Jan 13 2008
United States television news coverage of anthropogenic climate change
Here’s an interesting new paper about climate change news coverage.
Abstract: Full text requires subscription.
Eminent climate scientists have come to consensus that human influences are significant contributors to modern global climate change. This study examines coverage of anthropogenic climate change in United States (U.S.) network television news – ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News – and focuses on the application of the journalistic norm of ‘balance’ in coverage from 1995 through 2004. This study also examines CNN WorldView, CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports and CNN NewsNight as illustrations of cable news coverage. Through quantitative content analysis, results show that 70% of U.S. television news segments have provided ‘balanced’ coverage regarding anthropogenic contributions to climate change vis-à-vis natural radiative forcing, and there has been a significant difference between this television coverage and scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change from 1996 through 2004. Thus, by way of the institutionalized journalistic norm of balanced reporting, United States television news coverage has perpetrated an informational bias by significantly diverging from the consensus view in climate science that humans contribute to climate change. Troubles in translating this consensus in climate science have led to the appearance of amplified uncertainty and debate, also then permeating public and policy discourse.
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...Related Posts:
3 Responses to “United States television news coverage of anthropogenic climate change”
To reduce spam, comments are automatically closed 30 days after the last comment. If you would like to comment on any closed thread, please use the contact form at the top of this page.
Hi N.,
Here’s the full text as a PDF:
Lost in translation? United States television news coverage of anthropogenic climate change, 1995–2004
DOI 10.1007/s10584-007-9299-3
Author Maxwell T. Boykoff
[Reply: I'm surprised this is open access. Thanks for pointing that out.]
Thanks, inel, although I must say I’m mystified that it’s public-access on the publisher’s site. Is there a trick you know?
Also, note that Max lists a number of related papers on his web page, several of which have the full text linked. One of of them is a 2003-6 analysis for US and UK media. I haven’t read it, but from the title it appears as if it may be a bit more topical than the one atmoz linked. I assume we’ll be seeing something from Max soon on the 2007 “sea change.”
Hi atmoz:
I assume you’ve seen this by now. You may recall that Ben announced these results (see the tenth paragraph) on RP Sr.’s blog last April *before* he had analyzed the latest RSS version. I thought that was interesting.
Googling a bit, I find nothing on RM Randall other than this prior effort with Ben. I’m not even sure this earlier paper is peer-reviewed, or what relationship it has to the new one (the abstracts make it seem like totally different methods were used), but according to Google Scholar it has no cites as yet. Does that mean it’s just been ignored?
Any light you can shed on this episode would be helpful, although of course I’ll understand if it’s a bit too close to home.
[Reply: As far as I'm aware, the "prior effort" was just a draft released by the Air Force since that is whom employs RM Randall. Besides changes due to reviewer comments, they are the same paper. It makes since that it has no citations yet; it still in press. The fact that a researcher comments on their research before it is published is also not uncommon.]