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Credit crunch hits coverage of climate change

Headline coverage of climate change in the UK national press has dropped by over 40% since May 2007.

In May 2007, 103 headline stories in the top 20 UK newspapers carried either ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ or ‘Kyoto Protocol’ in the title. In May 2008, that figure had dropped to 59.

One month’s statistics could be a blip, of course, so I took a look at the whole of 2008 so far, in comparison with 2007. These are the results, first January-May 2007:

And then January - May 2008:

You can see that for these five months, the best month in 2008 (March, with 79) doesn’t even come close to the worst month in 2007 (May, with 103). While the Guardian has maintained a trend of near every day reporting, other titles have reduced their coverage. Of course quantity is not the same as quality, responsible or positive coverage. I’ll get to this in my later posts this week (tomorrow on The Sun; and you’ll be surprised about how much and how positive…). But in numbers, coverage is falling. And the trend is generally downwards.

So what’s happening?

Every headline tells a story
While headlines don’t tell the whole story, they are a strong indication of when a story has ‘made’ it on the news agenda. According to Neil Gavin from the University of Liverpool, drawing on existing literature:

a focus on headline news is consistent with the notion that it is this aspect of a story which helps determine the frame of a report or the salience of a sub-theme… While it may be appropriate to look at how global warming themes are embedded in news stories, headline status shows that an issue has definitely ‘arrived’, rather than just constituting part of what might be termed ‘background noise’. (Gavin, 2007)

Gavin has done some great work in papers, presented at conferences throughout last year on coverage of the issue from Oct 2000 to Nov 2006. In his analysis of headlines, it was, unsurprisingly, the liberal quality papers (Guardian, Independent) with most coverage, with almost nothing over this period in the tabloids. A paper released by Max Boykoff earlier this year, analysing coverage up into 2007, showed growing tabloid coverage, but with at best ambivalent treatment of the subject (the paper’s called ‘Ye OIde Hot Air’).

So, while climate change coverage has certainly grown since 2000, it may have hit a peak.

But not only headlines
I wanted to be sure, so I took a look at those same key terms (it would be difficult to cover the issue without referring to ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ at least) appearing anywhere in the article. As Hargreaves, Lewis and Speers (2003) discovered in their research, climate change has become an issue that is often addressed without explanation, or as a secondary issue in a story. This is both good and bad: good in that people understand what it means without explanation; bad in that it is often bandied around (The Sun’s six word editorial on May 28th: “This global warming’s wet, isn’t it?”) and without the useful connections to public policy that would help instigate public pressure on taking action.

So, are all references to climate change in these 20 UK newspapers also falling? Here’s the same year on year comparison between May 2007 and May 2008.

Another decline, this time by a little less: 33%. To check again that it wasn’t just a blip, here’s the coverage for January-May 2007:

And here’s the coverage for January-May 2008:

And here’s the same pattern. The highest month in 2008 (January, 1000 mentions) is still 58 lower than the lowest month in 2007 (April, 1058 mentions). And again, the trend has been, in general, downwards:

So all primary, secondary and aside comments of ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’ or ‘kyoto protocol’ appearing anywhere in the publication have also been falling.

What are the causes?
On May 25th, Catherine Bennett wrote an opinion piece in the Observer (’Green politics, like all fashions, has proved sadly transient’) that looked at consumer and social attitudes towards green politics, purchasing and taxes, and outlined one key probable cause in the decline as the credit crunch and looming recession leaving people “much too fearful and poor to care” about the environment.

Echoed by a Guardian editorial the next day (‘A paler shade of green’), Bennett hit on the fact that when economic times get tough, people (and politicians) start relegating green issues down the agenda. The credit crunch and the housing market are more important to both people and politicians, and have been since the end of last year. As the Guardian notes:

Gordon Brown, whose political identity was forged as shadow chancellor in [the last] recession, has always been cautious about [talking about climate change]. When he mentions it at all, he tends to talk of climate change in economic terms, not scientific ones.

And the green blues? Not much improved. David Cameron has also backed away from trumpeting a green cause:

There was only one passing reference to the environment in [Cameron's] speech last week on taxation, which instead attacked [using] a traditional Conservative theme: the “bigger state and rising public spending”.

Green blogs may be on the rise (for example, Environmental Graffiti). But when people care less about the environment in hard times, politicians talk less about it, and so (most) journalists report it less.

Final word
This is only one probable explanation, but a credible one. Despite Gavin’s finding that “the issue of global warming is not as transient as some earlier analysts have argued”, even he makes reference to the possible ‘peaking’ of coverage as climate change hits its issue attention-cycle limit.

When economics is key in the voters’ minds, as the Guardian leader points out, the politicians may not be the people to keep the issue alive:

The conditions are in place for climate change to slip behind jobs, growth and the cost of petrol as a priority. Cutting emissions will not win back Labour’s lost voters in Crewe. But it must be done. This is the moment for courage. There are reasons to fear it may be lacking.

Tomorrow I’ll look at the actual content of May 2008’s climate change coverage, starting with The Sun and, fair to say for a tabloid, its groundbreaking Arctic Blog.

References
Boykoff, M. & Mansfield, M. (2008) ‘Ye Olde Hot Aire’: Reporting on human contributions to climate change in the UK tabloid press”, Environ. Res. Lett. 3 (2008)..
Hargreaves, I., Lewis, J. & Speers, T. (2003). Towards a Better Map: Science, Public and The Media. ESRC: London.
Gavin, N. (2007). ‘Global Warming and the British Press: The Emergence of an Issue and its Political Implications.’ Paper presented at the Political Studies Association’s ‘Elections, Public Opinion and Parties’ conference, University of the West of England, Bristol, September 2007.

Research conducted through an interrogation of the Lexis-Nexis database.