This Is How Little Time Television News Devotes To Climate Change

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Meet the PressClimate change got more coverage on broadcast news in 2013 than in the previous few years, but the issue still didn't get nearly as much attention as it did in 2009, Media Matters found in a new analysis.

ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox together featured more coverage in 2013 than they did in 2012. The amount of airtime granted to climate change on both the Sunday shows and the nightly news was up, too -- to a total of 27 minutes, and an hour and 42 minutes, respectively, for the entire year. The progressive media watchdog group Media Matters totaled the time broadcasters devoted to climate change for a new report released Thursday.

The Media Matters report deemed overall coverage of climate change "tepid," and noted there were many news events in 2013 that created opportunities for coverage, including carbon dioxide levels that exceeded 400 parts per million in May, President Barack Obama's major climate policy address in June, and the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment in September.

Coverage peaked in 2009, the year of the Copenhagen climate summit and the release of hundreds emails stolen from climate scientists. It was much lower for the three years that followed.

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