‘A Textbook Example of How Not to Cover Climate Propaganda’
Like many journalists, I get a lot of PR emails. They pour into my inbox, pitching me books, campaigns, events, strawberry-mango flavored menopause-relief chews, and, as one email from March declared, “Why Japanese Whisky Is Emerging as a Serious Alternative Investment.”
This is part of the job. If your email is online, PR people — who, according to recent estimates, outnumber journalists by a ratio of 6 to 1 — will find you.
I ignore most of them.
But the other day, I received a pitch that caught my attention. The subject line was: “MEDIA ADVISORY: New Report Shows No Climate Crisis in Rhode Island.” That claim was so bold and absurd that I had to click.
As it turns out, the press release was from the Heartland Institute, a think tank about which PBS’s Frontline has said, “few entities have worked harder to instill doubt in American minds about the science of climate change.”
The gist of the report was — surprise! — climate change is really no big deal. In fact, the report suggests, it might be a good thing. “Rhode Island is warming and that warmth is saving lives,” the email read. “Fewer life-threatening cold nights in Rhode Island are an unambiguous public health benefit.”
I posted about the email on Bluesky, with a joke and an observation that the report’s claim about climate change’s upsides was “one of the most audaciously cynical things I’ve seen in a while.”
Then I moved on.
But, the next day, I saw that Newport Buzz had published an uncritical report on the study, titled New Climate Report Challenges Rhode Island Crisis Narrative. It also posted that story to Instagram (where it has 115,000 followers) and Facebook (where it has 133,000 followers).
The Buzz — which bills itself as “Newport, RI’s favorite online publication” and “a shining example of what can be accomplished with a bold vision and a willingness to take risks” — had clearly gotten the same email as me. But in its posts on Instagram, Facebook, and its website, the outlet had not done much in the way of additional reporting. In the article, Christian Winthrop, the founder of the site, summarized the Heartland study’s conclusions, linked to the study, and ended the article by stating, “The report is likely to fuel debate over climate policy in Rhode Island, where rising seas and extreme weather have become central issues in state planning and environmental discussions.”
I was stunned.
I know Newport Buzz isn’t exactly ProPublica. But even by the loose standards of today’s online info ecosystem, this was glaringly non-rigorous stuff. In the summer of 2026, with wildfires belching smoke over huge swaths of North America, record-breaking temperatures in Europe, it seems particularly irresponsible to boost a report from the folks who once ran a billboard campaign trying to link believers in climate change to Charles Manson and the “Unabomber.”
None of this would matter much if the Buzz was just a small site. But it’s not. On Instagram, the site has more followers than the Newport Daily News, Providence Journal, and WJAR combined. On Facebook, its posts regularly get hundreds of shares.
I reached out to the Buzz for a comment about the article, and Winthrop sent back an explanation. “The report itself was newsworthy because it challenges prevailing claims about Rhode Island’s climate using publicly available government datasets,” he wrote. “Reporting that such a report exists is not the same as endorsing every conclusion it reaches.”
He continued, “This was a straight news story about the release of a report, not an analysis of the broader scientific debate or an investigation into the report’s methodology. Its purpose was to inform readers that the report had been published and to accurately summarize its principal claims with clear attribution.”
(I have included his full email below.)
I appreciate Winthrop’s willingness to defend his editorial decisions. But I strongly disagree with them.
The Buzz’s “coverage” of the Heartland report strikes me as a textbook example of how not to cover climate propaganda.
The Buzz’s article and posts offered no context about the source of the report to help readers assess its veracity. It didn’t mention that one textbook has called Heartland “a leading think-tank promoting climate change denial” or that Heartland is famous for publicly downplaying the risks of tobacco. (One 1998 essay in the institute’s magazine stated, “smoking in moderation has few, if any, adverse health effects.”)
The Buzz report did not refer readers to trustworthy info on the climate, like Rhode Island’s Science of Climate Change page, or the EPA-produced What Climate Change Means for Rhode Island, or climate.us, the nonprofit site dedicated to preserving government data that might be deleted by the Trump administration.
The Buzz did not appear to have contacted any experts. For instance, Brown University professor Kim Cobb is a former lead author of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report who, earlier this summer, told CNN, “Make no mistake, the primary driver for the uptick in deadly heat waves across the world is the burning of fossil fuels.” It would have been helpful, to put it mildly, if the Buzz’s audience had gotten her take on the Heartland report.
At the very least, the Buzz could have countered the absurd suggestion that climate change is saving lives with, say, the World Health Organization’s recent warning that “Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone.”
Instead, the Buzz uncritically shared the Heartland Institute’s findings with its massive audience.
In doing so, the outlet reminded Rhode Islanders that, in 2026, we aren’t just dealing with wildfire smoke and other symptoms of climate change. We’re also dealing with tired, cynical attempts to spin this crisis that get more traction than they deserve.
Full email response from Buzz founder Christian Winthrop:
Thanks for reaching out.
I disagree with your characterization of the story. [Author note: In my request for comment, I described it as an “alarming and irresponsible signal-boost of untrustworthy right-wing propaganda.”]
The article accurately reported on the release of a report, clearly identified The Heartland Institute as its source, and attributed its findings throughout. It did not present the report’s conclusions as established fact, nor did it conceal who produced it.
The report itself was newsworthy because it challenges prevailing claims about Rhode Island’s climate using publicly available government datasets. Reporting that such a report exists is not the same as endorsing every conclusion it reaches.
This was a straight news story about the release of a report, not an analysis of the broader scientific debate or an investigation into the report’s methodology. Its purpose was to inform readers that the report had been published and to accurately summarize its principal claims with clear attribution.
Editorial decisions at Newport Buzz are guided by whether something is newsworthy and whether it can be reported accurately and transparently. Readers are best served when reporting clearly identifies the source of information and distinguishes between the claims of a report and independently established facts.
Philip Eil is a freelance journalist and nonfiction author based in Providence, his hometown.