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Nieman Reports, Winter 2005, Global Warming NIEMAN REPORTS THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION FOR JOURNALISM AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY VOL. 59 NO. 4 WINTER 2005 Digital Reprint Global Warming 2 Introduction 4 Science and Journalism Fail to Connect BY DAN FAGIN 6 Knowing Uncertainty for What It Is BY DAVID MICHAELS 8 Disinformation, Financial Pressures, and Misplaced Balance BY ROSS GELBSPAN 11 Observing Those Who Observe By DANIEL GROSSMAN 17 The Disconnect of News Reporting From Scientific Evidence BY MAX BOYKOff 19 Context and Controversy: Global Warming Coverage By JESSICA DUrfEE AND JULIA COrbETT 20 Weight-of-Evidence Reporting: What Is It? Why Use It? BY SHARON DUNWOODY 22 Global Warming: What’s Known vs. What’s Told BY SANDY TOLAN AND ALEXANdrA BERZON 26 How Do We Cover Penguins and Politics of Denial? BY BILL MOYERS 28 Accepting Global Warming as Fact BY MARKUS BECKER 30 Culture Contributes to Perceptions of Climate Change BY HANS VON STORCH AND WERNER KRAUSS 34 Trying to Achieve Balance Against Great Odds BY JACQUES A. RIVArd “… to promote and elevate the standards of journalism” —Agnes Wahl Nieman, the benefactor of the Nieman Foundation IntroductionGlobal Warming Nieman Reports / Winter 2005 Publisher BOB GILES Global Warming Editor In his opening essay, Dan Fagin, associate director of New York University’s MELISSA LUDTKE Science and Environmental Reporting Program, plows the common ground beneath Assistant Editor LOIS FIORE the coverage of intelligent design and global warming. Science, he observes, is not Editorial Assistant “adept at feeding the media’s craving for novelty, since the credibility of science SARAH HAGEDORN depends on meticulous process in which each hypothesis builds incrementally on Design Editor all the work that has come before. In science, nothing ever really comes out of left DIANE NOVETSKY field. In journalism, it’s our favorite position.” Then we move on from his words to This Nieman Reports articles examining reporting about global warming. eMprint™ newsbook was produced in David Michaels, a research professor in environmental and occupational cooperation with the health at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Donald W. Reynolds Services, describes how public-information campaigns, funded by the fossil fuel Journalism Institute at the Missouri industry, insert skeptical views into journalists’ reporting on global warming. School of Journalism. “… the skeptic’s assertions are often reported without identifying their corporate eMprint is a trade- mark of the Curators sponsors or letting readers know the person’s credentials for raising such doubts,” of the University of Michael writes. Ross Gelbspan, author of “Boiling Point,” criticizes reporters Missouri. for their misplaced use of “balance” in the telling of the global warming story and The contents are writes that “it seems profoundly irresponsible for them to pass along a story that digitally reprinted is ‘balanced’ with opposing quotes without doing the necessary digging to reach from the Words & Reflections section an informed judgment about the gravity of the situation.” In reporting on science of the Winter 2005 and the environment for radio, print and the Web, Daniel Grossman travels Nieman Reports. with scientists to research sites as they study impacts of climate change. In a photo Copyright 2005 by the essay from his trips, many of which have taken him near the earth’s poles “since President and Fellows the Arctic and Antarctic are heating up faster than anywhere else,” Grossman shows of Harvard College. and describes what he has observed. Telephone: (617) 496-2968 Max Boykoff, a doctoral student in environmental studies at the University E-Mail Address: of California, Santa Cruz, reports findings from a study he coauthored about [email protected] “balanced reporting” in newspaper coverage of global warming. The conclusion: Internet Address: “… the reporting was found to be strikingly out of alignment with the top climate www.nieman.harvard.edu science.” University of Utah doctoral student Jessica Durfee and associate professor Julia Corbett examined how context and controversy in stories about global warming affect readers’ perceptions of the issue. One finding: “It is heartening to know that the simple inclusion of scientific context might help eMprint™ newsbook IntroductionGlobal Warming Nieman Reports / Winter 2005 3 Publisher BOB GILES mitigate the readers’ level of uncertainty.” Sharon Dunwoody, who teaches Editor science and environmental journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, MELISSA LUDTKE wants journalists to use “weight-of-evidence” reporting in covering this issue. It Assistant Editor is not up to journalists “to determine what’s true but, instead, to find out where LOIS FIORE the bulk of evidence and expert thought lies on the truth continuum and then Editorial Assistant communicate that to audiences.” University of California at Berkeley journalism SARAH HAGEDORN professor Sandy Tolan and graduate student Alexandra Berzon provide an Design Editor DIANE NOVETSKY overview of coverage of this topic, and Tolan describes a class he designed, “Early Signs: How Global Warming Affects Commerce, Culture and Community,” in which This Nieman Reports journalism students learn how to document “the social, cultural, political and eMprint™ newsbook was produced in economic impact of climate change around the world.” cooperation with the Donald W. Reynolds In excerpts from a speech television journalist Bill Moyers delivered to the Journalism Institute Society of Environmental Journalists, he offers ways to connect storytelling about at the Missouri School of Journalism. global warming to evangelical concerns about preserving the earth. Markus Becker, eMprint is a trade- who heads the science department at Spiegel Online, contrasts U.S. and German mark of the Curators approaches and notes that American news media “are so intent on hearing both sides of the University of Missouri. in a debate that they often are virtually incapable of showing where the majority opinion lies.” Hans von Storch, who directs the Institute for Coastal Research in The contents are digitally reprinted Germany and Werner Krauss, who teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, from the Words & explain how cultural orientations in the U.S. and Germany affect public perceptions Reflections section about climate change and reporting about it. And former Canadian Broadcasting of the Winter 2005 Nieman Reports. Corporation correspondent Jacques A. Rivard describes why his editors rarely requested that he include “opposing views about global warming.” n Copyright 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Telephone: (617) 496-2968 E-Mail Address: [email protected] Internet Address: www.nieman.harvard.edu eMprint™ newsbook Global Warming Nieman Reports / Winter 2005 4 Science and Journalism Fail to Connect ‘How can we expect Americans to know anything beyond what they happen to remember from science class? Journalists certainly don’t tell them.’ By Dan Fagin volution is “only a theory.” if only for a moment. It turns out that most of us not only Global warming is “unproven.” A few respected scientists do make don’t know science, we don’t even EAnd science itself is “just an- it a priority to speak out on the com- understand why it matters. other opinion.” pelling issues of the day: E.O. Wilson How can we expect Americans to Critics of mainstream science seem and Richard Dawkins, to name two, know anything beyond what they hap- to be everywhere these days, and though neither has the public profile pen to remember from science class? we, as journalists, just can’t seem to of his predecessors. And a few mass- Journalists certainly don’t tell them. get enough of them. It’s just about market media outlets still cover scien- When is the last time you heard a re- impossible to pick up a newspaper tific developments in a sophisticated porter explain in print or on the air or watch CNN for an hour without way: The Economist and The New York that a scientific hypothesis is elevated being confronted by someone attack- Times, to name two, though neither to a “theory” only after it is supported ing ideas that most scientists think are is as comprehensive as it once was. by overwhelming observational and so settled that they aren’t even worth The best coverage, as always, comes experimental evidence and is widely discussing any more. Meanwhile, the from many niche publications, but accepted by the scientific community? topics that many scientists are work- they reach relatively small audiences. Sure, evolution is a theory—and so ing on—the almost daily advances Most consumers of news never hear is Mendelian heredity and Newtonian in nanotechnology and genetics, to about the work of contemporary sci- gravitation. pick just two—are largely absent from ence: the meticulous testing, honing When is the last time you heard a mass-market media coverage. What’s and retesting of hypotheses—the journalist explain that the scientific going on? process that ended the Dark Ages and process is not about “proving” any- Nearly 50 years ago, the British continues to illuminate dark corners thing? Instead, it’s about constructing physicist and novelist C.P. Snow of our world. a hypothesis, disproving it, and then published his famous “two cultures” So we shouldn’t be surprised that developing a better one that offers essay, which deplores the widening about 46 percent of American adults a slightly fuller explanation of the gulf between scientists and their in- don’t know it takes a year for the natural world as we experience it. tellectual counterparts in the arts. If earth to orbit the sun, according to a The cycle never stops. Science will Snow was alive today, I think he might 2004 survey by the National Science never prove, in an absolute sense, have extended his argument to apply Foundation, and that more than half of that emissions of carbon dioxide from to the chasm that now exists between Americans think the earliest humans man-made sources are contributing science and just about everyone else lived at the same time as dinosaurs, to global warming, but science can in society, including journalists.
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