Yesterday I looked at the 40% decline in coverage of climate change in the UK national press between May 2007 and May 2008 due, most probably, to coverage of the credit crunch. While that was disappointing, today I’m taking a closer look at some of the specific coverage of climate change in May 2008, starting with the The Sun, and its Arctic blog.
Launched on April 22nd and running through to May 12th, The Sun newspaper’s Arctic blog heralded the step change for tabloid coverage of the environment that has happened in the last couple of years. From publishing just six headline stories from Oct 2000 to Nov 2006 directly about climate change, according to research conducted by Neil Gavin at the University of Liverpool, The Sun (and News of the World) published more headline stories in the first five months of this year, mainly in its Go Green section. In May this year alone, climate change or global warming received 44 mentions.
Benn’s ok, but not everyone is happy
And many of these mentions have accepted climate change is real, happening, and that we need to change behaviours. In fact, the Sun’s done so well, it’s congratulating itself (not a surprise there) quoting Environment Minister Hilary Benn for ‘leading the charge’ on climate change.
It hasn’t come without some fallout. Of the 26 comments on the article announcing the launch, over 95% were hostile to the idea of climate change, one even going so far as to claim:
I cant believe a paper like the Sun has been taken in so readily by the Global Warming Enthusiasts.
Although it may not seem far to go for many, The Sun’s coverage is, I feel, a bit of a landmark for the 3.15m people who bought a copy every day in May 2008. So what were they reading?
This is the unequivocal, direct and positive message Sun readers were waking up to on April 22:
THE Sun is hot on battling climate change – and going to the ends of the Earth to prove it. We are joining a fact-finding mission to the Arctic in a bid to show you the devastating effects of climate change from the front line. We are all aware that we must act now to avert climate change catastrophe. Climate Change Articulated, April 22.
Right through to the final blog entry:
To see it actually happening before your eyes sets off real alarm bells that things really are changing. And if we can slow this down, then surely we must. My message to all reading this is climate change really is happening and we can all do our bit, however small. Back to Reality – And a Heatwave, May 12.
Measured rhetoric
Opportunities for headline puns and plays aside, the entries/articles displayed an extremely measured rhetoric–The Sun and its readers taking baby steps together towards an understanding of the issue. (This is not a criticism.) The journalist and his editors have been meticulous in the care given to the framing of their positions, couching each reference to climate change in language that is least likely to scare away their readers:
LAST night I watched Al Gore’s 2006 global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth in preparation for my assignment. Whatever you believe about climate change, it is powerful viewing and a stark warning about our future.
Here The Sun is careful to ensure the vocal minority of its readers who are still sceptical remain at least included in the targeted readership.
What was also impressive was the lack of what Boykoff and Mansfied, in their paper published in April this year, called “divergent tabloid newspaper coverage” that could diminish public support for greenhouse gas mitigation programmes. There were one or two examples:
In Healy, we went for the day to a lake where two dedicated scientists are studying methane emissions, which are thought to contribute to the harmful greenhouse gases.
There is no debate about this. Methane is scientifically proven to block the escape of heat in the atmosphere as one of the greenhouse gases, so the equivocation in the article is misleading. But in general, there was a significant absence of such divergence in these articles (although across the paper, the same cannot yet be said. Some more positive ‘Time we all went green’ stories, through to six word editorials: ‘This global warming’s wet, isn’t it?’).
Reporting norms: don’t trust the scientist
One of the identifiers of the careful, cautious reporting was that, most clearly, despite its claims to bring back first hand sightings and reports of climate change happening, there was very little mention of causes and impacts. Most of the entries were descriptive, and took in the favourite Sun topics of nuts freezing off, adventure, crazy boffins, and Brits doing well abroad (and able to read The Sun online, even in the Arctic). This was probably the most direct mention of observation informing opinion:
I interviewed wilderness guide Jen Gessert who said that while receding glaciers are a natural occurrence, the rate, which the ones we saw have retreated of late, was noticeably quicker. For me, that was climate change happening right before my eyes and THAT is what I came to see.
Whereas this was the reporting norm:
I also had a final chat with Dr George Divokywho who has had 33 years of experience of climate change while he has been researching sea birds on an island in the Arctic. Sadly, this may come to an end as conditions make it too hard for him to return. He had some distressing observations to make. As I stepped onto the plane at Barrow’s tiny airport, I felt incredibly lucky that I got to see the Arctic.
Observations are not required. As long as the journalist has seen them, then that’s enough. It is, of course, one of the great strengths of the Sun newspaper that it has built this trust with its individual reader and collective readership. However, the price is that it obstructs the relationship with science.
Those observations of scientists are rarely, if ever, reported. Only those observations of The Sun journalist (who Sun readers trust) and of celebrities (see the interview with Di Caprio, that followed) and everyday people (who they trust) are reported or framed as being allowed to inform opinion. Scientists are not. This issue has been picked up both by Neil Gavin and more recently by Boykoff and Mansfield in their paper. Scientists are generally crazy, often German or EU, and always called boffins.
Final word
But, despite this mistrust of science, the Arctic blog (which was The Sun tagging along with the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream climate change amabassadors–scientists with flavour) is a good sign of things to come, I hope. It shows that Sun readers are, in general, aware of the impacts and need to act on climate change. And while Clarkson won’t stop being a columnist any time soon, making sure his rants echo around Sun towers and readers’ minds for a good while yet, it does show that the millions who read tabloid newspapers may be getting, at last, a decent amount of coverage that may, just may, inform their opinion, for even the smallest changes in behaviour. If they trust their journalist, they may just follow his lead:
But I have vowed to do as much as is possible to reduce my impact on the world and try and tell people about what they can do. Sebastian Lander, May 9, The Sun.
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