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Climate change coverage:
When balanced may not be fair

By Kimball Bennion
J-School Web reporter

Journalism needs to rebuild its lines of communication with science if it wants to play a positive role in solving the environment’s problems, panelists said at a March 4 lecture on the press and climate change.

Frank Allen, Michelle Nijhuis and Steve Schwarze discussed the role of the media in the climate change conversation as part of a series by The University of Montana’s Wilderness Institute called “Climate Change: Moving from Science to Solutions.”

“The media have a lot to live down,” said Allen, a former editor at the Wall Street Journal. Allen now lives in Missoula where he runs the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources. IJNR is devoted to higher journalistic standards in coverage of environmental issues.

One of journalism’s biggest shortcomings in its communication with the scientific community has been its over coverage of misinformed skepticism, panelists said.

Allen said that for the past 25 years, journalists have been “puzzled and perplexed” by disinformation. Since they are trained to be skeptics, journalists have unwittingly given too much coverage to research that is done by what Allen called “shoe salesmen.”

Schwarze said that many reporters, even those at the most prestigious outlets such as The New York Times or The Washington Post, get confused between objectivity and balance. Objectivity is trying to tell a story accurately and fairly. Balance is telling as story as though all sides carry equal weight.

Balance can be a form of bias in the climate change debate, Schwarze said. The scientific community has virtually reached a consensus that climate change is real, but many newspapers give an equal voice to the minority of climate skeptics for balance’s sake.
“Balance isn’t necessarily objective,” Schwarze said.

Schwarze is an assistant professor of communications at the University of Montana. He has been teaching an environmental communications class since 2000.

Some of the skepticism about climate change is a product of what Nijhuis called, “manufactured uncertainty.” She said the efforts to discredit climate science are similar to the tactics tobacco companies used to cast doubt on claims that smoking tobacco caused health problems. Its goal, Nijhuis said, was to lead the public to doubt scientific inquiry about a topic.

Nijhuis said that legitimate skepticism isn’t bad, but paid skepticism designed to confuse an issue, is.

“That’s really interfered with the public debate,” Nijhuis said.

Nijhuis is a contributing editor for High Country News. She has covered climate change for the publication since 2004.

Allen talked about the Global Climate Coalition, a group that formed in 1989 and included oil and motor companies such as Exxon, Ford, Shell Oil and Chrysler. Allen said that their message was to think twice about the science and not to rush into the issue so quickly.

At a local level, Allen criticized the Missoulian for printing letters to the editor from climate skeptics that contained false information.

The panelists said it was time for journalists and their publications to move past skepticism and start moving toward solutions.

“How sure do you need to be?” Allen said.

“We’re always making decisions in the face of uncertainty,” Nijhuis said. “Science is inherently uncertain.”

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