![]() Gloninger, 38, is moving back to Boston to care for aging parents, but he says he’s leaving Des Moines having realized that a small percentage of people who reject climate change make up an overwhelming percentage of the negative comments he has gotten. It’s really unacceptable from our perspective that anyone should have to fear for their lives for merely stating the facts.” “Science is under attack in this country,” said Chitra Kumar, managing director of Climate and Energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. But confidence in both declined across the aisle last year. The gaps between Republicans’ and Democrats’ confidence in both the scientific community and the news media have been the widest in nearly five decades of polling by the General Society Survey, a long-standing trends survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. Jessica Hafner, chief meteorologist at Columbia, Missouri’s KMIZ-TV, said that with the exception of a few hecklers, she’s seen people respond well to data-based reporting because they want to know what’s going on around them. Some meteorologists have seen public interest in climate change grow even in largely red states as flooding, drought and other severe weather has ravaged farmland and homes. “If you stop reporting on relevant and important facts about what’s going on in your community because you’re hearing from the one out of 10, it means you are not serving the other nine out of 10,” Maibach said. It is increasingly common to at least show its effects, he said, like highlighting the trend of more days in a year hitting temperatures above 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius).Įven if that kind of reporting resonates with most people, the criticism can be the loudest. Now TV meteorologists across the country report on climate change, though Maibach said they don’t always use those words. Many meteorologists say it’s a reflection of a more hostile political landscape that has also affected workers in a variety of jobs previously seen as nonpartisan, including librarians, school board officials and election workers. For on-air meteorologists, the anti-science trend that has emerged in recent years compounds a deepening skepticism of the news media. Gloninger’s experience is all too common among meteorologists across the country who are encountering reactions from viewers as they tie climate change to extreme temperatures, blizzards, tornadoes and floods in their local weather reports. So, on June 21, he announced that he was leaving KCCI-TV - and his 18-year career in broadcast journalism altogether. “I started just connecting the dots between extreme weather and climate change, and then the volume of pushback started to increase quite dramatically,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. The Des Moines station asked him to dial back his coverage, facing what he called an understandable pressure to maintain ratings. The man who sent him a series of threatening emails was charged with third-degree harassment. Gloninger said he had been recruited, in part, to “shake things up” at the Iowa station where he worked, but backlash was building. DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The harassment started to intensify as TV meteorologist Chris Gloninger did more reporting on climate change during local newscasts - outraged emails and even a threat to show up at his house. ![]()
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