How Does The Media Portray Climate Change
America elected Donald Trump at the end of the hottest year ever recorded, without debate moderators request him a single question near global warming.
But afterwards three years of record temperatures, devastating wildfires and some of the near destructive hurricanes in U.s. history, the media is facing new pressure level – often from the candidates themselves – to give the subject more prominence during the 2020 election.
Yesterday, MSNBC devoted more than than five minutes to Beto O'Rourke's rollout of a $5tn climate program, calling climate a "kitchen table issue" for 2020. Jay Inslee, the Washington governor who is seeking to make climate change the central thrust of his campaign, is calling on the Democratic National Committee to host a fence solely focused on climate. Bernie Sanders raised the consequence during his town hall on Play a trick on News earlier this month – and even drew thank you from the audience when he talked about new jobs in the renewable energy sector. Ascension temperatures and the crisis they pose for humans were part of every Autonomous candidate's pitch during CNN's marathon of 60 minutes-long town halls last calendar week.
In the run-upward to 2020, every bit newsroom leaders grapple with their mistakes in the 2016 election – from reliance on inaccurate polls to underestimating the impact of faux news – the failure to press candidates on climate change is emerging as an area of self-test.
"In 2016 there were most no questions asked , which is insane," says Tony Bartelme, a senior reporter who covers climatic change for the Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. "It's a good start that we're starting to hear questions for 2020."
The Guardian is joining forces with Columbia Journalism Review and the Nation to launch Roofing Climate Change: A New Playbook for a 1.5-Degree World, a projection aimed at dramatically improving US media coverage of the climate crunch. The project kicks off today with an event at Columbia Journalism Schoolhouse featuring CJR's editor-in-chief, Kyle Pope, the Nation'due south environment correspondent, Mark Hertsgaard, and the Guardian climate columnist Nib McKibben.
The Green New Deal – progressives' vision for slowing climate alter without further burdening the poor – has too helped catapult the field of study into the 2020 conversation. In March, MSNBC's Chris Hayes took the highly unusual footstep of devoting an 60 minutes to the thought, in a show featuring the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But fifty-fifty equally in that location are signs that airtime for climate is starting time to increment, questions remain about the depth and quality of the coverage. "I don't see the media paying much attending to differentiating how serious each candidate is on the climate question," said David Gelber, the creator and executive producer for the Beginning series on climate alter, Years Of Living Dangerously.
More Americans than ever are worried most climate change. A poll of probable Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa ranked climate alter about on par with healthcare as the top issues they want candidates to talk well-nigh.
Inquiry indicates that major national newspapers are beginning to pay more attention to climate – just local publications and TV news haven't kept up. The major broadcast networks – ABC, CBS, NBC and Trick – spent merely 142 minutes on climatic change final twelvemonth, co-ordinate to one calculation from the progressive group Media Matters. And about one-half of Americans hear well-nigh global warming in the media once a month or less, according to surveys past climate communications programs at Yale and George Bricklayer universities.
Meanwhile, five major national Us newspapers – the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times – accept, in aggregate, roughly tripled their coverage of climate change since four years ago, according to the Media and Climate Change Observatory at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
The New York Times now has a desk of almost a dozen covering climate. Climate editor Hannah Fairfield said the team is collaborating with the politics desk to report on the 2020 candidates' climate positions.
Only climate coverage is non just a question of volume– information technology's likewise a question of approach. We spoke to experts in the field for their advice on how news outlets should comprehend climate in ways that brand voters heed during the 2020 race.
Quote conservatives
Adam Berinsky, who studies why some people believe political rumors – such as that climate change is a hoax – said people who buy into political rumors are driven by a "combination of conspiratorial dispositions and political motivations". They are more likely to alter their minds if they hear from sources they place with, oftentimes fellow conservatives.
Aaron McCright, a sociology professor who studies public opinion at Michigan Land Academy, said journalists should give the minor but growing numbers of conservatives who care well-nigh climatic change "more of a mouthpiece then that their message could start competing" with science denialism.
Republicans who want to limit climate pollution for the sake of national security or as role of a plan for energy independence need to compete better with climate deniers, said McCright. "Those could exist effective messages if they're promoted hour past hour, day by day, week past week, past dozens or hundreds of conservatives in everyday life, Tv set, papers, Congress."
Bring up climate, even when the candidates don't
Gelber says reporters should bring the entrada story back to climatic change, even if the candidates aren't discussing their proposed solutions. He said they should help audiences differentiate between the candidates, explaining to viewers and readers how specific they have gotten in their plans.
Encompass climate as a local news story
Edward Maibach, a George Mason climate communications scientist, said "most people are saying they rarely hear climatic change news because nearly people pay attending to local news. Nearly climate news in America is not local news". Maibach's program, Climate Matters, trains weathercasters and local reporters to explicate the local consequences of a warming world.
Bartelme suggests trying to connect local catastrophes to the climate story and explain why the farthermost weather condition is happening.
"What nosotros tin exercise is make those connections for people," Fairfield said. Reporters can seek out "local stories that have climate fingerprints on them".
Focus on solutions
Elizabeth Arnold, a longtime reporter and professor at the University of Alaska, argues that "doom and gloom" coverage alone may force the public to disengage.
"Repetition of a narrow narrative that focuses exclusively on the impacts of climate change leaves the public with an overall sense of powerlessness," she said in an introduction to i paper.
Choose words carefully
Susan Hassol, manager of the arrangement Climate Communication, said the phrase "oestrus-trapping pollution" is easier to empathise than "greenhouse gas", and "global warming" conveys more meaning than "climate change".
The Guardian is partnering with Columbia Journalism Review and the Nation today on "Covering Climate change," a town hall event with media leaders virtually how to change the media narrative on climate change. Watch the result live hither between 9am and 2pm.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/30/what-will-it-take-for-the-media-to-focus-on-climate-change-in-the-2020-elections
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