Boykoff, M.T. and J.M. Boykoff. 2004. Balance as bias: global warming and
the US prestige press. Global Env Change 14: 125-136.
In this article, researchers did a content analysis of the New York Times,
the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal for
the period 1988-2002, and found that adherence to journalistic balance leads
to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to climate change and
resultant actions. They found that the majority of coverage (53%) gave
roughly equal attention to the view that humans were contributing to global
warming, and that other view that exclusively natural fluctuations could
explain the earth's temperature increase. They also found that this trend
towards informational bias has increased with time. By looking at the
year-to-year distribution of coverage of anthropogenic contributions, they
found that while in 1988 and 1989 the focus was on the anthropogenic
contribution, by the release of the IPCC's First Assessment Report in 1990
the emphasis was moving towards balanced accounts. From 1990 forward,
authors explain this shift by the politicization of the issue and the
coalescence of a small group of influential spokespeople and scientists that
emerged in the news to refute these findings. These "skeptics" have been
very influential in the climate change debate in emphasizing uncertainty and
delays in action. Boykoff and Boykoff conclude that there is a significant
difference between the scientific community discourse and that of the press
regarding both anthropogenic contributions to climate change and decisions
regarding action.
Discuss