Bari Weiss vs. climate change
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Steven E. Koonin
13 min read
Koonin is quoted extensively in The Free Press's climate coverage. Understanding his background as a former BP chief scientist, Obama-era DOE official, and controversial climate skeptic author provides essential context for evaluating the sources being promoted.
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Fossil fuel divestment
16 min read
The article discusses The Free Press's dismissal of divestment as 'pointless.' Understanding the actual history, scale, and debate around the divestment movement—including its successes and criticisms—gives readers factual grounding to evaluate such claims.
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American Enterprise Institute
15 min read
The article mentions AEI as a 'conservative think tank funded by fossil fuel billionaires' publishing climate op-eds. Understanding AEI's history, funding sources, and role in shaping policy debates provides context for evaluating the credibility of sources cited.
In theory, I should be a fan of The Free Press, the outlet founded by Bari Weiss.
The publication preaches “honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence.” I founded HEATED on the same principles. The Free Press also promises to chase stories “that are ignored or misconstrued in the service of an ideological narrative.” Similarly, my mission has always been to pursue climate stories that challenge profit-driven ideological narratives about the crisis.
In practice, however, I’ve found that The Free Press doesn’t live up to its stated values when it comes to climate change reporting. Over and over, it allows its readers to get spun like a basketball on Big Oil’s finger.
I’m looking at The Free Press for a very specific reason. Weiss is the new editor in chief of CBS News. And last week, as I reported, CBS laid off almost its entire climate unit, widely regarded as one of the strongest climate reporting teams in national television news.
There’s no confirmation that Weiss was involved in those layoffs. But without that team, the best clue we have about the future of CBS’s climate coverage is the climate coverage Weiss has already overseen.
For this reason, I recently read every climate change article The Free Press has published since 2021. And for all its rhetoric of challenging “ideological narratives,” the outlet has never once interrogated the dominant ideological narratives the fossil fuel industry and its allies have spent decades refining: namely, that climate impacts are not that serious, that meaningful solutions are unrealistic and/or stupid, and that fossil fuels represent the only path to prosperity.
Instead, The Free Press tends to publish climate pieces that reinforce polluter-friendly framing. To show you what I mean, here is a list of the outlet’s standalone climate articles, and the tired fossil fuel talking points they attempt to rebrand as rebellious free thought.
“Climate Change Did Not Cause The L.A. Fires.” This is a Q&A interview with Steve Koonin, a former BP scientist hired by the Trump administration to co-author a report downplaying the severity of climate change. He argues wildfires aren’t getting worse due to climate change, and that climate change isn’t that big a deal. (Climate impacts are
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