'Climate change contrarians' receive 49% more media coverage than scientists

It seems like the 49% is when taking into account a wide variety of sources, including random online magazines and blogs. When using "mainstream media", the coverage drops to 1%. The fact that they get even 1% more (or equal for that matter) coverage is still dumb but at least it's not as bad as 49%.

From the paper:

>Here we show via direct comparison that contrarians are featured in 49% more media articles than scientists. Yet when comparing visibility in mainstream media sources only, we observe just a 1% excess visibility, which objectively demonstrates the crowding out of professional mainstream sources by the proliferation of new media sources, many of which contribute to the production and consumption of climate change disinformation at scale.

>Together, these results show that CCCs derive a comparative visibility advantage from non-scientists gaining attention in peripheral non-mainstream media sources. Conversely, the observed parity between CCCs and CCSs in mainstream media sources may reflect media writers seeking journalistic balance when reporting on CC. Indeed, we find that every select-30 media source has provided CCC significant visibility, thereby increasing CCC authority and credibility (see Supplementary Fig. 4). The disproportionate visibility of CCCs, even in mainstream media sources, is reminiscent of early contrarian efforts that leveraged the U.S. Federal Communications Commission Fairness Doctrine to obtain equal press time.