Elissa V.
Coverage of environmental issues in the media has increased worldwide over recent years, but Europe and Australia have consistently proven themselves the dominant sources of information about all things green, while the United States aimlessly struggles to catch up. But are the tides finally starting to turn? Newspapers, magazines and television stations in the U.S. have started making important issues facing our planet front page news, but still journalists are accused of pushing an "agenda" when they do so. Because of America's divisive political climate, environmental issues are often treated as environmental propaganda – a false assumption that has caused many U.S. news outlets to shy away from heavy coverage of the topic.
Time Inc. touts its green efforts on its website, and The New York Times has thoroughly vamped up its environmental coverage – with Al Gore's crusade taking center stage and the establishment of the eco-blog, Dot Earth. But The New York Times is often dubbed "a liberal rag" by conservatives, leaving many to wonder whether all this effort to expand environmental coverage in the U.S. will simply fall on deaf ears. Or perhaps it's how the American media chooses to cover climate change that draws so much ire. Dot Earth blogger Andrew C. Revkin actually tackled a similar issue last week in his post, Media Mania for a 'Front-Page Thought' on Climate. In it, he addresses the claim that the media only reports on doomsday climate topics, specifically citing hurricanes as an example.
Nature magazine, arguably the leading scientific journal in the world, published a paper this week by two widely-respected scholars – Gabriel Vecchi and Brian Soden – suggesting that global warming may have a minimal effect on hurricanes. Over two days the media – as measured by Google News – published a grand total of 3 news stories on this paper. Now contrast this with a paper published in July in a fairly obscure journal by two other respected scholars – Peter Webster and Greg Holland – suggesting that global warming has a huge effect on hurricanes. That paper resulted in 79 news stories over two days. What accounts for the 26 to 1 ratio in news stories? -- Center for Science & Technology Policy Research
Revkin responded:
The main one, to my mind, is an institutional eagerness to sift for and amplify what editors here at The Times sometimes call "the front-page thought." This is only natural, but in coverage of science it can skew what you read toward the more calamitous side of things. It's usually not agenda-driven, as some conservative commentators charge. It's just a deeply ingrained habit.
Because this trend in reporting – "if it bleeds, it leads" – has existed since the dawn of journalism, it is unlikely circumstances will change for the environment's sake. Therefore, it's up to the American public to sift through the apocalyptic and paranoid rhetoric to find the truth. Isn't that what we're supposed to do with all news stories, not just one pertaining to the environment, anyway? Europe and Australia, on the other hand, consistently cover climate issues in the media, which some researchers attribute to the healthy relationship between journalists and scientists abroad. According to research by Maxwell T. Boykoff and S. Ravi Rajan, authors of Signals and Noise, "the intersection of mass media, science and policy is a particularly dynamic arena of communication, in which all sides have high stakes." But all those sides must reach a common ground, which seems to still be an issue in the U.S. Is it because politics don't carry as much weight in the eco-dialogue of Europe, or that these countries are generally more aware of the importance these issues have in society today? Just last week, Gore praised Europe, Australia and Japan for their dedication to solving the climate crisis in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, while chastising the U.S. and China, the two largest CO2 emitters, for failing to act during such a crucial time. America, in particular, is the only rich nation that has not been party to the Kyoto Protocol, up until its recent reluctant participation. It's unclear whether this apathy is a result of the lack of media influence on the issue or vice versa, but even the giant strides being taken by U.S. news outlets, like The New York Times and Time Inc., can't compete with the international community as a whole. So which comes first – the dedication to solving the world's environmental dilemmas or the media coverage encouraging society to do so? Does the media tell us what to think or just what to think about? And will the American media ever catch up to its international counterparts when it comes to fair and balanced environmental reporting? It hardly seems possible between the combative political parties in the West and the media's dedication to sensationalized reporting. But on the bright side, at least we're better than China. Further Reading:
