Climate change in the newsroom: journalists' evolving standards of objectivity when covering global warming

Abstract

Climate change may well be the most important environmental issue of our time. For journalists covering the environmental beat, there is no bigger story-and none more treacherous. Journalists have been accused of distorting the scientific consensus by applying "false balance" to those who say anthropogenic climate change is happening and those who say it isn't. This study interviewed 11 experienced environmental reporters for mainstream print or online publications about how they understand the occupational norm of objectivity as applied to coverage of climate change, and how has that changed since 2000. Results were that subjects expressed support for several of nine dimensions of objectivity considered, but they redefined these terms to fit with their experiences. In the case of "balance," reporters have redefined it to mean applying a "weight of evidence" approach (Dunwoody, 2005) to science stories, and they tend to use global warming "skeptics" as sources very sparingly now. There only limited support for increased transparency in journalism, especially if that included revealing the reporter's personal opinions. Eight of 11 reporters interviewed said journalists should still be objective when covering climate change-but they indicated this meant "writing with authority," or interpreting their research. The other three journalists rejected the notion of objectivity as being impossible or prone to abuse. This study's findings indicate that the core values of journalism are incredibly durable, especially among its senior practitioners.

Public Problem Characterization, Policy Solution Generation, and Intra‐Agenda Connectivity

“…The test for newspaper‐fixed effect examines whether the pattern of attribute–solution connections holds across different newspapers. Previous studies indicate that news stories are not just a product guided by professional journalism standards of fairness and neutrality, they are also driven by individual journalists’ perceptions (Hiles & Hinnant, ) and news organizations’ political values and norms (Bennett, ; Patterson & Donsbach, ) as well as market incentives and economic concerns of managers and owners for business efficiency and profitability (McManus, ). Political orientations, partisan bias, economic norms, and other prior conditions and characteristics vary across individual news organizations, and the coverage of climate change in different newspapers may be affected by “motivated reasoning” and other information‐processing biases (Lodge & Taber, ; Taber & Lodge, 2006; see also Chong & Druckman, , ; Druckman , , ; Druckman & Bolsen, ; Jones & Song, ).…”

Finding a Place for Deliberation and Democracy in the Manufactroversy about Climate Change

“…Gross instead suggests that the quality of scientific coverage should be determinant not on the notion of balance, but on the quality of sources, and that they must be primary and plural. Hiles and Hinnant (2014) found the same emphasis on source quality over "balance" through interviewing veteran environmental reporters. Through the increasing realization that the technical and the political spheres operate under different logics, journalists offline and online are making headway in presenting accurately environmental issues that concern the public's interest.…”

“…A few years after his initial study, Boykoff (2007) found that "balance as bias" in elite newspapers was beginning to shift toward a more accurate reflection of the scientific consensus. What had happened was that mainstream environmental journalists had developed a modified norm of objectivity, largely through their experience with reporting on climate change (Hiles & Hinnant, 2014). Hiles and Hinnant found that veteran environmental journalists may be well versed in their beat, but still face pressures regarding how to portray their own views.…”

“…Moreover, Hermida suggests that the brief and digestible nature of Tweets allow publics more easily to conceptualize the corpus of news information and events, making way for a new age of "ambient" journalism. Journalists, as issue interpreters, however, have been known to help to perpetuate unscientific arguments of climate change deniers because of institutional expectations and standards of objectivity (Ceccarelli, 2011;Hiles & Hinnant, 2014, Santhanam, 2014. Twitter, then, with tweet content overwhelmingly focused on mainstream news and current events, helps to perpetuate journalists' "balanced" but imprecise reporting of the climate change disaster (Kwal et al, 2010).…”

United States news media and climate change in the era of US President Trump

“…News companies have cut full-time specialists in favor of a workforce of general assignments, freelancers, or crowd-sourced unpaid amateurs, which means there are significantly fewer environmental journalists left in the US to cover climate change (Deuze et al 2010;Moser 2010;Hansen 2011;Fuchs 2014;Gibson et al 2015). Of the 2 most recent studies that interviewed climate journalists, 1 study could find 10 (Gibson et al 2015), while the other found 11 (Hiles and Hinnant 2014). Moreover, the journalists who are left often lack significant training in climate science and find a dearth of appropriate time to meaningfully research and evaluate various claims within scientific information (McComas and Shanahan 1999;Bennett 2002).…”