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Climate Change in the Newsroom: Journalists' Evolving Standards
of Objectivity When Covering Global Warming
Sara Shipley Hiles and Amanda Hinnant
Science Communication 2014 36: 428 originally published online 19 May 2014
DOI: 10.1177/1075547014534077
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SCXXXX10.1177/1075547014534077Science CommunicationHiles and Hinnant
Theme Article
Climate Change in the
Newsroom: Journalists’
Evolving Standards
of Objectivity When
Covering Global
Warming
Science Communication
2014, Vol. 36(4) 428­–453
© 2014 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/1075547014534077
scx.sagepub.com
Sara Shipley Hiles1 and Amanda Hinnant1
Abstract
This study investigated how highly experienced environmental journalists
view the professional norms of objectivity when covering climate change
over time. Elite journalists were sought, and all had a minimum of 10 years
of experience in climate coverage. In-depth interviews revealed a paradox:
Most still profess belief in objectivity even as they reject or redefine it.
Participants said that journalists should use objective practices and refrain
from revealing their own biases, including advocating for the environment.
However, participants have radically redefined the component of objectivity
known as “balance.” They now advocate a “weight-of-evidence” approach,
where stories reflect scientific consensus.
Keywords
environmental journalism, climate change, sociology of news, objectivity,
transparency
1Missouri
School of Journalism, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA
Corresponding Author:
Sara Shipley Hiles, Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, 108 Lee Hills Hall,
Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
Email: [email protected]
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Hiles and Hinnant
429
Climate change is arguably the world’s biggest environmental story—and for
journalists, it may be the toughest (Ward, 2008). Not only is the story scientifically complex, it is politically treacherous. With American opinion about
anthropogenic climate change polarized along partisan lines (Pew Research
Center for the People & the Press, 2012), journalists have suffered withering
criticism left and right—even veiled death threats (Revkin, 2009).
Traditionally, journalists could shield themselves from attack through practicing “objectivity” (e.g., Mindich, 1998; Schiller, 1978; Schudson, 1978;
Tuchman, 1978). A key component of traditional journalistic objectivity is
“balance,” in which reporters try to tell “both sides of the story” (Tuchman,
1972, p. 665). With climate change, however, traditional balance led journalists and the public massively astray. Public relations (PR) firms and dissenting scientists funded by the fossil fuel industry sowed doubt and
misinformation about the reality of human-caused climate change (Gelbspan,
2005; J. Greenberg, Knight, & Westersund, 2011), and journalists repeated
the information in an attempt to be “balanced” (Gelbspan, 2005). This pattern
led to the charge of “balance as bias,” in which Boykoff and Boykoff (2004)
skewered the media for creating an appearance of significant scientific debate
over anthropogenic climate change, when, in fact, there was little disagreement. This lopsided coverage falsely framed climate change as a “debate” in
the public eye (Boykoff, 2010). Scholars have noted problematic climate
coverage from the 1980s through about 2005 (Antilla, 2005; Brossard,
Shanahan, & McComas, 2004, Liu, Vedlitz, & Alston, 2008; McComas &
Shanahan, 1999; Trumbo, 1996; Zehr, 2000). However, not long after
Boykoff and Boykoff’s (2004) influential study, coverage appeared to
change. By 2007, Boykoff (2007a) found that media coverage more closely
reflected scientific consensus. By 2010, Block (2010) noted that most journalists had stopped covering climate change as a scientific controversy.
How do journalists perceive this shift? A number of previous studies have
examined climate change coverage through content analyses of U.S. newspapers (e.g., Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004). This study asked journalists themselves to explain the evolution—and to discuss what role their perception of
journalistic norms played. More specifically, this study asked how an elite
group of expert U.S. environmental reporters perceived the professional
norm of objectivity when covering climate change and how they say this
perception changed during a period of apparent shift from 2000 to 2010.
Participants were probed on eight dimensions of traditional objectivity
gleaned from the literature, such as neutrality and balance (e.g., Schudson,
1978). Results show that mainstream environmental journalists developed a
modified norm of objectivity but do not claim to have abandoned it completely. This discovery is important in an era when traditional notions of
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Science Communication 36(4)
journalism are being challenged and new definitions are coming forward.
Both journalists and the public deserve a thorough understanding of the values that contributed to this most crucial story.
Before turning to the journalists’ perspectives, we provide a conceptual
review of objectivity, a history of climate change coverage, and a review of
research on environmental journalists.
Literature Review
Journalistic Objectivity
Scholars have been analyzing journalistic objectivity for decades (Mindich,
1998; Schudson, 1978; Tuchman, 1972). The norm of objectivity grew out of
the empiricism of the late 1800s, leading to the supremacy of science and
medicine and a focus on “fact-based journalism” (Mindich, 1998, p. 14). The
shock of the First World War and the rise of professional PR led to the understanding of reality as a social construct. Journalists saw they needed to
employ a more sophisticated approach, and Lippmann’s (1922) scientific
method of reporting emerged and flourished.
Sociology of news research has pointed out, however, that even with a
scientific approach, a news story is the product of a social institution, translated into concrete texts through newsroom routines (Tuchman, 1978).
Schiller (1978) spoke of objectivity as part of the “invisible frame” bracketing news stories: “Objectivity facilitates the otherwise difficult belief that the
newspaper ‘mirrors’ or ‘reflects’ reality” (p. 2). Major social upheavals, such
as the struggle for racial equality, have been notoriously disserviced by the
norms of objectivity, mainly through the tools of “balance” and “authority”
(Meyer, 2004; Mindich, 1998). Many scholars and practitioners of journalism deny that objectivity is even possible to achieve (e.g., Herman &
Chomsky, 1988).
Recent research has examined how these foundational ideas of objectivity
materialize in contemporary media contexts. For example, Skovsgaard,
Albæk, Bro, and de Vreese (2013) found that Danish journalists described the
concept of objectivity variously as a “passive mirror role,” “watchdog role,”
or “public forum role.” Vos, Craft, and Ashley (2010) analyzed how bloggers
attacked the mainstream press for using the “veneer of objectivity” to create
“false balance” and then fail the public “by never determining ‘who’s right
and who’s wrong’” (p. 23). Online journalists who are not affiliated with a
traditional news source have been found to adopt norms that differ from
objectivity (Atton, 2004), such as through dialogue (Soffer, 2009) or through
“moral witnessing” (Wiesslitz & Ashuri, 2011), which “allow them to go
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beyond factual reporting and present their personal views and experiences
about a reality they wish to change through their journalistic activity” (p.
1048). These previous studies have sought the perceptions of journalists
about objectivity, thereby laying the groundwork for this research and offering a site for comparison. More generally, we seek the “tacit knowledge”
(Polanyi, 1958) or “tacit knowing-in-action” (Schön, 1983, p. 49) of seasoned journalists (Dewerth-Pallmeyer, 1996; Gitlin, 2003; Hinnant & LenRíos, 2009) about objectivity as it relates to climate coverage, which is a
knowledge these journalists possess and put to use but do not often
articulate.
Climate Change Coverage
Media coverage of climate change has come under intense scrutiny, notably
by scholars, bloggers, activists, and journalists themselves. However, complaints about uneven coverage are nothing new. A number of studies of coverage in the 1980s and 1990s found flaws in climate change coverage.
Trumbo (1996), McComas and Shanahan (1999), and Brossard et al. (2004)
found evidence of this cycle regarding climate change coverage in the 1980s
and 1990s. Media coverage increased dramatically in the late 1980s
(McComas & Shanahan, 1999; Trumbo, 1996) as media “discovered” the
problem; then concern leveled off. American media also tended to emphasize
scientific uncertainty and controversy (Brossard et al., 2004; Zehr, 2000).
Zehr argued that this focus on uncertainty created an artificial boundary
between scientists and the lay public, suggesting people should wait to act
until scientists reached consensus on the matter.
By the early 2000s, there was some indication that media had stopped
questioning the science as much. Antilla (2005) found that two thirds of the
climate coverage in 2003-2004 constructed the science as “valid” and did not
include the views of “skeptics.” The remaining third of the stories framed the
science as “nonvalid,” portraying it as uncertain or controversial. In 2008,
Liu et al. (2008) found that about three quarters of stories in regional newspaper coverage from 1992 to 2005 portrayed climate change as harmful, but
some still portrayed it to be not harmful, mixed, or undetermined. It was not
until 2004, however, that a landmark study caught the attention of the environmental press. In a frequently referenced work, “Balance as Bias: Global
Warming and the U.S. Prestige Press,” Boykoff and Boykoff (2004) conducted a content analysis of global warming coverage in four major American
newspapers from 1988 to 2002 and found equal weight given to those who
denied climate change and those who affirmed it, despite the fact that the vast
majority of scientists believed it was happening. The authors noted the emergence around 1990 of a small group of influential spokespeople and scientists
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(“skeptics”) who refuted evidence of global warming, many of whom were
later revealed to be funded by the fossil fuel industry. Meanwhile, emerging
science continued to point to the existence of human-caused climate change.
Science historian Oreskes (2004) found that not a single peer-reviewed study
between 1993 and 2003 disagreed with conclusion of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change that human activities have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The year after the Boykoff and Boykoff study (2004) was published, the
journalism trade publication Nieman Reports devoted a section to coverage
of global warming. In the publication, Boykoff (2005) argued that journalists
had distorted the scientific consensus by granting roughly equal space to dissonant scientists. Gelbspan (2005), a retired newspaper journalist who had
written a book on the fossil fuel lobby’s global warming disinformation campaign, said that the practice of extensively quoting scientists who denied the
reality of global warming was “irresponsible” and “a violation of trust” (pp.
78-79). Dunwoody (2005) expanded on that idea by suggesting an alternative
to the balanced approach: “Weight-of-evidence reporting” asks journalists
not “to determine what’s true but, instead, to find out where the bulk of evidence and expert thought lies on the truth continuum and then communicate
that to audiences” (p. 90).
There is evidence that noteworthy changes in climate coverage occurred
after 2005. Returning to the same four newspapers he had studied earlier,
Boykoff (2007a) noticed a marked shift in coverage of climate change. In
2003-2004, U.S. newspapers reflected a significant portion of explicitly “balanced” accounts, but in 2005-2006, the majority of stories more closely
reflected the scientific consensus. Boykoff suggested that new scientific evidence and the landfall of Hurricane Katrina were among the reasons for the
change. By 2010, Boykoff (2010) noted that coverage in the U.S. prestige
press had changed significantly, but media continued to refer to the climate
change debate, a term he found misleading. Boykoff also found abundant
evidence for the false-balance problem on television newscasts. Both Boykoff
(2010) and Block (2010) cited evidence that the “balance as bias” distortion
was alive and well in the coverage of “Climategate”—the controversial
e-mails hacked from climate scientists at East Anglia University in late 2009.
Although some media reports framed the affair as scandalous, a number of
analyses found that the e-mails revealed no fraud or scientific misconduct
(Maibach et al., 2012).
Environmental Journalists
Several studies have analyzed how environmental journalists do their work
and make meaning from it. Although environmental journalists are typically
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veteran reporters with more than 13 years of experience, 7 of those on the
beat, and often armed with advanced degrees (Sachsman, Simon, & Valenti,
2006), they still face the challenges of a lack of resources and time (Detjen,
Fico, Li, & Kim, 2000). Environmental journalists also face pressure regarding how to portray their interest in the environment. Sachsman et al.’s (2006)
respondents said that environmental reporters need to be as objective as any
other reporter, but nearly a third said they should occasionally advocate for
the environment. Respondents were split on whether environmental reporters
were too “green” or biased in favor of environmentalism, but they agreed that
environmental reporters were not biased in favor of industry (Sachsman et
al., 2006). The Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), founded in 1989,
addressed the issue by prohibiting members from being paid for lobbying or
PR work on environmental issues (Palen, 1999). This compromise spoke to a
functional definition of objectivity as independence from vested interests, as
opposed to neutrality of opinion.
Environmental journalists also face the challenge of having scientists as
primary sources. These two groups sometimes appear at odds, which may
help explain some of the confusion and criticism surrounding climate change
coverage. For example, Reed (2001) found that scientists and journalists both
strive for their own versions of “accuracy” and “objectivity.” But scientists
view their work as technical, neutral, and apolitical, whereas journalists value
individualism, creativity, and skepticism of authority—even of scientific
findings. From the scientists’ perspective, journalists tend to oversimplify
scientific ambiguity and focus on sensational angles as “news hooks” to catch
readers.
Another issue for science journalists is developing “interactional expertise” (Collins & Evans, 2008, p. 31), the intellectual fluency in a topic
required to thoroughly assess and explain it. Journalists develop this knowledge through conversation with “contributory experts”—in this case, scientists—which allows the journalists to possess a sophisticated understanding
of science, even if they are not doing the science themselves (Collins &
Evans, 2008, p. 35). Journalists realize that they are translators of science, not
practitioners; “hardly ever would science journalists make the explicit claim
that they were trying to make scientific knowledge when they wrote their
stories” (p. 121). The process of rendering science to the public can result in
mischaracterization, however. For example, journalists may gloss over
uncertainties, making scientific knowledge appear more “unambiguous and
intractable” (Collins, 1987, p. 709). Journalists may also misconstrue scientific expertise, as in the case of the widespread questioning of the safety of the
measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine in the early 2000s (Collins & Evans,
2008). As the MMR vaccine misinformation spread across general media, the
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Science Communication 36(4)
lack of “contributory experts” was noteworthy (Boyce, 2006). In coverage of
both the MMR vaccine and climate change, the state-of-the-science gap was
inflated to make it appear as if contributory experts were in debate, which is
typical of a traditional “objective” approach of presenting conflict or competing truth claims (Mindich, 1998; Tuchman, 1972). As a journalist gains interactional expertise, he or she can use this knowledge to put scientific claims
into a broader context instead of relying on conflict. More recently, Nisbet
(2013) has identified the rise of the “knowledge journalist,” a public intellectual who appears to move beyond interactional expertise to create a new
synthesis of knowledge and often promote a specific point of view.
In summary, studies analyzing climate coverage have found that media
frequently focused on scientific uncertainty over the existence of, cause of,
effect of, and responsibility for climate change, especially from 1980 through
approximately 2005. This trend appeared to change after 2005. Boykoff
(2007a, 2010) found that the “balance as bias” phenomenon was no longer
statistically significant in major U.S. newspapers after 2005. Environmental
journalists have unusual assets and face a unique set of challenges in reporting on their beats. The current research set out to examine environmental
journalists’ insights on the norm of objectivity and have them discuss these
noteworthy changes. Therefore, we pose the following research question:
How do highly experienced environmental journalists for mainstream
print and online media understand the occupational norm of objectivity
as applied to coverage of climate change? And how do they characterize changes of those norms during 2000-2010?
This study looked to a group of elite journalists with high “interactional
expertise” to compare their perceptions of objectivity with its traditional definitions and to explore how their functional understanding of objectivity
enables them to cover this complex subject.
Method
In-depth interviews were used because they enable researchers to understand
“experience, knowledge, and worldviews” of others (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011,
p. 173). Additionally, interviews do not require participants to be observed
directly; they allow participants to provide historical information, useful for
recounting climate coverage norms from 2000-2010. Common pitfalls,
including leading questions (McCracken, 1988), were avoided. Many studies
have used this method to analyze the work of science and health journalists
(Avery, Lariscy, & Sohn, 2009; Berglez, 2011; Chew, Mandelbaum-Schmid,
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435
& Gao, 2006; Hinnant & Len-Ríos, 2009; Stocking, 1999) and try to illuminate journalists’ own understanding of their role in producing the news (e.g.,
N. Greenberg, Thomas, Murphy, & Dandeker, 2007; Luscombe, 2009;
Sumpter, 2000; Usher, 2009).
Sample
Criterion sampling was used (Yin, 1994), and participants (N = 11) were
reporters for mainstream U.S. publications, defined as newspapers, magazines, or online publications, including general news websites, who had
covered climate change for at least 10 years (see Table 1). Mainstream
publications were defined as print and online media designed for a general
audience and generally adhering to the tenets of objectivity that are the
focus of this research. In other words, op-ed pages, blogs, and advocacy
publications were not considered. Print and online publications, as opposed
to broadcast radio or television, were the focus because reporters for these
outlets made up the bulk of the professional environmental journalism
corps during the time period in question (Detjen et al., 2000; Sachsman et al.,
2006). Requiring the participants to have at least 10 years of experience
ensured that they would have developed “interactional expertise” (Collins
& Evans, 2008).
The relatively small sample size of 11 was limited due to the fact that few
environmental journalists have the requisite experience and still survive in
the ranks of mainstream media, which have been decimated in the past
decade; yet it allowed for the accessibility of “master practitioners” (Ettema
& Glasser, 1998). The long history of rich, in-depth research shows us that
big ideas can be gained from small samples (Ettema & Glasser, 1998; Platon
& Deuze, 2003; White, 1950; Wiesslitz & Ashuri, 2011). Also, the vast experience of these elite journalists (our sample had a median of 29 years of experience in journalism) gave us the ability to understand shared norms and
explore differences while reaching conceptual saturation without a large
sample. Saturation refers to the point when no new information emerges and
when the concepts are fully developed (Rakow, 2011). In the spirit of Ettema
and Glasser (1998), we interviewed a “few master practitioners rather than
superficially survey a cross-section of practitioners” (p. 15).
The primary author, a longtime environmental journalist, used her membership in SEJ, professional contacts, and years of observing the climate
change beat to identify journalists who had extensive experience covering
climate change and who would be willing to have a frank and detailed conversation about their work habits, beliefs, and insights. This professional connection was especially important in gaining trust, given that those who have
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Table 1. Journalism Experience and Characteristics of Study Participants.
Publication type
Print newspaper/website
Wire service
Online only
Region
Northeast
Southeast
Midwest
Southwest
West
Reporter gender
Male
Female
Reporter age, years
Median age
Reporter experience level
Median years in journalism
Median years primarily covering environmental
issues
Median years covering climate change
Reporter educational level
Bachelor’s degree
Advanced degree
Science degree at any level
Professional memberships
Society of Environmental Journalists
Investigative Reporters and Editors
National Association of Science Writers
7
2
2
5
2
3
0
1
9
2
48
29
15
12
11 (8 in journalism, 1 in
journalism and science, 1
in English, 1 in biology)
4 master’s (2 in journalism,
2 in science)
3 (1 bachelor’s, 2 master’s)
11
3
2
covered climate change frequently have faced ridicule and personal attacks.
The author sought input from participants and other longtime reporters and
editors in the field as to the best people to approach. Thirteen invitations were
extended via e-mail and phone calls, and 11 accepted.
Referring to the idea of interview research by a participant (Platon &
Deuze, 2003), practitioner-scholars who have inroads with a particular group
can use this route to increase understanding, gain access, and build confidence in participants. A person’s “tacit knowledge” (Polanyi, 1958) can be
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conveyed among those who have a shared understanding (Lam, 2000). To
mitigate conflicts of interest, the first author did not interview coworkers, and
the second author is not an environmental journalist, which provided critical
distance when analyzing the data.
Although membership in the SEJ was not a criterion, it happened that all
participants did have membership in the organization. This is not surprising
given the large membership of legacy media environmental journalists in
SEJ. This is a potential limitation in that environmental-beat reporters are
socialized through organizations such as SEJ, which was founded by and is
still influenced by journalists from legacy media. At the same time, this
research specifically sought journalists with traditional mainstream experience, so that they might be able to compare their own changing views of
objectivity with perceived changes in mainstream media coverage between
2000 and 2010.
Procedure
In advance of the interviews in 2010, which ranged from approximately 60 to
90 minutes and were conducted over the phone by the first author, participants provided recent articles covering climate change. During the semistructured interviews, participants were asked to explain how they applied the
norm of objectivity to covering climate change—including whether and how
they attempted to be balanced or fair, what types of sources they should use,
whether they felt they should be advocates for the environment, and so on.
Once recorded interviews were transcribed, researchers coded the transcripts,
using a constant comparative approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), which
allowed the researchers to note conceptual saturation in a group by identifying patterns as they developed. The transcripts were organized into axial
codes based on the eight dimensions of objectivity previously identified in
scholarship (below). More specifically, statements relating to each of the
eight dimensions were noted by hand in the transcripts, excerpted into a file,
and then conceptually grouped with other dimensions by both researchers
who discussed the groupings.
Conceptual Group 1: Quoting Authoritative Sources, Facticity, Avoiding Opinion in
Newswriting. Schudson (1978) wrote, “The belief in objectivity is a faith in
‘facts,’ a distrust of ‘values’ and a commitment to their segregation” (p. 6).
Tuchman (1978) described how journalists accept “facts” from legitimated
institutions to spin a “web of facticity” that supports a story as an “objective”
view of reality. Information attributed to a source maintains journalistic
detachment and therefore the reporter’s objectivity (Gilligan, 2006).
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Conceptual Group 2: Balance, Impartiality, Neutrality, Fairness. By the end of the
19th century, journalists had embraced the idea that “reality lies between
competing truth claims” (Mindich, 1998, p. 14). Tuchman (1972) identified
“presentation of conflicting possibilities”—or telling “both sides of the
story”—as a strategic ritual to convey objectivity (p. 665). “Reporters believe
that if they strive for balance and fairness in their stories, this will demonstrate their objectivity” (Gilligan, 2006, p. 10). Besley and McComas (2007)
more recently examined how fairness works into notions of objectivity with
political journalists.
Conceptual Group 3: Transparency. Rather than pretending that journalists
have no opinions, biases, or faults, transparency demands openness and is
sometimes viewed as an antidote to the ills of traditional objectivity (Kovach
& Rosenstiel, 2007; Weinberger, 2009). Weinberger declared that “transparency is the new objectivity” and brings reliability. Transparency may be
practiced at several levels (Moore, 2009), such as sharing the process of constructing stories and making editorial decisions, or disclosing conflicts,
beliefs, and biases.
Findings
Before exploring climate change coverage as it relates to dimensions of
objectivity, we provide necessary background on how these environmental
journalists viewed climate coverage between 2000 and 2010.
Trends Journalists Have Observed in Climate Change Coverage
In every case, reporters cited the end of “false-balance” type story construction as one of the most important changes evident in global warming coverage between 2000 and 2010. The journalists said that in the late 1990s
through the early 2000s, many climate change stories were mired in controversy, and they lamented the coverage typical of that era as displaying a “he
said, she said Ping-Pong match.” One journalist said climate change was
covered like a political campaign, with equal space given to both “sides.”
Journalists acted this way out of a habitual dedication to balance. The journalist said,
All the mistakes I see political reporters make, I saw reporters make with
climate change, in pathetic fashion. A lot of the nuance and the uncertainty and
the fine level of detail that a good science or environmental reporter would find
was lost in the very simplistic “he said, she said” construction.
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439
Another journalist saw his allegiances questioned:
When I started here in [the early 1990s], it seemed like if you were going to
bring up climate change in a story, . . . you might as well put a sign around your
neck saying you were a member of Greenpeace.
Several journalists cited as a turning point the 2001 Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change report that cited “new and stronger evidence” that
mankind was altering the climate. “It’s gone more from coverage being
theory, to coverage being scientific consensus,” one journalist said. “I’d
still argue it’s probably been way too conservative, trying to leave the open
possibility” that scientific opinion could change yet again.
These journalists see the science “debate” as settled and have now moved
to the policy and political debates in their coverage. “The science is fairly
clear,” one journalist said. “You really can’t debate that man is contributing
to climate change; you can debate exactly how much and what to do about it.”
This perspective aligns with climate change becoming intensely political.
Recent history includes a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the
Environmental Protection Agency could regulate carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases, and in 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency found
those gases to be harmful to public health. In 2010, however, the U.S.
Congress debated and then abandoned climate change legislation. “Politically,
it’s gotten a lot more serious,” said one reporter who covers environmental
politics.
Another change several journalists cited was a shift from seeing climate
change as a far-off, theoretical, worldwide phenomenon best left to international experts to one that could be seen imminently from readers’ backyards.
“Because it’s a global issue, always having been a local reporter, it was a
little difficult to write authoritatively on climate change because it was so
damn big,” one journalist said. Reporters worked to find observable impacts,
whether that was by visiting Arctic scientists or tagging along with local
bird-watchers.
Responses also indicated that reporters covering climate change receive
an extreme amount of criticism, occasionally from sources and editors but
most often from people who do not believe in global warming. Several journalists said they are the target of “hate mail,” “hate blogs,” parody images,
“whole websites attacking me,” conspiracy theories, angry phone calls, and
nasty online comments. Other journalists mentioned that criticism can come
from all sides—not just from the deniers but also from the environmentalists
and scientists. Another reporter pointed out that those who cover climate
change must be willing to take “personal abuse.” This has scared some
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Science Communication 36(4)
reporters and editors away from the story, which this journalist described as
an effective part of the opponents’ campaign. In all, journalists described
covering climate change as professionally challenging and sometimes personally distressing.
Journalists on Dimensions of “Objectivity”
In the next section, we synthesize the eight dimensions of traditional journalistic objectivity into three conceptual groups as evidenced in the environmental journalists’ perspectives on climate coverage.
Quoting Authoritative Sources, Facticity, Avoiding Opinion in Newswriting. Relying
on “facts” helps journalists build an “objective” story. Facts generally must be
attributed to sources unless they are incontrovertible. There was a range of
responses about what journalists’ roles are in verifying, asserting, and hedging
“facts.” They expressed disdain for journalists who were merely “stenographers,” transmitting what someone said with no regard for the information’s
veracity. Reporters said they would not knowingly let a source make a false
statement in a story without providing some rebuttal. One reporter explained
that her viewpoint is different now than when she covered politics and would
simply report on conflicting sides in a hearing. Now she adds outside perspective. “Not just the who, what, when, where,” she said, “but the why, the
motives, the context.” These journalists describe distinctions in experience
that reflect Collins and Evans’s (2008) classifications of interactional experts
and nonexperts.
As to whether the existence of anthropogenic global warming can be
stated as a fact, journalists were divided, with some saying it should be
treated as a freestanding fact and the rest saying it should be attributed to a
source. On the former side: “Yes. It can be plainly stated as a fact. It’s just
a reality.” Another journalist said he excludes the disclaimer saying that
most scientists have found evidence of global warming. And he will not
write that carbon dioxide is “linked to” warming. “No, it causes warming,”
he said emphatically. Journalists who viewed global warming as a journalistic “fact” were asked when it became acceptable to state it as such.
“Somewhere in the early 2000s—maybe 10 to 15 years after scientists,”
one journalist said. “Which is good. Let the science community get there
first,” he said.
On the side of not stating global warming as fact without attribution, one
reporter said he still refers to greenhouse gases as “being blamed” for global
warming rather than stating the gases “cause” it. When asked why, the
reporter said,
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Maybe it’s because I’m not a scientist myself. . . . It still is a hugely complicated,
complex subject, and I suppose in some ways it’s leaving some small amount of
room for the possibility maybe they have it all wrong, however remote that is.
Another person said because a significant portion of the population does
not believe in global warming, it is important to maintain credibility with
readers and “to remind people this is something scientists have studied, and
not something politicians pull out of thin air.” Another journalist said that
although he is becoming increasingly comfortable with saying there is evidence of global warming, he continues to attribute it to scientists. “This may
sound goofy, but I’m not the expert. The minute I think of myself as an
expert, I’m committing a journalistic no-no,” he said. “My expertise, such as
it is, is in journalism, not in atmospheric science.” These journalists touch on
the crux of the difference between contributory experts (the scientists) and
themselves as interactional experts, which is whether the fact of climate
change needs to be attributed. The need to attribute material to the “real” or
contributory experts distinguishes the journalists as un-expert, but it can also
frame the science as a “debate.”
Journalists in this study generally said “skeptics” had no place in climate
science stories. They might, however, be quoted in policy stories. “I don’t use
the skeptics at all,” one reporter said. “I’m not going to write a story saying,
‘Is climate change real? Some say yes and some say no.’” Many journalists
moved away from “skeptics” as these sources became discredited by connections to fossil fuel interests and industry PR campaigns. For the sake of fairness, however, opponents cannot be ignored, even if they are in the minority,
one said. Besides scientific “skeptics,” reporters must deal with politicians,
activists, and members of the general public who might also be considered
“skeptics.” “If they are elected officials—governors, congress people—you
certainly are bound to quote them,” one reporter said. “You should also point
out what the science says.” One reporter compared it to writing about evolution: “If I write a science story about evolution, I don’t feel bound to call up
a creationist,” he said. A skeptic might still qualify as a source if the person
were actually a scientist doing active research and proposing testable hypotheses. “That makes them legitimate in my book because they’re actively working on the problem,” one reporter said.
Activists for any cause—whether representing industry or the environmental movement—are to be approached with caution. Several journalists
said climate change sources must be especially thoroughly vetted. Resources
such as SourceWatch.org help identify which sources might have questionable ties, such as past work for the oil industry. “You have to ask them who
they’re funded by,” a reporter said. “The perception of prejudice or
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perception of conflict of interest is a very dangerous one.” Another pointed
out the challenge of trying to find sources who are not only authoritative but
also impartial. “It’s hard, if not impossible, to find the perfect, lily-white,
pure disinterested source,” he said. The journalists’ rules and reflections on
which sources to use are a sign of their experience as interactional experts
and approach Nisbet’s (2013) idea of the “knowledge” journalist. Their
refusal to use skeptics or those with a conflict of interest reveals the “watchdog” nature of the process of verification.
Participants described their reporting today as being more interpretive and
analytical than in the past. One said he wanted to be a “curator” of information because his readers can’t sift through original research. Several used the
term writing with authority to describe what they do now. “We’re not writing
opinion, but we’re writing with more of a voice, and using our expertise to
make these calls.” Another added: “Opinion journalism can be incredibly
lazy; anybody can say it. Writing with authority means you’ve actually studied your subjects, read the records, studied the reports.”
Balance, Impartiality, Neutrality, Fairness. Reporters described an evolution in
their thinking on the issue of climate change in the decade between 2000 and
2010, starting with balance as bias (Boykoff, 2005, 2007a, 2007b; Boykoff
& Boykoff, 2004)—a term specifically mentioned by one journalist. “By giving both sides—which is what you do in political reporting—that connotes
the two sides are equal,” he said. Today, the environmental journalists say
they write science stories that reflect “the preponderance of evidence.”
Reporters might have to stand up for themselves within the newsroom to do
so. “You tell your editor this is a science story, not a political story,” another
said. If the story is actually about politics or policy decisions, the old rule still
applies, which implies a tacit knowledge of how the traditional beats in newspapers function. Another said that because he works in a coal-dependent
state, he often has to report on the coal industry and its positions relative to
global warming. One journalist rejected the need for explicit balance: “If you
covered a story on an avalanche, and people were buried under it, you
wouldn’t feel the need to balance it by quoting someone saying it didn’t happen,” he said. In summary, these journalists rejected balance, excepting political stories, and many of them reflected on their experience to explain why
they might have once relied on balance.
To one journalist, being fair means admitting, “what you don’t know and
what the scientists don’t know”—not overstating the story or glossing over
uncertainties. Several journalists said being fair means listening to critics and
“skeptics” even though the weight of evidence has been established. “You
still have to hear the naysayers and denialists; you still have to keep reading
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that stuff,” one said. “Essentially it’s adopting the attitude of a scientist,
which is to say, ‘I’ll keep looking at this, I’ll keep testing this.’” This specific
quote echoes Lippmann’s (1922) scientific model of reporting or Kovach and
Rosenstiel’s (2007) “principles of a science of reporting” (p. 89). It’s important to note that these journalists said they keep listening to—not repeating—
the skeptics.
All journalists in this study said they should be impartial when covering
climate change. One journalist said she defines impartiality as applying her
knowledge base equally to every source on her beat—whether it’s General
Electric, BP, the Sierra Club, or NRDC. “Some days I want to piss everybody
off equally. Then I’m doing my job,” she said. “Nobody gets a free pass.” All
participants said yes, journalists should be neutral in terms of policy decisions or political outcomes—whether to support a particular piece of capand-trade legislation, for example. But they disputed the idea that they should
not care about the environment in general. “I think journalists would not be
human if they didn’t have a concern about the fate of the planet,” one said.
Political reporters, it’s OK for them to embrace democracy. It seems to be OK
for business reporters to embrace capitalism. It seems to me that it should be
OK for a reporter who covers the environment to want to live in a clean and
healthy environment.
One compared covering the environment to covering education, a beat she
previously held. “Once you accept the basic truth that education is a good
thing, you don’t sit around writing stories about how we shouldn’t invest in
schools,” she said. Another said he avoids donating to environmental causes,
does not sign petitions, is a registered independent, and will not post anything
to Facebook that could be construed as biased. However, he considers it his
right to want a good environment for his children. “I do not cede my right as
a parent or a human being just because I’m a reporter,” he said. Another said
he had to dismiss his own feelings about climate change to avoid an overwhelming sense of doom. “If I let the science freak me out, I probably never
would get to sleep at night,” he said. Although the reporters did not want to
advocate specific policy positions, they seemed to think having a general
proenvironment ethic was acceptable and did not compromise journalistic
neutrality.
As to whether journalists should be advocates for the environment, most
said no—never. One said those who do advocacy give mainstream environmental journalists a bad name. This reaffirms the Sachsman et al. (2006)
survey finding that environmental reporters were split on whether they themselves were too “green.” One reporter said that journalists should simply put
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a spotlight on or hold a mirror up to whatever reality people need to see. “You
can certainly tell them some of the solutions the experts are saying, but ultimately, you’re the messenger. You’re not the policy maker,” he said. With
the reference to policy makers, this journalist is noting another type of contributory expert from which journalists need to remain distinct.
The two who disagreed that journalists should always avoid advocacy said
climate change was such a serious challenge that it merited a slightly different approach than most news stories. “I think it’s OK to advocate for saving
the planet,” one said. But he added, “My approach is to say climate change is
happening and let people know what’s going on, rather than to personally
advocate for it.” Another said he wondered whether climate change was the
moral issue of our time, like the civil rights movement was in the 1960s.
“This does affect people all over the world—the poor mostly—mass migrations, lack of water. The U.S. and industrialized nations are causing it,” he
said. “There comes a time when you say this is right or wrong.” This debate
about advocacy ties back to Wiesslitz and Ashuri’s (2011) finding about
online journalists establishing the norm of “moral witnessing” that seeks to
change a reality through journalistic activity.
Transparency. Only one journalist said she would support full-blown transparency on any topic, one said he was “agnostic” about it, and the rest said
they would support varying degrees of disclosure that did not include revealing the reporter’s personal opinions. “I don’t think it’s lacking transparency
to keep your feelings and thoughts and opinions to yourself,” one said. “I
think it’s being professional.” Another said he would not want to say, for
example, how he voted. The reporter’s opinion does not matter at all, one
said. “Our job is to be a mirror,” he said. One took pride in writing stories in
such a way that people would not be able to figure out what his personal
opinion was.
Even though most reporters acknowledged that they had opinions on climate change, all said they kept those opinions to themselves. One journalist
said, “It should be asking good questions, marshaling good facts and letting
readers draw their own conclusions. That’s how it’s always been. Journalists
are in the fact business.” Another compared environmental writing to sports
reporters not cheering in the press box. “I try to maintain my reputation as a
credible, objective journalist, which I feel I absolutely am,” he said. “You
have opinions on any subject you’re covering, but you do your best to leave
those at the door.” Others pointed out that the very act of choosing a certain
story or a certain source is a subjective decision. “The best way to show your
commitment is to write about it, in an intelligent way, in a fair way, and when
the situation calls for it, in a balanced way.”
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Reporters who wrote blog items or columns, in addition to their “straight”
news stories, said those pieces tended to use a slightly different tone. “Some
of my opinions or ideas may leak out or sneak out” in the blog, one said.
Another added, “What I try to do is dance right up to the line that separates
fact from opinion and not go over it.” This echoes the findings of those studying objectivity on digital platforms who find the rules of objectivity are different or largely subverted (Atton, 2004; Wiesslitz & Ashuri, 2011). Another
said his columns are more like news analysis:
Any good column should have a point of view, but that doesn’t mean you’re
writing an editorial. You can lead readers down a certain path. Make sure it’s a
salient point you’re trying to make,” but “have it come through somebody
else’s voice.
The idea of distancing oneself and one’s opinions from the finished product
embodies the concept of detachment (Gilligan, 2006; Mindich, 1998).
Reporters distinguished between sharing personal opinions from showing
readers where they got their facts. One defined transparency as delineating
the reporter’s expertise and background research on a subject. One journalist
mentioned transparency in funding. His nonprofit publication discloses its
grant providers, some of whom are proenvironmental groups. The journalist
who favored the concept of transparency said that journalists should be completely open if they expected others to do so. In essence, journalists should
not hold themselves above others.
Support for a New Form of Objectivity
Most of the journalists said they should be objective, but their definition of
objectivity no longer meant “opinion free” in fact gathering. Instead, through
the tacit knowledge accrued over years of environmental coverage, many
have developed a process of verification that allows them to use authority or
“opinion” when evaluating sources (though opinion stays out of the final
story). On the other hand, a few said that objectivity was impossible and/or
pursuing it led to the false-balance problems described above. In the main,
these veteran reporters still regarded objectivity—as they now defined it—to
be essential. Several said objectivity is “a lofty goal,” or the “cornerstone of
real journalism.” One reporter who had covered international climate change
conferences abroad found it fascinating to observe foreign journalists who
have no qualms about exposing their personal views. “British journalists
have such opinions and they don’t hide them at all. There was booing from
different reporters. That’s an eye-opening experience,” he said. He said he
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preferred the American way, which he saw as healthy and informative.
Proponents of objectivity said it is more important now than ever to provide
an alternative to cable TV, biased bloggers, and the fragmentation of viewpoints and hoped there would always be a market, perhaps a small one, for
people who want independent reporting. “Credibility is one of the few things
newspapers still have going for them,” one said. “There’s some effort by a
professional to weigh different sides and try to come to an independent conclusion about what’s going on in the world,” another said.
Those who did not think journalists should be objective rejected the definition of the term. They said true objectivity was “impossible” or “unachievable.” They also pointed to problems arising from the pursuit of objectivity.
“Sometimes [. . .] people use this idea of so-called objectivity as a cloak for
lying. ‘Print my lies; otherwise you’re not objective.’ Well, that doesn’t serve
anybody, except the person who’s lying,” one said. Another said objectivity
“implies a cold detachment” and that “journalism is not a license to shed
yourself of your humanity.” For the most part, respondents agreed that interpretation borne out of journalistic experience and extensive research is an
acceptable form of objectivity, which rejects the notion of the journalist as a
“passive mirror” (Mindich, 1998, p. 141).
Discussion
This study investigated how experienced environmental reporters understand
the concept of objectivity and apply its maxims to the coverage of climate
change, reflecting on their work between 2000 and 2010. In-depth interviews
revealed something of a paradox: Most of these journalists continue to profess belief in objectivity even as they reject or redefine it. More specifically,
these veteran reporters, by and large, find great comfort and pride in upholding the revered traditions of newspapers, but they have adapted those traditions to the demands of climate change coverage and, as a result, frequently
find themselves trying to claim a space on the subjectivity/objectivity continuum. All participants in this study said they had revised their views on
objectivity since 2000.
Among this group of journalists, some elements of traditional objectivity
retain strong support and others have been modified or abandoned completely. A major finding of this research is that these environmental journalists have radically shifted their view of what makes a story “balanced,” which
has relevance for a broader understanding of renegotiations of objectivity as
journalism evolves and becomes redefined. These experienced environmental reporters now advocate applying a “weight of evidence” (Dunwoody,
2005) approach to covering climate change science, where the findings of
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mainstream scientists are the focus of global warming science stories and
“skeptics” are given little, if any, ink. Several reporters said this approach
should apply to all science stories. In other ways, however, this research indicates some dimensions of traditional objectivity have become even more
entrenched under the withering attacks journalists face. For example, the
journalists have abandoned the old “balance” approach to climate science
stories, but they still feel they must apply “balance” to climate change policy
or political stories. Therefore, when a story is codified as political, the journalists return to “he said, she said” tactics, a dilemma of journalistic process
the study participants did not acknowledge. The journalists’ system of classifying stories as science, policy, or politics would be considered by Tuchman
(1972, 1978) to be a “strategic ritual,” which allows them to avoid blame for
political ramifications but creates the same balance traps they have worked to
avoid. Another blame-avoiding “strategic ritual” is the practice of not stating
the existence of anthropogenic global warming as “fact.” The simple act of
attributing that fact to a source portrays it as debatable and allows the journalist to strategically defer authority.
The reporters expressed support for many of the other traditional dimensions of objectivity: quoting authoritative sources, relying on facts, being
impartial, staying neutral, keeping opinions out of newswriting, and being
fair. In each case, however, the subjects defined the terms in a way that fit
with their experiences. There was only limited support for transparency.
Disclosing information about methods and sources was good, but most journalists did not feel comfortable revealing their personal opinions. This relates
to most of the journalists’ belief that a personal proenvironment ethic is
acceptable, but they should never advocate for environmental policies. The
transparency solution (Mindich, 1998; Moore, 2009; Weinberger, 2009) puts
these journalists in the awkward position of wanting to help the environment
but not wanting to be open about those desires. In essence, they want to maintain that they can work uninfluenced by their own biases. This relates to
Ettema’s (2005) point: “Journalism, supposing that it would lose itself in
self-contemplation, is characteristically hostile to the mere mention of reflexivity” (p. 146). The fact that most will not explicitly reveal their own subjectivity for readers to evaluate is perhaps not surprising given the intimidation
tactics climate journalists already face.
Several reporters said it was covering climate change that forced them to
reevaluate objectivity. One said he used to approach climate change like a
political story with two sides. “As I studied it, I realized . . . science is not like
politics.” Another reporter said this experience cemented his view that objectivity was a sham. “Climate change is the story that led me to those conclusions that I had slowly been coming to anyway,” he said. “It became obvious
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after covering that story that objectivity isn’t serving readers.” Interestingly,
the two reporters came to opposite conclusions about objectivity: The first
one emphatically calls himself an objective reporter; the second one says,
“There was a time I thought you could be objective, but you really can’t.”
The results suggest, however, that journalists have become increasingly
aware of the subjective nature of the news agenda and the way stories are
framed. Participants felt duped by the agenda-building efforts of the fossil
fuel industry into covering the climate change story as a controversy. After
becoming aware of this mistake, many vowed not to be misled again by the
fossil fuel lobby or any partisan enterprise. This realization appears to have
led to an even stricter, more traditional view of what constitutes an authoritative news source. Among these journalists, government and university scientists are the favored sources now, and industry representatives and
environmental activists appear more questionable. The result may be more
dependence on publicly funded scientists, whom the journalists perceived to
have fewer conflicts of interest.
Limitations for this research include the fact that environmental reporters
tend to be older and more experienced. These factors mean that reporters who
are asked to cover climate change—known as one of the toughest stories in
the newsroom—may tend toward a more conservative, traditional view of
objectivity. Another limitation is the reliance on journalists’ memory to capture recent occurrences, and memory can be selective or faulty.
Suggested areas for future study are manifold. First, journalists indicated
that there needs to be a lag time of 10 to 15 years after which scientists reach
a consensus before journalists can report something as fact, which could be
in part due to the length of time that it takes for a journalist to develop “interactional expertise” (Collins & Evans, 2008) about a topic. As the climate
coverage history has shown, that lag time can introduce a set of problems that
confound future coverage of the issue. Is there a way to reduce that lag time
without compromising journalistic processes? Another point worth further
exploration is the role of editors in climate change coverage. Several journalists interviewed reported getting interference from editors on their climate
change reporting—usually in the direction of making anthropogenic climate
change appear to be less certain. This points to a distinction from Collins’s
(1987) argument about science stories making scientific discovery unambiguous. Future research could analyze how editors and producers decide when
to emphasize scientific uncertainty versus certainty in science stories.
A final thought-provoking research possibility stems from the fact that
one of the journalists said he considers himself a scientist, and many advocate
a “weight of evidence” approach, both of which echo Lippmann’s (1922)
scientific method of journalistic inquiry. Scientists who are interested in
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communicating to the public and supporting journalists as translators for a
lay audience would benefit by understanding that journalists have their own
process that involves weighing evidence and expertise. Getting the “contributory experts” to understand the perspective and process of “interactional
experts” (Collins & Evans, 2008) could lessen the cultural divide between
journalists and scientists and lead to solutions for science communication.
The journalists in this research understood that they were key communicators in a global discussion. One reporter described climate change as the most
challenging environmental issue of our time because it touches on so many
aspects of life, such as energy, development, food production, and population. “Global warming is challenging people’s fundamental values; it threatens their very way of life. The climate issue has become kind of a magnifying
glass—you’re bringing all those rays of light together in a fairly intense
focus,” he said. Moreover, journalists are now dealing with an audience that
has been primed by years of “balance as bias” coverage that journalists themselves inadvertently cultivated. The story of climate change is a useful lens
through which to examine whether traditional journalism values—particularly the bedrock of objectivity—can accommodate the needs of science and
society.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Author Biographies
Sara Shipley Hiles, MA, is an assistant professor at the Missouri School of Journalism.
She worked as an environmental reporter for newspapers and magazines before
becoming an academic. Her research interests include environmental journalism, science communication, and sociology of news.
Amanda Hinnant, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Her research interests include health journalism, social determinants of health, sociology of news, and public understanding of science. Articles have appeared in Health
Communication, Health Education Research, Journalism & Mass Communication
Quarterly, Communication Research, and Science Communication.
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