Two of the worst examples of shoddy, irresponsible journalism related to global warming – and journalism in general – that I’ve ever seen have unfortunately come in the past month in the Science section of the New York Times. On February 13, libertarian opinion columnist John Tierney used an article ostensibly about Richard Branson’s $25 million carbon sequestration challenge to launch a myopic attack on Al Gore based on the fact that global warming may unfold over the entire next century. You can’t tell from the internet version, but the content on Branson was on the front page and the attack on Al Gore began, suspiciously, right behind the fold and had nothing to do with Branson’s challenge.
Tomorrow morning the Science section will feature an article by William Broad titled “From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype.” The storyline is very simple and familiar: some scientists say Al Gore is exaggerating his claims about global warming, some scientists say he is exaggerating them not so much, actually Al Gore is conveying everything fairly accurately and fully understands the science, but again folks, this reporter found someone who would say he’s exaggerating. Byline March 13, 2007, but it might as well be a reprint from March 13, 1992. The Al Gore-as-Ozone-Man thing… it’s so fifteen years ago. This article was irresponsibly bad for three reasons, outlined below the jump. Why is this relevant to a youth blog? Because the New York Times owes us more than to treat the biggest public policy issue of our century as a gossip-fest.
First, this is a transparent hit piece. It is the kind of useless non-news that a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning reporter like Broad should not have been so silly as to pursue as a storyline. This is about as meaningful a story for the public as the fact that Al Gore was advised to wear brown clothes when running for President.
This is non-news not because of what has been written about, but how. This is an irresponsibly bad piece of reporting (secondly) because it has been conveyed as if this reporter is covering a trial or a messy divorce, where facts might be disputed or unknown. It’s not news that someone called Al Gore’s documentary “shrill alarmism” in the Wall Street Journal if it’s not true! It would have been entirely possible to write an article by addressing how An Inconvenient Truth squares by comparing it to scientific facts. (These facts are available through such means as the tubes of the internet. I believe accredited journalists at the New York Times have access to this research tool.) The fact is that had this article compared the film or Al Gore’s statements to actual facts, Broad would probably not have had a story. He would have had to think up a story based on science, or reality.
Third, this is irresponsible because if the Times wants to run a Gossip section, they are entirely able to. In fact, they already do: “Sunday Styles.” The media has played a useless and often detrimental role in reporting in the public interest on global warming, as simply one example, because it has for years chosen to portray global warming as political theater. It is a reporter’s job to write stories, it is an editor’s job to squash the dumb ones. Beyond all the reasons listed above for why this story should not have been written, it should not have been run by the editors.
If it wants to remain credible, (and in the case of the Times, profitable) the media must accept its responsibility to act in the public interest and the full implications of this. It’s not good enough not to print lies, it’s necessary to print the truth. Most of the time the media fails to do this, it is because of sins of omission rather than commission – holes in the story rather than inaccuracies. To write an article that contains accurate quotes from real people but which, through omission, conveys an inaccurate narrative, or worse, perpetuates outright lies, is no better with regard to this public mission than to run fabricated stories. I just kind of thought we’d seen the end of stories like this one.
The NYT does “fair and balanced”? With you 100%.
Well, it’s even worse than a gossip piece — it’s got blatant errors in it. This is an excerpt from my letter to the NYT editors:
Broad states that the latest IPCC report has lowered its estimate of future sea level rise, apparently exposing Gore as a “shrill alarmist”. This is dead wrong. The reason for the lower estimate is that the IPCC report now excludes the full effects of ice sheet melting — because we don’t understand it well enough. And that’s mainly because Greenland is melting faster than anyone had expected. What they’re saying is not, “Sea level rise is going to be less than we thought.” They’re saying, “We just can’t predict what the ice sheets are going to do.”
Still think that, as Broad bizarrely concludes, the IPCC portrays climate change as a “slow-motion process”? The IPCC estimates that under a business-as-usual scenario global temperature will rise over 7 degrees F by 2100. That’s more than half a degree per decade.
Good comment.
Those who have not read this web page on the AIP web site might find it informative:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
It gives a history of the scientific understanding of CO2 as a greenhouse gas causing warming that goes back to 1859.
Nathan Wyeth’s column, “Breaking News” (March 12, 2007, News and Media, Climate Science) is presented as a counterpiece to Tierney’s February 13th column in the New York Times. Wyeth’s contribution is, however, basically an immature rant, employing an extensive, emotionally-charged vocabulary and a plethora of inflammatory phrases. The subject is too important to be dealt with in such a manner.
Please, may we have some more fact-based argument from knowledgeable people on the subject? Is it true that the present global-warming scenario only dates back 400 years and cannot be traced in an uninterrupted sweep back to earlier periods of planetary history? Yes or no? Does anyone have some authoritative information on sea-level predictions?
Regrettably, I do not have the answers personally at this time, but others do, and I, as would many others, no doubt, would welcome additional serious scientific discussion from either side. If such discussion involves repeating previous assertions, published elsewhere or otherwise, so what? No amount of repetition could possibly be redundant in the face of such a massive influx into the environmental arena of new or incompletely-informed concerned individuals as we are presently seeing regarding global warming.
As for the merely scurrilous journalistic assassins, present or forthcoming, a pox on all your houses. Mr. Wyeth — if you please — no more comments about “shoddy, irresponsible journalism”; your heart is in the right place, but your tactics appear to be as reprehensible as those of any whom you deplore.