As we depart from the ’00s and enter a new decade, the multi-faceted issue of climate change remains a high-stakes, highly contentious and high-profile challenge for understanding and engagement. Mass media are vitally important to public understanding of climate change, as they translate what can often be alienating, jargon-laden, formal climate science and policy; they powerfully shape and negotiate meaning, influencing how citizens make sense of and value the world. Therefore, intensity of media attention has a strong bearing on considerations for various policy actions as well as the spectrum of possibility for public engagement. From 2000 through 2009, coverage [...]
Search Results for: Maxwell Boykoff
Dec
24
2004
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on environmental coverage, Jules Boykoff on global warming
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: a holiday special on the media and the environment, including an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., author of Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country and Highjacking our Democracy. Kennedy says that at a time when we are living under worst environmental administration ever, the media are largely ignoring environmental stories. We'll talk to Robert F. Kennedy about the media, the environment and George W. Bush. Also this week: There's little-- if any-- serious scientific debate about what causes global warming. But you wouldn't get [...]
Nov
01
2004
Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias
Creating controversy where science finds consensus
A new study has found that when it comes to U.S. media coverage of global warming , superficial balance—telling "both" sides of the story—can actually be a form of informational bias. Despite the consistent assertions of the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that human activities have had a "discernible" influence on the global climate and that global warming is a serious problem that must be addressed immediately, "he said/she said" reporting has allowed a small group of global warming skeptics to have their views greatly amplified. The current best climate research predicts that the Earth's temperature could [...]
