Mereja

Brulle: “The NY Times doesn’t need to go to European conferences to find out why public opinion on climate change has shifted…. Just look in the mirror.”

Written by

Joe

in

The NYT’s Elisabeth Rosenthal had another front-page “teach the controversy” piece yesterday, “Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons.”  That has apparently become a specialty of the one-time paper of record (see NYT faces credibility siege over unbalanced climate coverage and The NYT once again equates non-scientists — Bastardi, Coleman, and Watts (!) — with climate scientists).

I asked Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, whom the NYT itself quoted last year as “an expert on environmental communications,” for his comments.  Here they are:

It is well known in both sociology and communications that public opinion is largely shaped by media coverage.  So the shift in public opinion about climate change is linked to the nature of mainstream media coverage of the so-called “climategate scandal.”

Several media researchers have documented the persistent bias in main stream media.

(See the links to the AAAS presentations of Max Boykoff and William Freudenberg).

Other links from FAIR;

Yet none of these independent analyses are noted in the article by Ms. Rosenthal.  Acknowledging the media’s role in facilitating the public relations aims of the climate denialists strikes too close to home for the NY Times to cover.  The aim of the climate denialists public relations campaign is to spread confusion and doubt about climate change.  They have been very successful, aided by, what Dr. Boykoff noted as the exaggeration of outliers and a false sense of balance:

“Such claims are amplified when traditional news media position noncredible contrarian sources against those with scientific data, in a failed effort to represent opposing sides.”

The article by Ms. Rosenthal ends with the observation that “The public is left to struggle with the salvos between the two sides.”  Why is this the case?  Because the media has abdicated its duty to inform the public under a misguided notion of providing “balance” between science and nonsense.

The NY Times doesn’t need to go to European conferences to find out why public opinion on climate change has shifted.  They can save the carbon emissions of the trip.  Just look in the mirror.

I would add that the British media is arguably now worse than the American media on this issue:

Rosenthal herself notes in the article:

In March, Simon L. Lewis, an expert on rain forests at the University of Leeds in Britain, filed a 30-page complaint with the nation’s Press Complaints Commission against The Times of London, accusing it of publishing “inaccurate, misleading or distorted information” about climate change, his own research and remarks he had made to a reporter.

“I was most annoyed that there seemed to be a pattern of pushing the idea that there were a number of serious mistakes in the I.P.C.C. report, when most were fairly innocuous, or not mistakes at all,” said Dr. Lewis, referring to the report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

On top of that, the “British winter was the coldest for 31 years.“  We have had enough warming now that people are surprised by coolish winters, so it’s no surprise that over a short period of time, it will impact public opinion, even when that winter isn’t actually close to record breaking.  Stanford communications expert Jon Krosnick notes that “One factor that can influence opinion is the perception of local changes in the weather” (see “One more reason that recent U.S. polling on global warming is down slightly“).

As long as the NYT diverts so much of its scarce front-page coverage on climate to articles like this one, the prospects remain poor that the public will become informed on the actual state of the science.

Related Post:

More posts