SOC433H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter Chapter 2: False Balance, Social Forces, Spencer R. Weart
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Chapter 2 – Reporting on Climate Change
• Climate change as a story, according to scholars, scientists, and journalists, has suffered mightily
in the past from these problems of unnecessarily balancing points of view and reporters being
dropped into climate change with little or no background on the science and/or debate
• This interaction—scientist explaining area of expertise, journalists seeking how to best cover
expert area—is not uncommon for many who work in science journalism.
• Journalists are expected to learn about the area of research, to converse regularly and develop
professional relationships with scientists, to have a sense of how to gauge the impact or newness
of the scientific discovery/fact/process, and adjudicate whether and how it merits journalistic
coverage
• the credibility of both journalist and scientist are on the line, as are the metrics that measure and
account for what and who merits public trust.
• Credibility, to a great degree, rests on the norms and practices already built into journalism and
science—norms that dictate both what the public good is and how these professions should serve
it
• Science as a self- governing, objective fact- producing set of institutions is maintained, but
journalism’s role remains in question as it seeks to negotiate social forces and proceed with its
watchdog work of holding government and corporations accountable while also educating (and
inspiring) the public about climate change and its latent ethical questions.
• The question about how to report truth carries with it an implicit statement about norms: “our job
is to report the truth”—journalistic norms are thus articulated as a way of explaining the
challenge that reporting on climate change presents for journalists who have a responsibility to
their profession and, by extension, to democratic publics
• role of expertise and the role of media in adjudicating that expertise and responsibly informing
the public
• Many scholars have sought to analyze media coverage of climate change in terms of how norms
shape what’s considered newsworthy and “who speaks for climate.
• This chapter specifically uses ethnographic data to get inside the issue of how credibility is
constructed, perceived, and articulated by journalists and particularly how “ethical” journalistic
coverage of climate change is debated
• It seeks to understand how journalists are being “trained” at workshops and other events that
elaborate climate change as a specific science-laden form of life
• This chapter will also address criticism of and by journalists about climate change coverage that
can be loosely grouped into a few categories:
o (1) accusations of bias, alarmist coverage, and exaggeration
o (2) claims of inadequate application or explanations of climate science using false
balance and ignoring “scientific consensus,”
o ( 3) lack of proportionate attention to the issue such that publics might demand and take
action.
The Reporters’ Guide: How to Report on Climate Change
• Climate change has produced an enormous amount of “homework” for journalists, policymakers,
and the public
• In particular, for journalists, the workshop I begin this chapter with is one example, but attempts
at cultivating an exceptional set of practices around climate change began much earlier.
• Reporting on climate change thus requires not only a depth of knowledge on varied fields of
research but also an ability to knit differing epistemic approaches together. Rarely, or some would
argue never, has an environmental issue enrolled so many disciplines and kinds of research— nor
has such an issue been so overtly politicized
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