Former Fox News political reporter Carl Cameron and climate change activist Joe Romm last week launched FrontPageLive.com, a news aggregation website that is being dubbed the lefty version of the Drudge Report.
The duo came together because they want to spread "accurate information" about climate change, something they feel people on the right continually deny.
"Climate change is the clearest instance where President Trump and the right-wing disinformation machine promote the opposite of science,” Romm told the Washington Examiner. “History will judge it more harshly than anything else.”
Cameron, who worked at Fox for more than two decades, said he rarely got to cover climate change because "it wasn't a high-priority issue” for the conservative network and he grew frustrated.
“The problem of misinformation and arguing that climate science is somehow partisan is really dangerous,” Cameron said. “Trump is one of the greatest purveyors of it we have seen since the advent of the media.”
From the Examiner:
Matt Drudge, the creator and editor of the Drudge Report, has a history of seeking to undermine climate change.
Drudge was criticized for suggesting the government may have lied about the danger of Hurricane Matthew in October 2016 to increase the public’s concern about climate change.
"The deplorables are starting to wonder if govt has been lying to them about Hurricane Matthew intensity to make exaggerated point on climate,” Drudge wrote in a Twitter post, in advance of the storm hitting Florida.
The Drudge Report treats climate change in a mocking and skeptical fashion. Most of its links have headlines with the phrase "climate change" written in quotation marks.
“NYC to Slash Red Meat Consumption to Fight ‘Climate Change,’” an April 25 headline reads.
“Young people blame ‘climate change’ for their small savings!” blares a May 23 headline.
But the Drudge Report also posts factual links about weather events and has recently shared stories highlighting a shift among Republicans in Congress who acknowledge climate change as a problem.
Drudge’s top headline on the afternoon of June 28 said: “FRANCE HOTTEST DAY IN HISTORY!” which linked to a news story by The Weather Channel that includes a quote from a meteorologist saying, “We should expect more intense and frequent heat waves with climate change.”
Romm and Cameron acknowledge their site has an agenda.
“This is the world I come from,” Romm said of his career focused on climate change. “Nobody is 100% accurate."
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Romm and Cameron say their goal is be bipartisan and report the facts. In fact, during a promotional video, Cameron explained why he left journalism.
"What’s a former Fox guy doing here on Front Page Live partnering with progressives? Well, it’s about facts, not partisanship," Cameron said in the video. "I was one of Fox's first hires. The idea of 'fair and balanced' news appealed to me, but over the years, right-wing hosts drowned out straight journalism with partisan misinformation."
Because of his experience at Fox, Cameron says he has "unique insight and understanding of how the right operates and literally 30 years of covering Donald Trump."
The pair knows they're going to have a tough time competing with Matt Drudge. They won't reveal how much their operating budge is but, according to the Examiner, Romm put up the majority of the capital and they employ a staff of six part-time employees.
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