Meteorologist harassed by Lenox man leaves 18-year career

“Through this entire process, I’ve learned that it is important to live life through love, kindness and compassion. We need to work on that a little harder, and if we do, the world will be a much better place,” former KCCI meteorologist Chris Gloninger said in a Facebook video after announcing he would be leaving broadcast journalism due to harassment including death threats. Friday was his last day at the news station.

Danny Hancock, 63, of Lenox, was charged with harassment in July 2022, by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office after sending a series of threatening emails to Gloninger last June over his coverage of climate change.

Gloninger said he had been recruited, in part, to “shake things up” at the station where he worked, but backlash was building. The Des Moines station asked him to dial back his coverage, facing what he called an understandable pressure to maintain ratings.

“I started just connecting the dots between extreme weather and climate change, and then the volume of pushback started to increase quite dramatically,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

According to a Polk County report, multiple emails were sent last summer.

“Getting sick and tired of your liberal conspiracy theory on the weather, climate changes every day, always has, always will, your pushing nothing but a Biden hoax, go back to where you came from,” a June 21 email stated.

On July 24, Hancock sent, “You are worthless Biden puppet, a liar, a conspiracy theorist, and an idiot!!!! You give Iowa a bad name, GO HOME B—”

Several hours later, Hancock sent a threat of violence. “What’s your address, we conservative Iowans would like to give you an Iowan welcome you will never forget...”

After a July 15 email telling him to “go east and drown from the ice cap melting you dumbf—!!!!!!!,” Gloninger wrote on his Twitter account that he had been threatened and harassed over his on-air comments.

“Police are investigating,” he wrote. “It’s mentally exhausting & at times I have NOT been ok.”

Though Hancock was convicted and fined $150, the negative impact caused Hancock to change career paths after nearly two decades.

“18 years. 7 stations. 5 states. I am bidding farewell to TV to embark on a new journey dedicated to helping solve the climate crisis,” Gloninger said in the statement. “After a death threat stemming from my climate coverage last year and resulting PTSD, in addition to family health issues, I’ve decided to begin this journey now.

Though he will be leaving the realm of broadcast journalism, Gloninger and his wife are moving to Massachusetts where he will join the Woods Hole Group as a senior scientist in climate and risk communication. He will focus on building resilient communities that can adapt to our changing climate.

“I don’t want people to think I’m giving up,” Gloninger said in an interview with Real Talk. “I don’t want my colleagues who are doing this important work to stop connecting the dots.”

For several years now, Gloninger said, “beliefs are amplified more than truth and evidence-based science. And that is not a good situation to be in as a nation.”

Gloninger’s announcement sent reverberations through a national conference of broadcast meteorologists in Phoenix, where many shared their own horror stories, recalled Brad Colman, president of the American Meteorological Society.

“They say, ‘You should have seen this note.’ And they try to take it with a smile, a lighthearted laugh,” Colman said. “But some of them are really scary.”

Gloninger, 38, says he’s leaving Des Moines having realized that a small percentage of people who reject climate change make up an overwhelming percentage of the negative comments he has received.

“I know that now with the feedback that I’ve received after the fact, with hundreds of emails, dozens of handwritten letters,” he said of messages that have come from all over the state.

“This incident is not representative of what Iowans are and what they believe,” Gloninger added. “At the end of the day, the people have been incredibly supportive — not just of me, but of the efforts that my station has made in covering climate.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story