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This morning I appeared on Fox and Friends. Afterwards I tweeted out a few things that have garnered some attention, including this:

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Fox & Friends producer wanted to talk about future trends. I said #1 will be impacts of climate change. I was told to pick something else.
5:41 AM - 30 Apr 2014

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Let me provide a fuller account:

Two days ago a producer for Fox & Friends contacted Scientific American’s media person about doing a segment along the lines of “Crystal ball: What will science and technology bring over the next 50 years?” Apparently they had seen the recent Pew poll about whether Americans believed that far-out technologies such as teleporters were going to exist by the year 2064. The show wanted someone to come on and give some TRUE/FALSE verdicts.

I agreed to do the spot, but I said that it’s a fool’s game to guess at what technologies are going to exist in a half-century. Instead I could do a “trends for the future” in science. They said OK. A 50-year-timescale is pretty far out. About the only interesting thing that the scientific community is sure will happen in the next 50 years is that climate change is going to get worse ( http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-will-cross-the-climate
-danger-threshold-by-2036/), and that we’re going to have to deal with the impacts ( http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-cities-adapt-to-clim
ate-change/). So I put that as one of my talking points.

I understood that there was little chance the topic would make it into the show, but I’m not going to self-censor myself from the get-go. I also included as talking points some topics that we have recently covered in the magazine: robot drivers, gene therapy and rocket technology. The Fox producer came back and very politely and matter-of-factly said that we would have to replace the climate change item.* So I included a talking point about how we were poised to soon discover more Earth-like planets. This all happened yesterday, well in advance of my appearance on the show.

To be honest I’m surprised this is garnering as much interest as it seems to be. A recent study examined the accuracy of cable news programs regarding climate science. The study ( http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/ca
ble-news-coverage-climate-change-science.html) concluded that “in general, Fox hosts and guests were more likely than those of other networks to disparage the study of climate science and criticize scientists.” We all understand that Fox comes with a political point of view, one which has served them well in the ratings hunt.

I did go on the show to discuss the other topics, because they are genuinely interesting and I love to share cool science with whomever will listen. I thought the segment itself went well. Unfortunately Fox appears to have removed the video from its website.

UPDATE: The specific language used was “can we replace the climate change with something else?” http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/04/30/my-experie
nce-on-fox-friends-regarding-climate-change/?WT.mc_id=SA_sharetool_Twitter

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Went on Fox & Friends this morning. Kinda feel like I should take a shower.
5:40 AM - 30 Apr 2014

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I couldn’t sit in the Fox & Friends greenroom beforehand b/c watching the show made me crazy. Every single segment was anti-Obama agitprop.
5:41 AM - 30 Apr 2014

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Everyone’s in a bubble. Makeup girl: Where u think the plane is? Me, puzzled: Bottom of the ocean? Her: No it’s on a military base somewhere.
5:42 AM - 30 Apr 2014

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The hosts of "Fox & Friends" took their revenge against editor Michael Moyer on air Thursday morning for tweeting about his uncomfortable experience on the show. The show even aired a photo of Moyer's appearance along with the text "'Scientific' Coward."

But the hosts didn't stop there. They also encouraged their viewers to tweet back at Moyer if they didn't like the way he handled his appearance:

@foxandfriends:
If you'd like to reach Scientific American editor, Michael Moyer - he can be found here: @mmoyr
4:44 AM - 1 May 2014

And browsing through Twitter on late Thursday morning showed Fox viewers had responded en masse.

Here's just a small sampling of the tweets:

@mmoyr Your ignorant
6:57 AM - 1 May 2014 Canton, GA, United States (you gotta love that one--can't even get "you're" right...but then...Georgia...)

@foxandfriends @mmoyr to mmoyers - well - im unsubscribing from you - . If you have something bad to say say it to their face - Coward
4:46 AM - 1 May 2014 (anyone placing bets he was ever subscribed to Moyer?)

@foxandfriends @mmoyr Hey Climate guy, your behavior? Disgraceful. BTW, sometimes a temp shifts 40degrees or more. That's called #winter.
4:48 AM - 1 May 2014

@mmoyr I'm not saying you're stupid; it just concerns me that you get to vote and could end up on a jury as one of my peers @foxandfriends
4:55 AM - 1 May 2014 (this one from a guy whose tagline is "ididyourdate")

@tan123 @mmoyr The View and Al Jazeera might be more receptive to climate psychic hotline style crystal ball doomspeak.
2:14 PM - 30 Apr 2014

@mmoyr is just upset because @foxandfriends wouldn't let him wear his #algore underoos.
6:21 AM - 1 May 2014

@mmoyr I think I need to wash my TV after hearing your rants.
7:07 AM - 1 May 2014

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fox-news-targets-scientific-amer
ican-editor-hate-tweets (comments in parentheses mine)

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“Clearly he has a problem with Fox,” Doocy said. “So why did he come on? Clearly, it was just to promote himself, and maybe his magazine as well. But, you know, hashtag classy. We put him on, we have a nice conversation and then he stabs us in the back."

"The bone that he had to pick with Fox, he said, was that he wanted to come on here and talk all about climate change," Kooiman added. "Well, our producers decide what we air."

"We talk about climate change all the time," Doocy interjected.

Moyer was brought on to talk about future trends in technology. He later tweeted that when he suggested the number one future trend would be the impact of climate change, he was "told to pick something else." The experience, he told TPM on Wednesday, made him decide against future appearances on the program.

"There are some things that in science and scientific discourse are not controversial at all," Moyer told TPM. "I hope that we can all as a society agree to at least discuss them and come up with good solutions. Just because you don't want something to be true doesn't make it not true."

Fox News denied that a producer "specifically" told Moyer that he couldn't discuss climate change. In response, Moyer told TPM that he had proof: a producer had sent him an email specifically asking, "can we replace the climate change with something else?"

Kooiman said on air Thursday that she enjoyed the topics Moyer was allowed to discuss on the show, like robots driving cars in the future and replacing defective genes, and thought they were "things that actually matter."

"And we know that some day the Earth will be so hot only robots will survive, so we don't want to bring it up," Kilmeade quipped. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fox-news-hosts-brand-scientific-
american-editor-coward

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In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.

During their appeal, FOX asserted that there are no written rules against distorting news in the media. They argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves. Fox attorneys did not dispute Akre’s claim that they pressured her to broadcast a false story, they simply maintained that it was their right to do so. http://www.relfe.com/media_can_legally_lie.html

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