No Balance in Environmental Reporting at The New York Times: John Coleman
Posted by jennifer, January 31st, 2009 - under Opinion.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
AT his popular New York Times blog, environmental journalist Andrew Revkin asks the question “Can a scientists be a Citizen, Too?” But what Mr Revkin is really asking is: should scientists become involved in advocacy?
Mr Revkin provides the case of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies Chief, James Hansen, as a specific example and suggests that because the issue of global warming has such “big consequences for society” Dr Hansen is almost obliged to become involved in politics.
I disagree.
In the following note, Mr Coleman goes on to explain that reporting on global warming at Mr Revkin’s newspaper, The New York Times, is unfortunately more advocacy than journalism.
“DID advocacy Journalism first get out of hand during the civil rights movement or the Vietnam war? It seems to me it began to sweep the newspapers and TV in the 1960′s and hasn’t been arrested since. I have little expectation that in the difficult times reform will take hold, but I will here and now hope for it.
There are two sides to everything. One of those sides is usually wrong, dead wrong. People who advocate the more unseemly or, to the Journalist, least supportable or correct position are often people the Journalist cannot stand or understand. But, to the solid Journalist, they must be covered and the coverage must be unbiased. That can be very hard, but it should be done.
That does not mean every single story must delve into both sides. The side that has taken some new action or released a new statement should dominate and may, in fact, be the only side covered in an article. But, over time, through a series of article, stories or reports a high degree of balance should be achieved.
In the case of the desegregation movement, the segregationists needed to be heard. They were wrong, in what we perceive to be only correct position. But, the Journalists needed to hear and report their statements and report their actions and positions without deriding them.
In the case of the Vietnam war, there were two sides of opinion, but it seems to me the media advocated the “end the war” side daily for several years and ignored or even derided the advocates fighting for victory. In the case of women’s rights, we all know there was only one side, so no balanced reporting was needed. (What’s this; a small joke creeping into this note?)
And, now the case of global warming; a current cause celeb: The news has flooded us with Al Gore’s pronouncements of climatic Armageddon and the constant barrage of supposed proof. From the dying Polar Bears (They were and are not dying), to the melting ice at the North Pole (The ice extent at the pole is now the same as it was when satellite surveillance began in 1979), the devastation of hurricane Katrina (A more or less average hurricane in a more or less average hurricane season, that created havoc in New Orleans because the levies were poor and the Mayor and Governor and well as federal officials did a poor job of evacuating the people and protecting property), all sorts of things including the die off of bees, shrinking coral reefs and a laundry list of other events have all been attributed by Journalists to global warming.
And, the connection between fossil fuel exhaust emissions of carbon dioxide has been presented over and over again as accepted science without the slightest bow to the growing throng of scientists protesting the entire silly foray of bad science and resulting public policy.
The meetings and publications of the UN IPCC have been reported like the final decisions of the high court.
If you search the files of New York Times articles about global warming, is there one single story that presents the skeptic’s side without demeaning them or their position? There is hardly such a story, much less a fair and balanced one.
In this day where everyone is in a position to be a publisher on the internet, advocacy is all around us. An individual’s website and blog and comments posted elsewhere are not meant to be Journalism.
But the writings and speech of a reporter for a paper or TV station or website should be expected to set advocacy aside.
This is fast and unedited since I must now quickly meet my 10 and 11 PM deadlines.
John Coleman
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner
*************************
John Coleman has been a TV weatherman since he was a freshman in college in 1953 and TV was brand new. He still loves predicting the weather and relating to the television viewers. He has been a TV weatherman in Champaign, Peoria and Chicago, Illinois; Omaha, Nebraska, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and New York City. For seven years he was the weatherman on “Good Morning, America” on the ABC Network. http://www.kusi.com/about/bios/weather/1838191.html
Advertisement
263 Responses to “No Balance in Environmental Reporting at The New York Times: John Coleman”
Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 [6] Show All
Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 [6] Show All
So Eli hied off to the local RCS (Rabett Counselling Service) where Sigmund Bunny told him not to make fun of the mentally inefficient. Eli has indeed been a very bad bunny:)
After the smoke has cleared, the hissing has stopped, and the rabbits have run, it is time to pause and collect one’s thoughts. I have one small observation to make. It has to do with the Louis Hissink note above: “All it proves is that liberals rely on personal attacks to score points when the argument is lost and that has been the modus operandi for the AGW supporters from the start of this blog.”
It is amusing to see that Hissink chooses to abuse his opponents by calling them “liberals”. As he variously describes them as socialists, the implication is that he is following the quaint and idiosyncratic American usage, where left-leaners or socialists are described as “liberals”. But what is a liberal in America? And what is a conservative? Let’s start with the latter. A conservative, European or American, can only be one who conserves the past. For the USA, however, the past is a liberal one: it is the past of the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and so on. These are all based on, and embody, liberal principles. It follows from this that American conservatives must be liberals, whatever they call themselves. [I am indebted to that acute Scottish philospher, Alasdair MacIntrye, for this insight, as set out in an essay/book review on American liberalism, circa 1980.] As Louis Hissink is so fond of paying lip service to the kinds of principles embodied in American liberalism, he should wake up every morning, look himself in the mirror, and shout: “I am a liberal!”
Peterd
I used the term liberal in responce to Eli Rabbett – knowing full well that it has a problematical meaning but in general U.S. usuage is taken mean socialist. Perhaps I should have used the term “Leftist” but that isn’t too representative either.
And if you did some homework you would find that I can be classed as a Liberalist as understood by Mises, Hayek, Rothbard and other devotees of the Austrian School of economics.
I am a capitalist.
Louis, sounds like you’re blowing smoke again. I really think you have tooo much free time on your hands.
After some months of not looking at this site (to spare my sanity), I decided to torture myself by having another peep. Nothing much has changed. Scanning through the post here, I notice that Bird has pronounced on the PETM:
“Thats all bullshit too. We know that [the PETM] had nothing to do with CO2 as well. You are talking about a 100 000 year event 55 million years ago. The CO2 didn’t precede the event and then heat it up. Thats all lies.”
It’s the usual monosyllabic grunts, shouts and abuse from Bird.
But why does he believe this? He doesn’t produce a shred of evidence for this viewpoint. To quote from the abstract of a quite recent paper: “The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) has been attributed to a sudden release of carbon dioxide and/or methane…..These correlations support the view that the PETM was triggered by greenhouse gas release during magma interaction with basin-filling carbon-rich sedimentary rocks proximal to the embryonic plate boundary between Greenland and Europe.” (Michael Storey, Robert A. Duncan, Carl C. Swisher III, Science, v.387, p.587 (2007).
Louis, getting back to my first post and your response, you do not explain the connection between your own avowed “liberalist” philosophy and your claim to be a “capitalist”. What is the connection? It would be quite open to, say, a social democrat to lay claim to having a “liberalist” social philosophy as well.
Bird:
“The initiation of the
PETM is marked by an abrupt decrease in the
delta 13C proportion of marine and terrestrial sedimentary
carbon (1, 6), which is consistent with
the rapid addition of >1500 gigatons of 13Cdepleted
carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide
and/or methane, into the hydrosphere and
atmosphere (7). The PETM is thought to have
lasted only 210,000 to 220,000 years, with most
of the decrease in d13C occurring over a 20,000-
year period at the beginning of the event (8).”
(Storey et al, as cited above).
100,00 years not.
100,000 years not
Peterd,
You got the obligatory, curteous reply. The rest is ignored.
Louis, you continue to surprise me. You respond to me with the tart suggestion that “if [I] did some homework” I would discover you were a “liberalist”. So, I am supposed to spend my time snooping around the internet to discover your views on politics. How long, pray tell, do you imagine that would take? (FYI, I just googled “Louis Hissink” and was led to Tim Lambert’s deltoid site, but that is perhaps not the kind of site you’d like to have as representing your views on anything?) As to your being “courteous”, the questions in my last post were politely posed, even as I struggled to get to the bottom of your (perhaps incoherent) political views, so I guess that makes us about even.
And the Bird has flown.
Peterd:
“So, I am supposed to spend my time snooping around the internet to discover your views on politics. ”
It’s called research to make sure we don’t plagiarise someone, or repeat what one of our predecessors previously published, and it’s usually summarised in the list of citations accompanying a scientific report.
Per your previous post you wrote “you do not explain the connection between your own avowed “liberalist” philosophy and your claim to be a “capitalist”. What is the connection? ”
I have an avowed “liberlist” philosophy”?
Better come up with some concrete examples before turning the light on your youthful intellectual onanism.
Jennifer,
its about time you levelled with your readers and admitted that you are in the process of changing your mind, and are coming to realise that mankind is changing the world’s climate in a dangerous way.
Come clean, before it is too late to save what reputation and self-respect you may have left..
Just take a good hard look at yourself, and then at the tribe of idiots you have been quoting… as you say, one side is usually right in matters like this…
It’s for your own good. Much of your writing about the environment is worth reading, I enjoy it, I must say.
You would have a lot to contribute to the future of the world if you wasting your talents and energy by denying the plain and obvious truth.
David
“Jennifer,
its about time you levelled with your readers and admitted that you are in the process of changing your mind, and are coming to realise that mankind is changing the world’s climate in a dangerous way.”
Do you really think so?
http://listentous.org.au/