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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? More »

Tags: global warming, Guardian, issue attention, newspaper coverage, qualities, research, tabloids, The Sun

Imagining our environment: Hiroshi Sugimoto

Research for my PhD took us last weekend to the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg and an exhibition of the work of photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. The Japanese-born New Yorker Sugimoto has been exhibiting since 1987 and is recognised as one of the outstanding contemporary photographers. Contemporary, but using almost archaic photographic equipment and practices, such as an old 19th century large-image camera, and an army of assistants touching up the black and white prints by hand.

It is this approach, along with the subject matter, that now draws me to Sugimoto as a case study of how we ‘talk’ about - in visual and verbal languages - and therefore represent the environment.

Why the environment?
Many of Sugimoto’s images are of, or relate to, how we experience the environment, both built and ‘natural’. Some of his most arresting images are of architecture in slow exposure (blurred) focus, teasing out how great design is strengthened by reconnecting with its more impressionistic, ‘yet to be realised’ image in the architect’s mind: what the design must have first ‘felt’ like. This urge to reconnect what we experience is the present with what we have experienced in the past, either internal or external to ourselves, is central to Sugimoto’s work, and is the kernal for perhaps his most emotive and powerful work, his Seascapes. More »

Tags: environment, image, photography, research, Sugimoto

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 of tackling climate change.

And Janet Raloff gets it wrong
Picked up by the Knight Science Tracker earlier this week was a story written on Monday for US Science News by Janet Raloff, their science reporter. It’s a great example of the traditional inverted pyramid having value in the news reporting of environment issues.

Raloff attended a poorly attended press conference where Arthur Robinson, co-founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in Cave Junction, put forward a spurious, flawed and baseless ‘petition’ of, he claimed, 30,000 scientists who think the IPCC has got it wrong on climate change. The petition has no credibility. The IPCC are right. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the main cause of dangerously accelerating climate change. Note that I am not linking to, and therefore validating, Arthur Robinson. Note, also, that I have clearly invalidated his petition. This was not Raloff’s approach: what did she do? More »

Tags: bad reporting, IPCC, Knight Science Tracker, research