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In a New York Times Dot Earth post on ‘Climate and the Web’, author Andy Revkin reflects on how digital media and culture can contribute to the tackling of climate change. But the article continues to support the journalistic norm of reporting with ‘balance’ which, in the case of climate change, distorts the real and certain consensus on the role of humans in creating the crisis.

The Dot Earth blog is a leap forward in climate coverage in the US elite mainstream press. These are the top four newspapers of the NYTimes, Washington Post, LA Times and Wall Street Journal that Boykoff & Boykoff call the “Prestige Press” in their paper ‘Balance as Bias’ (2004), published in the peer-reviewed journal Global Environmental Change. Andy Revkin’s blog is clear, concise, and mainly constructive in its communication of the impact of human behaviour on greehouse gases emitted into the atmosphere, and its dangerous consequences. So, I believe Andy in this sense is doing a good job.

However, while Andy and his publisher the NYTimes.com are “conducting an experiment” to deconstruct Bush’s most recent speech on climate change, I think Andy is also contributing to the phenomenon of informational ‘balance as bias’ that Boykoff & Boykoff identified in their 2004 paper.

The ‘balance as bias’ argument is one that shows how the journalistic norm of the balanced reporting of two sides of a particular issue is problematic when one side is so overwhelmingly supported by the factual and scientific consensus, and when the other side is hugely lacking in the same level of scientific fact and peer-reviewed consensual agreement. And in regards to climate change, in the words of James Baker at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “[t]here’s a better scientific consensus on this than on any issue I know - except maybe Newton’s second law of dynamics.”

Providing equal attention to the two sides in this case (and Boykoff and Boykoff’s research over a 14 year period from 1988-2002 showed that 53% of articles gave ‘roughly equal attention’ to both sides) is a hugely disproportionate response to the actual peer-reviewed scientific support for the ’sceptical’ view. So why do U.S. journalists keep doing this?

For example, Andy refers to the work of the “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” as “the same kind of experiment” as his analysis of the Bush speech, “but with a lot of the consensus-building happening behind closed doors. That leaves it subject to criticism from those saying it’s overly conservative or prone to warming alarmism.”

I’ve underlined those two phrases both to place emphasis on them to identify what I see as the problem, but also to indicate that they are, in the original document, links. But I am not, because of the point I am making, linking to them. This is I think important online, as links come to act as footnotes or quotes to back up an argument, or contribute to what Andy, rightly, notes as the “loom-like weaving of disparate threads and voices” that identifies online writing.

But Andy is wrong here to compare his journalism with the work of the IPCC. The IPCC reports are a huge body of carefully constructed scientific consensus; they are a, if not the, best credible example of peer-reviewed scientific study. This is how academic peer-review is conducted. To quote Will Steffen, writing the editorial for the peer-reviewed journal Global Environmental Change 18 (2008), the work of the IPCC:

“is very solid scientifically and is full of useful information, in general clearly presented with the degree of certainty or uncertainty in statements or projections explicity provided.” (Steffen, 2008)

To compare the IPCC peer-reviewed reports to a news journalism experiment is erroneous; to continue to emphasize that the IPCC is “still subject to criticism” is to contribute to the politicization of the issue and commit ‘informational bias’. Phrases such as ‘behind closed doors’ are rhetorically reinforcing scepticism of the process of peer-review, which at its best is done ‘blind’ (by anonymous reviewers). To construct something carefully, you sometimes have to take a step back from the limelight, as Andy admits in his own blog about his own work - so why not the IPCC? These rhetorical frames and informational bias–always feeling it right to provide the sceptical view–has been well studied by Boykoff and Boykoff and identified as a significant problem in accurately reporting climate change issues: “balanced reporting is actually problematic in practice when discussing the human contribution to global warming”(2004).

It is interesting that Boykoff & Boykoff quote the NYT from Nov 26, 1988, a story headlined: “Common Ground Seen on Warming of Globe” before the issue became a politized and oil-lobbied issue. Back in 1988, they argue, coverage of climate change was in step with the scientific discourse. Now, as they show through their study, the two discourses are divergent.

New media brings new rules. As do critical social problems (or merely “issues”, if you follow the White House). As a science journalist reporting on facts, new rules apply in relation to the journalistic norm of ‘balance’. Journalists are now no longer required to provide ‘balance’ on a story when that balance performs an institutional and informational bias which distorts the facts and overwhelming consensus .

Why is this important? It’s one blog, one entry, a few words. This is the view I constantly have to address from students and friends; they are not climate skeptics, but similarly they are not (yet) theorists of media.

Demerrit (2001) in the peer-reviewed Annals of the Association of American Geographers has clearly shown how uncertainty has been inserted into debates around action on climate change, often in order to inspire inaction. This is important if Andy and the NYTimes.com make a success of the migration of the brand online, and maintain their position as prestige and mass broadcasters of information to the U.S. and global public. As Nelkin (1987) and Wilson (1985) illustrate, “the general public garners most of its knowledge about science from the mass media” (quoted in Boykoff and Boykoff, 2004).

It is then worth identifying such ‘balance as bias’ as you come across it, particularly because it is not a situation that needs to continue. As Andreadis and Smith argue, this bad habit has already, in general, disappeared from the UK press. Indeed, “numerous specialists credit UK journalism of the past 18 months with being leagues ahead of their US colleagues in the depth and regularity of [quality] coverage” (Andreadis and Smith, 2007).

And it is important because as linguist George Lakoff observes, the language of journalism is not “conceptually neutral” and can reinforce certain value systems, such as the dominant carbon-based economic system. To maintain vigilance and repsonsibility towards how climate change and climate science are reported is an important role; one which the academic institution is well placed to conduct.

And, with the web, well placed to quickly disseminate.

References:
Andreadis, E. & Smith, J., (2007). Beyond the Oozone Layer. British Journalism Review. 18, p.50-56.
Boykoff, M. & Boykoff, J., (2004). Balance as Bias: global warming and the US Prestige Press. Global Environmental Change. 14, p.125-136.
Antilla, L., (2005). Climate of Scepticism: US newspaper coverage of the science of climate change. Global Environmental Change. 15, p.338-352.