Evlondo Cooper

Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on September 26, 2024, was the second deadliest U.S. mainland hurricane in half a century, killing at least 250 people and causing $80 billion in damage. In the year that followed, Fox News aired nearly 500 segments about Helene, keeping the story in circulation through a mix of empathy and outrage, especially via false claims that Federal Emergency Management Agency funds had been diverted to migrants or that the Biden administration did not care what happened to the victims of Helene. The network’s distorted version of accountability avoided any discussion of climate change, tried to turn FEMA into the emblem of failure, and portrayed the Biden administration as negligent, while leaving unexamined the Trump administration policies that later deepened the recovery crisis.The same migrant-centered misinformation that drove much of Fox's Helene coverage has resurfaced recently, as right-wing media recycle similar falsehoods about Democrats shutting down the governmen

It has been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,800 people, displacing hundreds of thousands more, and exposing the systemic neglect of some of the nation’s poorest residents. The storm itself was catastrophic, but the levee failures, the botched response, and the way television news framed the crisis turned it into a national reckoning on race and class in America.Coverage about the anniversary was mixed. CNN and MSNBC produced commemorative documentaries that revisited the storm, while ABC created a special feature as well. Corporate broadcast news generally offered shorter, mostly commemorative segments. However, in daily cable news coverage leading up to the August 29 anniversary, Federal Emergency Management Agency employees' “Katrina Declaration” was the dominant news hook — a policy warning that the Trump administration’s treatment of FEMA could lead to another Katrina-level disaster. The FEMA framing was valid and necessary. But

Fox News has spent years manufacturing consent for the GOP to dismantle climate policy, building a narrative ecosystem that depicts environmental regulations as illegitimate and recasts climate funding as corruption. Former Republican congressman turned Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin is one of the latest beneficiaries of this ecosystem, relying on Fox’s programming to promote his rollbacks. His August 19 appearance on Special Report with Bret Baier showed how the network’s flagship “straight news” show turns the Trump administration’s destructive policy into routine politics, treating one of the most consequential climate rollbacks in modern history as common-sense rather than a public health emergency.

Fox News shields EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin as he promotes the most destructive climate rollback in EPA history

National TV news coverage of the catastrophic Texas floods evolved from real-time reporting during the immediate aftermath of the disaster on July 4 to sustained scrutiny of the litany of failures that worsened the crisis. Across corporate broadcast news networks and the cable news networks CNN and MSNBC, journalists and experts raised urgent questions about four core issues: the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s delayed deployment, FEMA’s flawed floodplain maps, local alert system breakdowns, and a state-level refusal to fund warning infrastructure.The questions being asked — about governance, deliberate constraint, and public safety — are not abstract. They determine whether communities can evacuate in time and survive and recover from dangerous events. This piece highlights four core failures that contributed to the Texas flood disaster that national TV news covered and discusses why this heightened accountability must continue in the face of the Trump administration's unprecedented assault o

More than 120 people were killed and more than 160 remain missing after catastrophic flash flooding swept through the Texas Hill Country, driven by torrential rainfall from the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry. Communities along the Guadalupe River were inundated in the early morning hours of July 4, with water levels rising more than 30 feet in less than two hours, quickly becoming the deadliest United States inland flood since 1976.National TV news responded with extensive coverage — devoting more than 40 hours over five days to the scale of the disaster, spotlighting search and rescue operations, and honoring the victims, many of them children. Across broadcast and cable news, coverage also included clear explanations of the meteorological dynamics behind the flood and on-the-ground reporting from some of the hardest-hit communities.But while the human toll and storm mechanics were covered in depth, climate change was mentioned in only 5% of total segments about the Texas flooding from ABC, CBS, NBC, CN

A record-breaking heat dome scorched the United States in late June, setting or tying high-temperature records in more than 280 locations and placing more than 130 million people under extreme heat advisories and warnings. Cities across the East Coast and Midwest shattered all-time records, while dozens of others surpassed daily highs that had stood for more than a century. Simultaneously, the United Kingdom experienced its own heatwave, with scientists finding that global warming had made such an event up to 100 times more likely to occur.This United States' heat dome constituted a clear climate story, though national TV news largely failed to treat it as one. Climate change was rarely mentioned, despite the availability of robust attribution science showing that heat domes are becoming more frequent and intense as a result of Arctic warming and global emissions. Coverage also largely ignored the heat’s disproportionate toll on low-income families, outdoor workers, and medically vulnerable populations.

CNN’s Bill Weir highlights GOP tension as Trump’s clean energy rollbacks threaten 75,000 red state jobs

Corporate broadcast networks devoted nearly 2.5 hours of airtime to Earth Day and Earth Month coverage in 2025 — though much of it failed to meet the moment. Overall, Earth Day coverage has declined over the past three years, reaching its peak in 2022. At a time when the Trump administration is waging a sustained assault on climate and environmental policy, the need to connect climate and environmental challenges to their political causes has never been more urgent.Major networks largely overlooked how this assault by the administration is deepening the climate crisis and threatening public health. Key deregulatory actions by the administration went mostly unmentioned, even as they reshaped the environmental landscape in real time. Earth Month coverage must do more than raise awareness. It must hold power to account, and it must rapidly improve to meet that standard going forward.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has used his extensive appearances on Fox News and Fox Business to justify freezing environmental programs and slashing climate-related funding. A Media Matters analysis found that Zeldin has made at least 22 appearances on cable news since his confirmation on January 29, with 21 of those on Fox networks.This pattern of strategic media appearances has enabled the Trump administration to reframe essential climate initiatives as corrupt and wasteful while avoiding substantive media scrutiny of its climate and environmental rollbacks, shielding it from the consequences of these harmful policy shifts. Moreover, Zeldin has used these appearances to create a feedback loop in which harmful narratives aimed at climate funding are repeatedly echoed by Fox personalities until they become conventional wisdom across the network.