Climate of coverage: Lord Turner’s report

The beginning of this week saw the press respond (or not) to Lord Adair Turner’s new report on reducing our UK carbon emissions as part of his role as chair of the government’s Committee on Climate Change. Taking a snapshot (or synchronic, to use the technical term) analysis of the coverage of the report [...]

James Hansen in Parliament today

James Hansen, NASA scientist, is in Westminster today to give evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee on the impact of current science on climate policy. It’s being billed by new group Climate Safety as “one humdinger of a debate” between, in the red corner, Hansen and researcher Tim Helweg-Larsen of the Public Interest Research Centre, [...]

Pachauri’s blog and President Obama

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has launched his own blog.
It’s a curious thing for someone already so well known, well positioned, to do (hence the exclamation marks from Wattsupwiththat). It is also not that sophisticated as a portfolio site.
Perhaps the process of leading the IPCC through tortuous negotiations [...]

Engaging across blogging divides on climate

Last week, an anthropology PhD student in New Zealand wrote a summary and response to a paper I gave at the Association for Journalism Education annual conference, in September this year. I though her commentary was a thoughtful piece with a fair set of conclusions: that bloggers self-select their networks based on beliefs. And that [...]

Guardian launches Fred Pearce greenwash column

Back in June I interviewed Fred Pearce for a book chapter (to be published next year). My first question was if coverage of climate change had slowed. No, he said, and his employers (magazines such as New Scientist) were looking for more stories from him. He also said that the Guardian was increasing its pool [...]

Climate reporting: good, bad, experimental: 2

Yesterday I looked at an example of bad environment reporting. Janet Raloff’s failure to apply traditional news values in reporting a flawed attack on the IPCC opened up the danger that a ’scanning’ reader of the article, on the US Science News site, could believe the attack had credibilty.
Janet picked up the story from a [...]

Climate reporting: good, bad, experimental: 1

A number of posts this week from Fiona Fox, Charlie Beckett and the Knight Science Tracker have gone into the writing of these two linked entries (second one tomorrow). My subject is responsible, well-researched journalism that remains aware of its power to influence its audience. Practice of this journalism is an essential part [...]