In the recent Media Matters piece “CBS’ leadership in broadcast news climate coverage is chipping away under Bari Weiss,” the authors lament what they describe as a dramatic decline in climate coverage at CBS News. This shift is long overdue. CBS News appears to be recalibrating away from climate alarmism and toward more balanced editorial judgment.
For years, Media Matters celebrated CBS News as the leader in corporate broadcast climate coverage, noting that it aired more segments and more climate “solutions” content than its competitors. In 2025, CBS News accounted for 48 percent of total broadcast climate minutes. However, since Bari Weiss took over as editor-in-chief in October, the volume of climate stories declined sharply — just 20 minutes of climate coverage across seven segments through the end of the year as seen in the figure below.
Media Matters frames the reduced coverage as a dangerous retreat from “science-based” reporting. But what the article documents is something else entirely, a return to balanced reporting and a grudging understanding that climate change is not the dire threat so often claimed by CBS in the past, and that other matters are more important to the media company’s audience.
Among Media Matters complaints was CBS coverage of a story in January discussing the fact that polar bear populations are expanding and the bears appear healthy despite sea ice decline. Media Matters treated that as an outlier story unworthy of airtime, but reporting positive ecological data when it exists is honest journalism. When evidence complicates a narrative, responsible newsrooms report it.
As meteorologist Ryan Maue, Ph.D. observed on X, “CBS News under Bari Weiss has completely ‘zeroed out’ climate alarmism on [the] network.” He added, “Only story in months was about polar bears being too fat.” That is not a network abandoning science. That is a network stepping back from saturation coverage that often blurred the line between reporting and advocacy.
Even more revealing is Media Matters’ concern that CBS News ended its partnership with the activist consortium Covering Climate Now. As Maue noted in a second X post, “CBS News ditched its cozy partnership with climate activist outfit Covering Climate Now, which controls content and coordinates narratives across media landscape.” That move suggests CBS is distancing itself from coordinated advocacy directed by outside interest groups and reasserting editorial independence.
The Media Matters article portrays Weiss’ leadership as importing “climate skeptics and contrarians” and reducing “institutional capacity” for climate reporting. But what it truly documents is a reduction in volume — not a demonstrated reduction in accuracy. Climate reporting does not become more rigorous simply by increasing minutes of airtime.
Quantity is not quality.
For years, broadcast networks often framed climate as a crisis requiring urgent political action, uncritically reporting unverified alarming climate claims as truth and frequently integrating policy advocacy language into reporting. Media Matters’ own praise for CBS’ past leadership underscores this: the network “devot[ed] greater attention to climate solutions.” “Solutions” coverage often meant amplifying regulatory proposals and emissions reduction campaigns.
A pullback from that approach does not leave a “void in the national climate information ecosystem,” as Media Matters claims. Rather, it is a return to honest journalism by putting the potential dangers of climate change in the proper context relative to other important, more immediate and pressing, public policy matters of greater concern to the public.
Climate change remains a legitimate topic for coverage, but it is not the only issue facing the country. While a majority of Americans polled express concern about climate change, it consistently ranks low as a top voting priority, often ranked at or near the bottom of national polls—sometimes 12th or lower. Editorial judgment involves prioritization. If CBS executives concluded that previous coverage levels were disproportionate or advocacy-leaning, adjusting course is not retreat. It is a well-considered recalibration.
Broadcast news should inform, not advocate.
Media Matters worries that fewer climate segments will leave voters “less prepared.” That incorrectly presumes that constant exposure to climate framing is inherently educational. Overexposure can produce fatigue, polarization, and declining trust — trends widely documented by the mainstream media.
By stepping back from coordinated activist partnerships and reducing overtly alarmist framing, CBS may be responding to audience skepticism about advocacy journalism.
While Media Matters is alarmed over the decline in hyperbolic reporting about climate change, savvy viewers may see this as a welcome return to journalistic independence and unbiased reporting. With the polls showing that trust in the media is at all-time lows, this shift, by restoring integrity to reporting, may also restore the public’s trust in media.
If CBS is choosing to prioritize balance over saturation, evidence over narrative coordination, and editorial autonomy over activist alignment, that is not something to lament. It is something to be applauded.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
“The modern culture of science—cutthroat, mercenary, winner-take-all—practically invites fraud.”
Media partnerships with advocacy groups is never a good idea.
Unless I approve of the advocacy group.
Did I say that last part out loud?
Like https://coveringclimatenow.org/ ?
I think they filled the vacated time with TDS commentary. CBS has to produce something to fill air time. Whatever takes the least work?
Me, being out of the news media loop, have never encountered “Media Matters for America”. Thus I just went and read what Wikipedia has to say about this group.
I have read that the Washington Post dispensed with a bunch of climate story writers, and now CBS. I wonder where an unemployed climate writer of this type goes. Local school systems are looking for bus drivers. Pass the word.
JH:
Lol. Reading a liberally biased website [wikipedia] about another liberally biased website
[MM] must have been quite informative. 😉
When I query any AI, the phrase “Do not use wikipedia.” is always included.
The unemployed climate writers are good at writing fiction, but your idea of bus drivers
would be much more useful. Good suggestion.
Would you entrust your children to them?
Funny that was my quick thought too – they’ll probably be trying to infect young minds.
“Now remember, Johnny – tell mommy she needs to work harder to reduce your family’s carbon footprint.”
The new woke, purple-haired, 50 face piercing, bus driver would not only be convincing Johnny to indoctrinate his parents; he would also be convincing Johnny that they/them is actually Janey, that Muslims are universally good people, and that the fascist in chief doesn’t speak for them.
Wiki? 🤣🤣🤣. Even the founder of wiki says don’t use it—totally captured and controlled by the left. Media Matters has a long history of narrative massage and manipulation. I might use it to find out the population of a city or if a well known person is still alive, but nothing much else.
I have not recently checked. Does Wiki still show that 1+1=2? Or is it promulgating that math is racist?
Okay but they are on supervised probation for the next 10 years for crimes of misinformation committed without remorse.
Watts is too timid about acknowledging the dishonesty of alarmist organizations. Coordinating the dissemination of climate propaganda, as Covering Climate Now does, makes it a deceitful organization that deserves to be called out as such. True believers in the climate hoax will squawk and denounce honesty, of course, but people will be much better informed by understanding that they have been continuously misinformed with unscientific zealotry.
Your first sentence isn’t correct. For almost 20 years, this site has been the Number 1 global site in the destruction of the climate liars, criminals, fraudsters, useless scientists and nitwits, and their climate crisis hoax. How has that been timid?
For a minute I thought you were talking about CCN. 😆😅🤣😂
Define “too timid” in the context of your post.
There is still plenty of ‘crisis/emergency’ hyperbole on the CBS site to excite any climate neurotic:
. if seas rise by a little more than 3 feet — as some studies suggest will happen by the end of the century
. the oceans have been warming rapidly
. Climate change and warming oceans could potentially be driving sharks to the Southern Hemisphere’s colder waters
. Wildfire smoke pollution linked to tens of thousands of deaths in U.S. per year, [model] study finds
. Scientists have reported some rare good news from the Arctic … polar bears are thriving … but … the gains by the Svalbard bears will be temporary, and could be reversed
. The planet is entering an era of global “water bankruptcy” UN report warns … rising temperatures, are largely to blame …
And so on.
A complete list of things caused by global warming
Wow!
It does identify “a few” of the Trans-Reality Activist claims.
Should read “SUPPOSEDLY caused by.”
Like I said. Until the “mainstream media” admits that there is no “crisis,” SINCE THERE ISN’T, they’re still propaganda pushers. A bit of reduction is nice, but they have a LOT more work to do before those capable of critical thinking will take them seriously.
That list is precious. Would make Herr Goebbels proud.
Perhaps Bari Weiss should come across the pond and work for the BBC.
I fear if he did, he would immediately be arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for violation of the (non-free) speech laws in UK.
That will not do. Call the schoolmaster!
And what “dangers” would those be?
That’s the issue – the “dangers” of “climate change” are completely fabricated. The warming since the depths of The Little Ice Age has been 100% beneficial. A warmer climate IS BETTER, not worse.
And built into that is the alarmist view that “climate change” is “human induced,” for which they have not a scrap of empirical evidence.
I agree with the overall tone of this post, but the notion of “dangers” or “issues” that are “caused by climate change” are utter nonsense. As is the notion that atmospheric CO2 has anything to do with it, when 10x today’s levels couldn’t prevent GLACIATION in the distant past.
People who believe today’s climate is “a problem” and that we are the cause of it is the result of nearly 40 years of propaganda. Good on Bari Weiss for dialing it down a bit, but there’s much more to be done in that respect.
When the “mainstream media” starts telling people that there IS NO ‘CLIMATE CRISIS,’ then we’ll know honest journalism has returned.
The overall content and timbre of your post is agreeable. However, there are some nits that need to be highlighted.
The qualifier of “potential” mitigates your concern. “Potential danger” does not define the danger as real, merely possible. We are never safe. There are potential dangers everywhere. We have a satellite coming down with an estimated ~1 in 4000 chance of getting hit by the debris (don’t ask, I do not know how that number was contrived).
Issue: a topic for debate or discussion. Too often in social/common language, context derived definitions, “issue” is conflated with “problem.” Such is the fluidity of language.
In point of concurrence, “climate change” and “climate” which involve statistical calculations, cannot (literally) cause anything as both are the result of changing weather. The effect is never the cause.
Be aware the USA is a nation of lawfare where lawyers jump at the chance to reap 5% to 15% (sometimes more) litigating a cause. Were, today, “mainstream media” publishes that the is no “climate crisis,” the litigation would commence as fast as the paperwork gets filed. And as we have seen in other WUWT articles, there are nefarious attempts to tilt the judicial system in favor of Trans-Reality Activist lawsuits.
One of the best non-science oriented articles published.
Remember folks, it is not CBS it is See B.S.
Media Mutters reliably promotes stupid. They are the ensign showing us what direction not to take.
It would be a good idea if Canada’s publicly-funded CBC followed suit and gave viewers and listeners more balanced coverage of climate and environmental events. Instead, it provides nothing but one-sided full-fledged or semi-alarmist viewpoints on the most minor weather issues constantly trying to equate them with human activities. It’s tries particularly hard to convince its audience that China and India are rapidly transitioning to renewables like wind and solar, while it glosses over the facts those two countries are the 1st and 3rd largest carbon emitters and have no intentions of reducing their fossil fuel consumption. Maybe this is a major reason that the network’s ratings are so low; it’s used up whatever credibility it ever had on climate issues.
Anthony, your writing still embodies attempts to present a fair & balanced (Source: Fox News) approach to your topics almost unmatched (no examples come to mind, but I’m sure they’re out there…somewhere) in today’s opinion-based ‘news.’ Using only two examples from this article:
You said CBS’ recent climate articles represent “…more balanced editorial judgment….” Well, I’d give you a more balanced reporting, but it don’t hardly a’tall reach honest-to-goodness balanced! True balance would offer assessments of how the ‘science’ they claim to treasure is the result of MODELS, not found in the data so often missing from their proclamations of imminent apocalypse.
Second, it seems you leaned pretty far in maintaining objectivity when you gave CBS credit for “…a return to honest journalism by putting the potential dangers of climate change in the proper context,,,” Again, while it may be a start of a possible ‘return to honest journalism,’ the rest of their current programming shows no consistent application of such an approach. Compare their political, economic and social ‘reporting’ to facts on the ground, and bias is rampantly evident.
Finally, I hope you recognize this comment is truly one of admiration and respect for, literally, an amazing path you have blazed in the face of unceasing criticism and opposition, While I sat dumbfounded at the decline of factual analysis going back to Rush Limbaugh’s prophetic warnings about political correctness pervasive corruption of our country and its institutions, you took up the banner, not of an opposing opinion but of facts, at a time when you had to craft that banner yourself.
As a bystander in the war for truth, I salute you. Keep up the
goodgreat work!!