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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAn Iowa meteorologist started talking about climate change on newscasts. Then came the harassment
HANNAH FINGERHUT, HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and SUMMER BALLENTINE
Sat, 8 July 2023 at 1:05 am GMT-4·5-min read
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.
Gloninger said he had been recruited, in part, to shake things up at the Iowa station where he worked, but backlash was building. The man who sent him a series of threatening emails was charged with third-degree harassment. The Des Moines station asked him to dial back his coverage, facing what he called an understandable pressure to maintain ratings.
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.
So, on June 21, he announced that he was leaving KCCI-TV and his 18-year career in broadcast journalism altogether.
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. For on-air meteorologists, the anti-science trend that has emerged in recent years compounds a deepening skepticism of the news media.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/harassment-tv-meteorologists-reflects-broader-050521800.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw&tsrc=twtr
( Weird I know, but I wish we could give the cons their own island mass, since they're not worried about climate change. Please, just get out and leave us to address the needs of the present and future. )
dalton99a
(83,700 posts)Iowa man fined for harassing TV weatherman over climate change
By: Clark Kauffman - September 20, 2022 2:00 pm
An Iowa man has been fined $150 for sending a string of harassing emails to a television meteorologist concerning climate change.
Police and court records indicate that on June 21, Danny H. Hancock, 63, of Lenox, began sending emails to Chris Gloninger, the chief meteorologist for KCCI, Channel 8 News, in Des Moines.
At 5:35 p.m. that day, Hancock wrote to Gloninger, Getting sick and tired of your liberal conspiracy theory on the weather, climate changes every day, always has, always will, your pushing nothing but a Biden hoax, go back to where you came from.
A few days later, Hancock wrote to Gloninger: You are worthless Biden puppet, a liar, a conspiracy theorist, and an idiot!!! You give Iowa a bad name, GO HOME B-.
A few hours after that message was sent, Hancock sent another email in which he referenced Brett Kavanaugh, an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: Whats your address, we conservative Iowans would like to give you an Iowan welcome you will never forget, kinda like the l gave JUDGE KAVANAUGH!!!!!!! ...
On July 12, Hancock wrote again, stating: I dont watch your worthless weather forecast because your an idiot but someone else texted me and said you are still an idiot, go the hell back where you came from DOUCHEBAG!!!
On July 15, Hancock wrote again, this time referencing Anthony Fauci, the immunologist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has helped lead the fight against COVID-19, and told Gloninger to go east and drown from the ice cap melting you dumbf!!!!!!!
...
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)Rush Limbaugh's legacy, a political party that believes in every distraction so capitalists can keep screwing them.
A hoax? Can you imagine being that lost?
Walleye
(34,685 posts)BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)Makes no sense at all.
AllaN01Bear
(22,785 posts)Walleye
(34,685 posts)They are lying and slandering like theres nothing wrong with it. Just making up lies accusing him of taking bribes. But yes, they do it to all Democrats, look what they did to Hillary, a good woman, over decades. I dont think anybody thinks of Trump as being a good man. Everybody jokes about drinking the Kool-Aid, but they forget what really happened in Jonestown and what the Kool-Aid was for
AllaN01Bear
(22,785 posts)Response to Walleye (Reply #4)
jayschool2013 This message was self-deleted by its author.
NowISeetheLight
(3,991 posts)They're convinced the orange messiah had the Presidency stolen by the evil Socialist child eating Democrats. They're fuxxin idiots.
Walleye
(34,685 posts)Maybe we should ask them about that
Torchlight
(4,233 posts)Torchliticus 7:10
Lots of sad, miserable, cranky people out there whose only real goal is to provoke a negative reponse from others to gain some sense of relevance.
usaf-vet
(6,749 posts)Head in the sands low, IQ idiots.
45 will eventually be known for poisoning the brain capacity of millions. The 45 IQ club.
GreenWave
(8,795 posts)Takket
(22,406 posts)Threat of at least a beating. That deserves more than $150
Kid Berwyn
(17,548 posts)Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death. Adolf Hitler.
CurtEastPoint
(19,097 posts)BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Damn. I doubt that by now actual denial of man-caused climate change accounts for most of the hostility to this coverage. Seems likely most conservatives have rolled causes of changes in their weather into a list of topics disallowed as part of their anti-liberal/anti-Democratic resistance.
AC couldn't keep self awareness on this topic from being searing.
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)their overall authoritarian goals.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)to start fighting global warming, RW powers got busy training the populace to deny it and oppose action. You can see it reflected in the League of Conservation Voters' data on congressional voting records, which they started publishing I think the year before (after?) Biden was first elected.
Protection in various ways of the environment that had been endorsed by Republican legislators began dwindling, which then sped up over the decades, then turned extreme. Now their annual voting record is almost uniformly rated at 0%. Their voters expect that of them now, of course. Democrats are almost uniformly 100% each year, as their voters expect.
Sigh.
Thanks for the post.
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Notably, Eisenhowever-the-supreme-commander rose as a result of extremism overseas. Then Roosevelt-the-progressive-conservative president followed and no doubt was part of the continuing reaction against the era of surging extremism, both R and L, here.
I'm sure looking forward to when we've "followed."
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)Bruce Bartlett, amazing turn around....sincere, honest. Hope springs eternal!
Alexander Of Assyria
(7,839 posts)of news by the freeloading social media giants.
The giants sow the seeds of hate and reap the rewards, in human minds and wallets.
Canada has a plan they hate
so I like, by default!
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)beliefs are amplified more than truth and evidence-based science." And reactions.
Alexander Of Assyria
(7,839 posts)the vultures
the latest on the struggle to make the freelancers and misinformation hounds pay for their feeding, save local journalism and newspapers and magazines and
democracy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66104997
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)extreme dependence on mass lies for continued power, I sure hope other nations are able to make really substantial advances on this critical front.
I'll be so glad to be able to play catchup with policies already proven in other nations.
Go, Canada and others!
Alexander Of Assyria
(7,839 posts)The new Canadian social media law is what they are afraid of
so begin by prohibiting them even talking to social media giants
only a trump judge or loose Cannon would du that kind of dud bomblet.
Biden should just not bother talking to the evil giants, useless anyway as Canada knows, and cut and past and pass Canadian media law mutatis mutandis.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)I presume masses would just do what they're told, whatever direction they're herded at the time.
In our democracy, like Canada's and others, it'll happen when when enough citizens decide to vote for those advocating it, the kind of people who have the required independence from pernicious mass influencers. Mostly Democrats these days, of course.
Alexander Of Assyria
(7,839 posts)America only has two parties, ever, the American NDP has to make do with being called the Progressive Caucus and assigned to the backbenches, no Ministers.
A political system ok for the 19th century slave trade, mostly rusted out tin can of vagueness in the modern world.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)of course, but somehow tribal and ideological dynamics in our country have mostly stabilized around two. Yes, they've tended to tamp efforts to form more parties, but it's a mistake to imagine the wealthy and powerful have kept the will of hundreds of millions of people confined all this time. This has been studied for over 200 years. More parties even when successfully formed ultimately fail for other reasons.
The NDP, and similar factions, is relegated to backbenches by its minority size, views that appeal to few, including inappropriate righteousness and belief that everyone else must change dramatically, opposition to "the establishment" that liberal Democrats always strive to get control of and put to big use, and inability to respect and ally with others.
Importantly, liberal ideals and ideology lead to the creation of our liberal democracy, the Democratic Party is America's liberal party, and liberals believe in finding ways to work with and accommodate people with other views. We're as naturally wired for it as some are not.
Maybe consider that some 80M mainstream Democratic voters and their reps (sent to work with the establishment they helped create and believe works well when allowed to) would be unable to agree with, much less admire!, being regarded as a fundamental problem requiring elimination. They don't see themselves as a "mass." Their roles and rights are as individuals and citizens.
The sad reality for minority factions who want what most don't, but are constitutionally incapable of cooperating with others to form alliances that can win elections, is that majorities get to rule. Elections are won by those who can and do.
You might take another, different look for anything that's workable about the Democratic Party. The vast majority of America's ideological groups, racial, religious and ethnic groups, and other special interest groups choose to belong to and work through the Democratic Party. Think what that says about us!
And almost all elected Democratic representatives (all those able to make a difference) come to work expecting to continually squabble, ally, and negotiate with colleagues who have other views and goals, year after decade after century, to get their constituents' share. Republicans are currently trying to destroy our democracy by refusing to do their job, and there's a clue in that.
Fwiw, I would never join a faction that doesn't believe in the pluralism and cooperation required by representative government. But then I'm liberal, not illiberal, and committed to continuation of our democracy.
Kaleva
(37,857 posts)Otherwise we'd already be seeing a great increase in migration here in the US. People leaving the gulf coast, the southwest and Florida in particular.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Kaleva
(37,857 posts)Real estate values haven't begun to plummet yet in the regions expected to be devastated by climate change. The time to sell and move is now. Before property values drop where they are and prices explode in the regions expected to be less hard hit
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)It's not all oceanfront, and apparently a lot people, with HVAC as their ace card, choose threats of giant hurricanes over guarantees of snow shovels and giant blizzards.
We will see very significant, in some areas prohibitive, land value increases up north, no doubt already are. At one time I really seriously wanted to invest for the future, for us and whoever we left it to, but my husband, who hates the cold, wanted to invest in living now.
SouthernDem4ever
(6,618 posts)and stand up for science. But who cares, it's money right?
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)I have no idea what criteria he used to decide to get out, but I can understand a person such as himself worrying about how this could become violent. We see gun violence over nothing, here someone could see themselves as helping the "freedom cause " and target him.
FakeNoose
(35,184 posts)gratuitous
(82,849 posts)Hello? Is this thing on? I'll come back in again.
Javaman
(62,985 posts)they will suddenly start screaming, "how come no one informed us!!!"
Jimbo S
(3,007 posts)a well respected television meteorologist about fifteen years ago casually mentioned climate change on his blog and the station made him scrub it do to the blowback.