Sen. Jim Inhofe just concluded hearings about a perceived media bias supporting anthropic global warming. He provided guests who spoke about the reluctance to listen to or outright dismissal of opposing views. He has provided examples about how various media organizations (Time, Newsweek, ABC, Discovery Channel) and, of course, former VP Gore, have distorted, twisted or ignored facts. http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=266540 http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264777
OK, the debate about GW goes on and on. This thread isn’t about GW. It is about the media. Why was this story not covered? The press was all over the “steroid scandal” in MLB and all those professional ball players testifying before Congress. News outlets went nuts for the footage of Michael J. Fox testifying about stem cell research. But where the hell were they this week?
Is the media really providing an impartial and unbiased reportage of the global warming research? Or is the bias an inconvenient truth?
I think reporting about global warming has been pretty unbalanced over the years. Reading a lot of news stories about the subject, you would actually think there’s a major scientific controversy about it - and there isn’t.
Perhaps they stayed away because Inhofe - and thank goodness he won’t be leading the environmental committee anymore - is so biased on the issue? There’s also the question of self-interest. But mostly, I’m going to say that the story commands little interest because of Inhofe’s stance. The report, after all, is called
“Global Warming Alarmism
Hot & Cold Media Spin Cycle:
A Challenge to Journalists who Cover Global Warming”
I think it’s pretty obvious that the media is biased on almost every issue and I don’t mean this in a leftest versus right wing kind of way. Just by electing to spend more time on one story over another they exhibit bias. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing though it did seem silly to spend so much time talking about drug use in baseball in light of what else was happening at the time.
Your definition of bias is awfully close to the definition of “news judgment.” If the two things are the same, then accusations of bias don’t mean anything.
I’ll grant you that Inhofe is divisive and extreme (and I’m sure Boxer will never be partisan :dubious: ). But shouldn’t the media at least attempt to present opposing views? Shouldn’t it point out the discrepancies and innaccuracies?
That isn’t necessarily true. Two inner city kids and a beautiful little blonde suburban child get kidnapped on the same day. Which one is going to get more coverage and stay in the news? You make it sound like “news judgment” comes down to hard, objective choices of what to cover given limited resources and it often doesn’t. Circulation and ratings are always at the top of the priority list and that definitely helps steer the news all day, every day.
I believe global warming is real but I also know there is some room to debate the exact causes and other things. However, if those issues will bore people, they may get overshadows by “OMFG! The World is Turning into Hell” type stories which are always tried and true crowd pleasers.
I remember the stories you mentioned and was outraged at which case got the coverage.
Sensationalism and disaster make great ratings. Bird flu, SARS, Y2K, swine flu, “China Syndrome”, Ebola and so on have all been pushed by the news industry as the latest and greatest doom bringer. Hell, when the movie “The Core” came out I remember news specials about what would happen if the Earths core did stop spinning. Same thing after “The Day After Tomorrow”.
I agree that the planets climate is fluid and the average temperature appears to be rising. But the extent of human culpability has not been adequately proven to me and many others.
I think professional responsibility and personal pride would make reporters want to be more objective about their coverage. When someone states that the “Hockey Stick” graph clearly shows global temps are rising, the reporter should turn around and point out that the graph had been manipulated by excluding the Medieval Warm Period. They should call “Bull!” when they see and hear it.
It doesn’t, true. But that’s not really what I was saying. Bias could be a factor in choosing which stories get priority, but if you define bias as “they are prioritizing some stories over others,” as if it were possible or sensible to weigh them equally, you’re muddling the two ideas.
No, that’s basically right. What’s a story, what isn’t, which stories are the most important, what’s most important about each particular story, that kind of thing.
This debate is as old as the hills, and I don’t say that as a criticism. But I think the national media usually does a terrible job at covering science because they treat it the same way they treat politics, as if it’s a battle of words. Inhofe is one of those people who has worked hard over the years to make it sound like there is a major coverup and controversy about anthropogenic global warming. If you cover that in such a way that it implies half the scientists agree with him, you’re not informing the public. You’re doing them a disservice.
Has anyone ever seen a news report that shows the opposing views? I have only seen reports and specials that are unequivocal in their assertions that GW is caused by human activity.
Heck, I’m still trying to get the liberal media to pay due attention to the pandemic of Cognitive Dissonance! Fuck a bunch of penguins! When was the last time you heard any heavyweight panel discussions about CD? Not demonstratons, discussions! If you need clearer evidence of media control and bias, well, what could it be?
In 2004, Science magazine did a study of 928 peer-reviewed reports and articles. They found that not a one disagreed with the consensus of global warming. Their conclusion was
I could write a lot regarding Inhofe and his deliberate twisting of the research – The NAS study regarding the Michael Mann hockey-stick model determined that it largely supported the findings of the model. You’d never know this from reading Inhofe’s press release where he claims only that the NAS trashed the model as deeply flawed – but you want to keep this to the media debate. So, in terms of that, I’ll state that Senator Inhofe is deliberately feeding misinformation to the media in order to promote his own agenda.
In the UK one newspaper, the Daily Mail is definitely biased against anthropic global warming.
It is a pretty biased, slightly right wing paper that tends to take ‘stands’ - for example it is very much against Iraq, critical of UK support for our own troops in Afghanistan and considers the government a bunch of incompetent lying cretins.
@DM - well I get the Observer and occasionally have the Guardian delivered by accident, and I must confess neither are as grovelling as they used to be.
The Observer used to be more amusing when Tiny Rowland owned it, and I miss Richard Ingrams’ ascerbic wit.
:rolleyes: What, like giving the “arguments” for creatonism or intelligent design roughly equal time with those for evolution? That’s what this comes down to. The reality of global warming has substantial support among scientists in the relevant fields, skepticism of it has not. See post #13.
