swat team to “enhance the global understanding of climate change and its impact across the world.”

MRC Business noted of the AP's reporting: “The term ‘Climate Change’ itself appeared a whopping 212 times. ‘Warming’ and ‘Global Warming’ appeared 140 times collectively. ‘Extreme(s)’ emerged 32 times and ‘Disaster(s)’ and ‘Climate Disaster’ appeared a collective 30 times. One Dec. 9, 2022, AP story was headlined: ‘New abnormal: Climate disaster damage down to $268 billion.’ ”

The MRC Business study authors wrote, “The so-called ‘journalism’ AP has been doing on climate involves behaving like the de facto mouthpiece for its major left-wing donors who have an obsession with pushing apocalyptic climate narratives on the Internet.”

MRC Business highlighted one AP story about a United Nations report that included several climate buzzwords. “Deadly with extreme weather now, climate change is about to get so much worse,” it opened. “It is likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier and way more dangerous in the next 18 years with an ‘unavoidable’ increase in risks, a new United Nations science report says,” it added.

MRC Business said that while the AP has noted its funding on related stories, a concern is that a partner does not also include that note.

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