Liberal media outlets fixated on former Republican Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe’s views on climate change in obituaries following his death on Tuesday.
Inhofe died at the age of 89 after reportedly falling unexpectedly ill over the holiday. A variety of news agencies –including The New York Times, Politico and the Associated Press – referred to the late-senator’s stance on climate change in their headlines.
The NYT’s headline read “James M. Inhofe, Senator Who Denied Climate Change, Dies at 89.” It further referred to him as “arguably Washington’s most prominent denier of the established science of human-generated climate change.”
Politico originally ran the headline “Former Sen. Jim Inhofe, who called climate change a ‘hoax,’ dead at 89,” according to screenshots posted to X, formerly Twitter. The current headline, however, refers to Inhofe’s Senate career as being “marked by fight against climate science,” and the article describes him as “a proud critic of the overwhelming scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.”
“Headlines are regularly A/B tested and switched on a rotation, based on a number of factors, including engagement,” a Politico spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
One of these guys was a KKK member, another left a young woman to die in a car he crashed. The third threw a snowball on the Senate floor once.
Guess which is which? pic.twitter.com/23QcyqiIvm
— Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson) July 9, 2024
The AP worked into its headline that Inhofe “called human-caused climate change a ‘hoax’” and wrote that he was known for “his denial that human activity is responsible for the bulk of climate change.”
Inhofe said during a speech on the Senate floor in 2005 that “much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science.”
“Put simply, man induced global warming [is] an article of religious faith to the radical far left alarmists,” he said.
The New York Times and the Associated Press did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
