Cable News Winds Up Mostly Ignoring Terrifying Climate Change Report For A Full Day

Any hopes that the biggest hitters in cable news would rectify their networks' near-total blackout of a major climate change report on Monday were mostly dashed.

HuffPost's Michael Calderone wrote on Monday afternoon about how the biggest three cable networks had almost completely ignored the report from the UN, which both detailed the grave dangers to humanity stemming from climate change and called for swift action in response.

However, daytime television is often a haven for soft news and sensationalism; maybe the networks' prestige anchors would cover the report?

Maybe not. A search of the ever-useful TVEyes monitoring service shows that there was only a minor uptick in coverage as the day progressed.

Alex Wagner and Rachel Maddow aired segments, though Maddow's was mostly about how Republicans are denying the existence of climate change. Jake Tapper spent about 30 seconds on the report. Bill O'Reilly mentioned it somewhat randomly during a "Talking Points Memo" monologue, saying global warming is a "theory" and pushing for alternative energy.

And...that was about it. The fate of all living things was apparently not worthy of much time for discussion.

The report got better play elsewhere on television; "NBC Nightly News," for instance, led off its entire broadcast with a segment on its implications. ABC's "World News" and the "CBS Evening News" also had detailed segments.