Cry Me a River
Media bashing is a popular sport of both the Left and Right. It always has been, but in the blog/twitter/200 cable channels age, journalism has become a proxy battleground for everyone with an ax to grind, as this 2008 NYT story explains:
The blur of new media creates fresh opportunities for attack, counterattack, counter-counterattacks, odd alliances, strained allegiances, hidden agendas and, most of all, confusion.
“People walk up to me and start complaining about some crawl they just saw on CNBC,” said Mr. Brokaw, referring to the business news channel owned by his network. “And I have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s like the “˜Star Wars’ bar.”
This journalist-as-punching bag craze is pronounced in the climate blogosphere. Global warming-related coverage is regularly derided at two of the most popular sites, Climate Progress and What’s Up With That. Their faithful readerships eat it up, despite the criticism being selective, one-sided, and way out of proportion to the voluminous reportage and commentary produced daily on an array of sites, from The Guardian and Grist to Scientific American and The New York Times. (See Tom Yulsman’s recent post for more perspective on this.)
Journalists working the climate/environment beat mostly shrug off the arrows slung at them from all sides, which is a wise thing to do. Criticism comes with the territory, be it city hall or the EPA.
But sometimes pushback is necessary. So I was happy to see Andrew Revkin stick up for his profession in a recent post, specifically taking aim at this skewed criticism by Joe Romm.
Revkin writes:
I’m trying not to use Dot Earth as a reactive tool, but once in awhile I’ve got to defend my newsroom colleagues. While climate pundits sit inside the Beltway dictating posts, Justin Gillis has been traveling to mountain peaks and ice sheets to tell the story of accumulating carbon dioxide and diminishing glacial ice. The reporters who produced this year’s outstanding “Beyond Fossil Fuels” series traveled the globe, as well, building on years of prior coverage that first crested with our multi-year Energy Challenge series.
Of course, climate pundits aren’t the only ones taking potshots at the media. Climate scientists and climate educators are increasingly venting their displeasure with journalists, as well. The latest example is at Real Climate, which deconstructs this Forbes article. But towards the end of its legitimate criticism of the Forbes piece, the authors lob this stinkbomb at the media:
The naysayers ought to be thrilled at the lack of interest in climate change shown in the press, at least in North America. The longer we delay, the bigger the topic gets, and the more ridiculous the refusal of the press and policy sector to grapple with it becomes.
So when the press isn’t “blowing the story,” it’s ignoring it, right? Got it.
In fairness to the folks at RC, they will laud outstanding climate journalism from time to time, unlike Romm, who only emphasizes the negative, to the rare chagrin (comment #31) of his readers.
Charges of silence aside, critics such as Romm reflexively highlight only the stories they dislike, giving the impression that environmental and climate journalists “blow the story” every single time they publish. That recently prompted Yulsman to ask:
Are we really that awful?
No, of course not. Rather, as Brad Johnson, Romm’s colleague at the Center for American Progress, asserts (in comment #3), Yulsman is part of an
enviro-journalist cabal that have complicated reasons for muddying the science, that reflect decades of being manipulated by propagandists.
Or maybe he didn’t mean Yulsman, just everyone else who covers climate change. I don’t know. Brad never responded when I asked him (comment #17) at the “Star Wars” bar for specifics.
Regardless, you get the picture. Journalists exhibit “a lack of interest in climate change” when they aren’t “blowing the story” because of their membership in a “cabal” that has been “manipulated by propagandists” for decades.
Yep, makes sense to me.
Keith, what did you think of Romm’s recent Silence of the Lambs-piece about how the “media herd’s coverage of climate change ‘fell off the map’ in 2010”?
Lacking context, and as I said (and Revkin and Yulsman noted also in their respective posts), not accurate.
I have a question about how print journalism works. Who chooses the wording of the title and the headlines? Is it the writer, the editor, both, or either? One journalism blogger you recently linked said that what prompted the infamous “cabal” allegations by Romm, was most likely not written by the author to whom he directs his ire. Basically, Joe was excoriating the environmental journalist for a headline that was obviously created by the editor.
Should Joe have realized this? For the layperson reading an article, how would one know whether the headlines were written by the author or his/her editor?
In the digital age I don’t think there is such a thing as “print” journalism anymore. (Of course, lots of mags and some newspapers are behind a paywall, but you get my drift.)
Anyway, in both newspapers and magazines, editors almost always choose the headlines. At some magazines, writers may have more of a say, and they do often suggest headlines.
Of course, according to Joe Romm, “a large fraction of people don’t get beyond the headline.” So maybe we should stop doing journalism altogether and just write headlines. And it could be done on twitter, so that it would also save the added bother of going to a bunch of different websites.
Keith: your title is appropriate; I don’t much feel sorry for you for the sharp elbows thrown your way on occasion. You do, after all, return the favor, especially toward Joe Romm.
Global warming is and will be the single most important international public policy issue for this century until CO2e emissions are brought way down and possible even negative. Not surprisingly emotions run high. So a couple of bloggers / web journalists / scientists accused your profession of malpractice. Big whoop. Toughen up, dude.
Francis,
I absolutely don’t mind the sharp elbows and indeed feel it comes with the territory.
But you miss an important aspect of this, which I should have gone into (and will at a future time):
namely, that the indiscriminate and disproportionate carping against journalism by influential voices in the climate debate (such as Romm and various climate scientists) breeds and perpetuates cynicism for journalism (you can see this by reading the comment threads at CP and WUWT).
Perhaps more importantly (for the public policy issue you deem as the most important of the century), the criticism against journalists that I described in my post is a red herring, a cheap and easy way to scapegoat for the lack of progress on reducing co2: it’s not just those dastardly denialists, it’s the damn journalists, too.
Puhleeze.
The amount of carping by certain bloggers (e.g., Romm or Tobis)regarding how horrible the mainstream media is with respect to Climate Change really boggles my mind. From what I see, the mainstream media generally supports action to address climate change. From my local paper to major networks to magazines such as Newsweek, Scientific American, and National Geographic what I primarly see is a constant stream of stories on the fact that nearly all climate scientist agree climate change is coming and it could be very bad. Sure the media obviously do not get everything right and occassionally you see stories questioning some aspect of climate chage or the predictions of catastrophe, but anecdotely, I would guess the coverage I see is 85% or more warning of the dangers of climate change.
BobN, Absolutely correct, although this is slowly changing to the presentation of more balanced articles. For 20 years doom has been proclaimed. People are weary of it and Science is starting to present Science accurately.
So when the press isn’t “blowing the story,” it’s ignoring it, right? Got it.
You seem to think this is wrong or contradictory. The “story” on climate change is whatever the evidence among reliable sources (generally academic peer-reviewed journals or climate scientists) presents, and media should accurately report on it. What we see in the media and blogs are garbage stories on “ClimateGate” and other manufactured controversies. So yes, we see drop of legit coverage on climate change issues and more of the tabloid-quality stuff. There are multiple reasons for this. In my view, the prominent one is simply that the media prints stories it thinks people want to read/hear. Millions of ideologues want to hear that global warming is a hoax, and demand for that material has risen since the 2008 election cycle.
There are exceptions, though. Although I’ve been less than impressed with Revkin’s stuff, the work done by the journalist he cites Justin Gillis is outstanding. You’re wrong in asserting Romm only highlights stories he dislikes. He gave kudos for Gillis for his work:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/15/new-york-times-front-page-story-in-weather-chaos-a-case-for-global-warming/
His energy and global warming news daily sections have plenty of articles he likes.
@ Bob
You are right, of course: generally, the alarmists continue enjoying the support of both the MSM and blogosphere. However, from their PoV, there got to be reasons why they lost the PR war. Since they are so amazing, it’s gotta be the denialists and the cabal of journos. A very simple equation indeed. There is nothing to be surprised about.
NewYorkJ (9):
“What we see in the media and blogs are garbage stories on “ClimateGate” and other manufactured controversies.”
That’s an incredibly skewed perspective that bears no relation to reality.
Here is Tom Yulsman, trying to give a larger perspective, over at RC:
“Much of what passes for news in mass media is certainly horrible. We agree! But there is an entire other universe of excellent work that is reaching millions of people. It happens in small ways, such as in High Country News, Climate Central, and The Daily Climate, and in very big ways, such as National Geographic, the New York Times, the New Yorker, NPR, etc.”
That’s an incredibly skewed perspective that bears no relation to reality.
Really? It would probably take me a month of full-time work to put together all the junk stories on ClimateGate, other faux controversies, “global cooling”, etc. and my hard drive would run out of space.
Yulsman’s comment, which says “it happens in small ways”, indicates a view that isn’t far off mine, and if you read the rest of my post, you might see that (I’ll gladly amend your highlighted comment to “what we tend to see…”. As I said, there are some exceptions. It would be nice to see it happen in big ways.
NYTimes is hit and miss, though. Tierney’s stuff is horrible. The Gillis series is excellent.
And the definition of a “junk story” would be everything that doesn’t suit your agenda, I suppose?
KK,
I’m going to take the ClimateProgress-heavy slant of this critique as a sign that you don’t think WUWT’s excesses matter.
Right?
Lets do a quick survey of the UK meejah.
Pro-climate-scare
+ BBC TV
+ All other TV channels
+ BBC radio
+ Guardian newspaper
+ Independent newspaper
Anti-climate-scare
+ No TV or radio channels
+ Daliy Express newspaper
Mixed coverage – less than a year ago
+ Times newspaper
+ Daily Mail newspaper
+ Sun newspaper
+ Daily Mirror newspaper
Local newspapers try to avoid the subject – seeing it as a partisan hot potato.
Now that looks like a pro-climate-scare majority – especially given the weight of the BBC.
The BBC alone have at least 2 full-time activists – Black and von Harrabin – who have both nailed their colors to the mast. Neither has a science qualification.
Let’s also keep in mind that Revkin and Romm do occasionally make common cause, when the target is particularly egregious — as is the case of George Will.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/rev-the-scientific-engine-great-how/
There is a lot of climate fatigue in the UK meejah.
After all you can only keep up the breathless claims that it really is the end of the world for so long then people tune out.
KK,
These guys do not know what they are talking about. This “falling off the map” business in global warming/climate change has been specifically *studied* and understood, from way back.
.
In their analysis of the rise and fall of social problems, Hilgartner and Bosk (1988) argued that public attention Is a scarce resource allocated through competition in a system of public arenas with limited “carrying capacities”.
“¦
Those [social scares] that succeed tend to result in scares that follow a relatively short “soar and slump” cycle with limited potential for action. For accelerated demands to be acted upon, there must be an interactive spiral that culminates in ongoing surges.
.
-Ungar S. Social Scares and Global Warming: Beyond the Rio Convention. Society and Natural Resources. 1995; 8(5); 443-456
.
“The cyclical nature of American media attention to environmental issues have been extensively investigated. The “issue-attention cycle” proposed by Downs (1972) offers a theoretical framework for such a cycle that is widely accepted and discussed in environmental communication research. According to Downs (1972), public attention to issues such as the environment passes through five phases: (a) a preproblem statge, (b) a period of alarmed discovery of the problem and of eagerness to solve it rapidly, (c) the realization of the costs associated with solving the problem, (d) a decline in public interest, and (e) a postproblem phase, characterized by the settlement of public attention and sometimes in the sporadic return of interest. Downs (1972) argued that characteristics inherent in environmental issues fostered the cyclical ups and downs of the frequency of attention.”
.
-Brossard, D, Shanahan, J, & McComas, K 2004, ‘Are Issue-Cycles Culturally Constructed? A Comparison of French and American Coverage of Global Climate Change’, Mass Communication & Society, 7, 3, pp. 359-377,
.
Up and down with ecology-the “issue-attention cycle”, Anthony Downs, 1972;28;38 (Available: http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20080527_197202804upanddownwithecologytheissueattentioncycleanthonydowns.pdf)
Maybe this has something to do with it: http://bit.ly/dmfUt4
No, no, no that couldn’t be it.
Keith:
This seems an apt time to remind you of our discussion last September: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/2010/09/19/gangster-climate-talk/
Time perhaps to follow up the point? If I missed it, of course please provide the link where you did follow up.
At the time, we were talking about standards of truth in journalism, including that they were different for different sorts of article.
<blockquote>On the larger scale, what fraction of climate change coverage appears in a context you would agree that it was valid for me to complain about a reporter quoting “so-and-so believes that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas” and not following up with something like “this is considered absurd by almost everybody who has studied the topic in the last 100 years” ?</blockquote>
My bit of looking back then suggested that 7 in 8 of the WSJ’s articles on climate were on the opinion pages, and in your recent RC comment you seemed (again/still) to be excusing opinion pieces from getting the science right (Forbes this time).
I think Menth is on to something!
“Studies have also found hostile media effects related to other political conflicts, such as strife in Bosnia.[3] and in U.S. presidential elections.[4] This effect is interesting to psychologists because it appears to be a reversal of the otherwise pervasive effects ofconfirmation bias: in this area, people seem to pay more attention to information that contradicts rather than supports their pre-existing views. This is an example of disconfirmation bias.”
This is interesting. The comment by Brad Johnson on Dec 21 which I linked to never had an inline response from Romm–I never saw one yesterday when I read the comment again to quote it.
Suddenly today, one has appeared:
[JR: I don’t think there’s a cabal. And I think most day-to-day environmental reporters are pretty good. I think this is mostly the uninformed editors and the publishing management who have made decisions about what stories should run and who have fired many of the best environmental/science journalists.]
“I think most day-to-day environmental reporters are pretty good.” Gee, you’d never know that to read what he has to say about them on a near daily basis.