We're Facing A Climate Disaster,
But
You Won't Hear It From The Media
"You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe."
"You take the red pill and
you stay in Wonderland and I'll show you how deep the
rabbit-hole goes."
The Dallas Morning News. 04:51 PM CDT on Saturday, May 14, 2005
By Ross Gelbspan
Virtually all climate scientists agree that the first consequence of
a warmer atmosphere is a marked increase in extreme weather events
When Southern California was inundated by a foot of rain, several
feet of snow and lethal mudslides earlier this year, the news
reports made no mention of climate change – even though virtually
all climate scientists agree that the first consequence of a warmer
atmosphere is a marked increase in extreme weather events.
When four hurricanes of extraordinary strength tore through Florida
last fall, there was little media attention paid to the fact that
hurricanes are made more intense by warming ocean surface waters.
And when one storm dumped 5 feet of water on southern Haiti in 48
hours last spring, no coverage mentioned that an early manifestation
of a warming atmosphere is a significant rise in severe downpours.
Though global climate change is breaking out all around us, the U.S.
news media have remained silent.
Not because climate change is a bad story – to the contrary:
Conflict is the lifeblood of journalism, and the climate issue is
riven with conflict. Global warming policy pits the United States
against most countries of the world. It's a source of tension
between the Bush administration and 29 states, nearly 100 cities and
scores of activist groups working to reduce emissions. And it has
generated significant and acrimonious splits within the oil, auto
and insurance industries. These stories are begging to be written.
A decade-long campaign of deception, disinformation and, at times,
intimidation by the fossil fuel lobby to keep this issue off the
public radar screen
Why the lack of major media attention to one of the biggest stories
of this century? The reasons have to do with the culture of
newsrooms, the misguided application of journalistic balance, the
very human tendency to deny the magnitude of so overwhelming a
threat and, last though not least, a decade-long campaign of
deception, disinformation and, at times, intimidation by the fossil
fuel lobby to keep this issue off the public radar screen.
The carbon lobby's tactics can sometimes be heavy-handed; one
television editor told me that his network had been threatened with
a withdrawal of oil and automotive advertising after it ran a report
suggesting a connection between a massive flood and climate change.
But the most effective campaigns have been more subtly coercive.
In the early 1990s, when climate scientists began to suspect that
our burning of coal and oil was changing the Earth's climate,
Western Fuels, then a $400 million coal cooperative, declared in its
annual report that it was enlisting several scientists who were
skeptical about climate change as spokesmen. The coal industry paid
these and a handful of other skeptics some $1 million over a
three-year period and sent them around the country to speak to the
press and the public.
According to internal strategy papers I obtained at the time, the
purpose of the campaign was "to reposition global warming as theory
(not fact)," with an emphasis on targeting "older, less-educated
males," and "younger, low-income women" in districts that received
their electricity from coal.
A clever manipulation of the ethic of journalistic balance
The Western Fuels campaign was extraordinarily successful. In a
Newsweek poll conducted in 1991, before the spin began, 35 percent
of respondents said they "worry a great deal" about global warming.
By 1997 that figure had dropped by one-third, to 22 percent.
Then, as now, a prime tactic of the fossil fuel lobby centered on a
clever manipulation of the ethic of journalistic balance. Any time
reporters wrote stories about global warming, industry-funded
naysayers demanded equal time in the name of balance. As a result,
the press accorded the same weight to the industry-funded skeptics
as it did to mainstream scientists, creating an enduring confusion
in the public mind.
Journalistic balance comes into play when a story involves opinion.
But when the subject is a matter of fact, the concept of balance is
irrelevant.
The burning of fossil fuels is causing significant shifts in the
Earth's climate
What we know about the climate comes from the largest and most
rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history – the
findings of more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting
to the United Nations as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. The panel's conclusions, that the burning of fossil fuels is
indeed causing significant shifts in the Earth's climate, have been
widely and repeatedly corroborated.
Granted, few credentialed scientists still claim climate change to
be inconsequential. To give them their due, a reporter should learn
where the weight of scientific opinion falls – and reflect that
balance in his or her reporting. That would give mainstream
scientists 95 percent of the story, with the skeptics getting a
paragraph or two at the end.
Another major obstacle is the dominant culture of newsrooms
But because most reporters don't have the time, curiosity or
professionalism to check out the science, they write equivocal
stories with counterposing quotes that play directly into the hands
of the oil and coal industries.
Another major obstacle is the dominant culture of newsrooms. The
fastest-rising journalists tend to make their bones covering
politics, and so the lion's share of press coverage of climate
change has focused on the political machinations surrounding global
warming rather than its consequences.
Finally, coverage of the climate crisis is one of many casualties of
media conglomeration. Marketing strategy is replacing news judgment;
celebrity coverage is on the rise, even as newspapers cut staff and
fail to provide their remaining reporters the time they need to
research complex stories.
Editors and reporters betraying their professional obligation to
their readers and viewers
Ultimately, however, the responsibility for the failure of the press
lies neither with the carbon lobby nor with newsroom culture nor
even the commercialization of the news. It lies in the indifference
or laziness of hundreds of editors and thousands of reporters who
are betraying their professional obligation to their readers and
viewers.
Climate change constitutes an immense drama of very uncertain
outcome. It is as important and compelling a story as any reporter
could hope to work on. Perversely, for so great an opportunity, it
is threatening to become the shame of the American press.
Ross Gelbspan is the author of "Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big
Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate
Crisis – And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster" (Basic, 2004). He
contributed a longer version of this article to Mother Jones
magazine (www.motherjones.com).
"You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake
in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe."
"You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland
and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
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