Reuters reports that Oxford University Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has determined that news coverage of last December’s climate summit in Copenhagen was insufficiently scientific. Turns out that pesky Climategate scandal led too many journalists to almost entirely ignore the Global Scientific Consensus in favor of discussing the emails about “hiding the decline” and beating up global warming skeptics:
Based on analysis of 400 articles written about the December 2009 summit, the authors of the report for Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism called for a rethinking of reporting on future such conferences.
Author James Painter concluded that “science was under-reported” as the essential backdrop when about 120 world leaders met in Copenhagen but were unable to agree on a binding treaty to slow climate change.
Much coverage from Copenhagen instead focused on hacked e-mails from a British university that some skeptics took as evidence of efforts by scientists to ignore dissenting views. The scientists involved have since been cleared of wrongdoing.
“We need more discussion between scientists, journalists and policymakers on how to keep highly significant, slow-burn issues like climate change interesting and engaging to different audiences around the world,” Painter wrote….
Painter said one way to improve the reporting on climate change is to provide a larger media staff members to help scientists.
In other news Paul Chesser reports that the AmSpec University Chesser Institute for the Study of Media Bias found that in an analysis of journalistic coverage, the media paid way too much attention to the political hacks and U.N. bureaucrats (but I repeat myself) who attended Copenhagen; they reported too little about Climategate; they bought easily the whitewash investigations of the “cleared” Climategate scientists; and that alarmist communicators are hopeless incompetent boobs as was demonstrated by their recent Splattergate video.
Just trying to uphold the Reuters standard of independent, objective reporting of my own research.
