Media Coverage of Climate Change - Essay Example

Research Sabamir April 30, How Does British Newspaper Report on Climate Change Research Overview This research is in response to media's unnecessary exaggeration of reporting climate change news. Although one could have been a staunch supporter of media, because our moral and religious virtues have gone down the gutters, and we need to fix them since we would be held answerable in the hereafter as well, but being realistic. One can take heed from the words of Maya Angelou, an American author, poet, performer, and civil rights activist, who comments on the state of present day societies' virtue: "Curious, but we have come to a place, a time, when virtue is no longer considered a virtue. The mention of virtue is ridiculed, and even the word itself has fallen out of favor" (1928). Introduction This assignment reflects on the media coverage of climate change in United Kingdom and struggle towards exploring how British newspaper reports on climate change. There are some historical issues that have been discussed in this analytical report. It also provide with the literature review of history of climate change and how the media contributed a great deal towards communicating environmental issues. It also sheds light on how some famous newspapers of Britain reporting on climate change. Purpose of the Study When investigating how newspapers report climate change, there are questions of importance to ask. How do newscasters deal with reporting management Is the answer to this a proper way of communication According to research, if newspapers do not exaggerate it will be more meaningful and real to public. As a reporter, they need to find out how they can report the news that engage public and awake their attention rather than create havoc among them. Literature review The review of literature will look at several British newspapers related to reporting climate change. It will also shed some light on what is Climate change, what is Global Warming and how it effects the environment. Climate Change and Global Warming: Climate is the pattern of weather in a particular place, how much windy and sunshine it gets, how much rain it's going to be is all included in weather change. As we all know the world climate is all under the influence of sun. Since the beginning of the universe, the earth rotates on a tilted axis, and because of this different of the world is heated at different times making some places hotter than other and cause change in season. The change in temperature causes the change in air pressure, producing storms, hurricanes. The sun's temperature also warms up the seas unevenly which sometimes causes underwater winds. Association between atmosphere and oceans sometimes produce critical weather patterns such as El-Nino, a sort of strange weather happens every few years in the pacific. Scientists are of the view that large amount of carbon dioxide in atmosphere, and hotter temperature on earth affects the climate and brings change across the whole planet. And this change is already on its way to earth in different parts of the world. But it's nothing new. Earth's climate has been changing over from the past hundreds of millions of years, sometime getting colder sometimes warmer. Climate change people talk about these days is somewhat different. Scientists believe that it is not happening naturally but our way of living and consumption is making it happen. Mostly it is caused by gradual increase in fossil fuels. Traditional or natural climate change makes the whole world hotter or cooler, whereas modern climate change is making more erratic changes all over the places, making some places hotter and some cooler. This is what Global Warming is. Global warming works according to climate change. It's all because of what people do. Earth is getting warmer year by year but not in the sense of short term. It has been happening since 1990. Since then the whole planet has warmed up upto 0.8 degrees centigrade. And it is likely that by the end of the 21st century it's going to get 2.5 degree centigrade which is not at all good. And by the time it gets 5 degrees centigrade everything will be out of control. Once it has started, it is very hard to stop the process. It means Global Warming means big trouble. Global warming is caused by a phenomenon called green house effect. Green house effect is good for growing many things as it traps the heat inside and become hotter that the atmosphere outside. Earth atmosphere behaves the same way as our earth traps the heat in a different way. Gases such as carbon dioxide and methane behave like a giant glass wrapped around the planet. It is our fault that it's happening in such a way and at such speed. History of Media Reporting Climate Change: Global warming or climate change is not new to our curious minds. It has happened before and it has been happening since 1990. The earth is getting warmed up year by year. And media has been covering the whole subject of attention since then but not in a way as it is doing now. There is a long history of media coverage of climate change but now the media is blowing it like a bomb on our heads. No doubt it is a matter of attention and needs to be taken care with keen consideration. But newspapers and televisions are creating a chaos by unnecessary alarming the situation and creating disruption among people. Dr Neil Gavin, from the School of Politics and Communication Studies, believes the way the media handles issues like climate change shapes the public's perception of its importance. The media became increasingly powerful social, political, economic and cultural institutions that were entrenched in society in the last few years. The two spheres of climate science and mass media finally came together in the early 1950s. In the UK, the Saturday Evening Post published a story entitled 'Is the World Getting Warmer', which explored links between atmospheric temperature change, agricultural shifts and rising sea levels (Abarbanel & McClusky, 1950). Media coverage of human contributions to climate change peaked again in 1957, which was declared the 'International Geophysical Year' by the International Council of Scientific Unions. US science reporter Robert C. Cowen wrote an article for the Christian Science Monitor called 'Are Men Changing the Earth's Weather' (Cowen, 1957). In the following two decades, media coverage of climate science remained sparse-only a few articles were published in newspapers in the USA and the UK throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As international and domestic climate policy gained greater cohesion in the mid-1980s through activities by, for example, the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization, an increase in media coverage followed. The findings indicated that in reporting about global warming and climate change, the views of scientists were used to give legitimacy to the content of articles. Uncertainties about global warming were not explored effectively. Coverage about global warming in UK tabloid newspapers has been significantly divergent from the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change. British Newspapers Reporting Climate change: A series of events appears to be unfolding in the UK that provide for a serial story. As they say in the news biz "it has legs". Newspapers reports nowadays tend to focus on the potential consequences of global warming, but made little attempt to address the suspected causes that would inevitably involve criticism of highly consumptive lifestyles in the west. Britain's one of the leading newspapers, Express reports that Satellite data shows that concerns over the levels of sea ice may have been premature. Ice levels which had shrunk from 13million sq km in January 2007 to just four million in October are almost back to their original levels. Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than is usual for the time of year. The data flies in the face of many current thinkers and will be seized on by climate change skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming. Even the Middle East saw snow, with Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman and northern Saudi Arabia reporting the heaviest falls in years and below-zero temperatures. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan snow and freezing weather killed 120 people. In Britain the barmy February weather came to an abrupt halt at the weekend as temperatures plunged to -10C in central England. Experts believe that this month could end up as one of the coldest Februaries in Britain in the past 10 years. The freezing night-time conditions look set to stay around -8C until at least the middle of the week. The Guardian continues its sudden outburst of coverage of Climate gate with an analysis that it is calling a "definitive account of the controversy" because it will allow users to annotate the manuscript in what it is calling "a form of peer review." Of course, the author is keen to let the readers know that The Guardian has already made up its mind. Even if all the work of CRU were revealed as entirely phoney, which is far from being true, it would not demonstrate climate change was a hoax, or even much alters predictions of future climate. The Guardian's editorial line is that global warming is happening and caused by human actions, but that does not mean we are blind to contradictory evidence. It would be remiss of us journalistically to ignore a story like this where the actions of leading scientists are being seriously called into question. The team of researchers found that the Daily Mail was more divergent from the scientific consensus than other tabloid newspapers. Climate change and Global warming has also become the political issues. Now political parties are getting involved in this and are making it their priority to win elections. As reported in "Mirror News", The Liberal Democrats have pledged to put protecting the environment "at the heart of government" if they achieve electoral success on May 6. Party leader Nick Clegg said the next government will be the last that is able to stop "dangerous" climate change. Mr. Clegg said: "That is a huge responsibility for the party that wins this election. But it's an even bigger responsibility for the voters that will choose them on May 6." Mr. Clegg said: "This election is not like any other. Climate scientists tell us that the next government will be the last that can stop dangerous climate change." He added: "So my message is this: don't settle for a Labour Party that has had 13 years to deliver on the environment and has failed. "Don't settle for a Conservative Party that talks the talk on green issues, only to align themselves with climate change deniers in the European Parliament. "And don't give your vote to a Green Party that cannot make a difference in Westminster. Instead, choose the only party that was taking a stand on saving the planet well before it became fashionable." He continued: "Something really exciting is happening in British politics. This is a huge opportunity to set Britain on the road to a prosperous and green future. We should seize it." A well known writer Christopher Monckton is critical of the theory of anthropogenic causes for climate change and the stated scope of it, which he regards as a controversy catalyzed by "the need of the international left for a new flag to rally round following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989". He has expressed doubt about the reality of global warming in a number of newspaper articles and papers. He has been described in some quarters as a "former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and a world-renowned scholar. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered a huge blow to global warming skeptics. Leading climate scientists are now 90 percent sure that human activity is heating up the planet. They present various scenarios that show where global warming could take us by the end of the century. The choice is ours. Methodology: This chapter describes the research methodology followed in this study in detail which is through increasing understanding. It presents the reader with the discussion on various types of research questions used in this paper, to find a suitable approach and method for the present research work. Next, the chapter takes into consideration the issue of the data collected, which is followed by the depiction of the data classification procedures. Subsequently, the chapter informs about the limitations of this study. Research Questions Following research questions guided this study: How the newspapers report climate change What newspapers can do to make the news more informative Does their approach have positive influence on people How does their reporting of climate change affect the common public Research method: To achieve the objectives and find answers to the research questions, the researcher needed to find appropriate research approach and method. To Ary, Jacob, and Razavieh , the main divide in research method is made into two broad categories: quantitative and qualitative research. They assert, "Quantitative method uses objectives measurement and statistical analysis of numeric data to understand and explain phenomena. It generally requires a well controlled setting. Qualitative method, in contrast focuses on understanding social phenomena from the perspective of the human participants in the study" (2002). Researcher can combine both quantitative and qualitative methods of research as Hammersley argues but present research incorporates this investigation in quantitative nature of "content analysis" method as it focuses on the detailed analysis, interpretation and discussion and it explores the social and cultural dimensions of the phenomena (1996). Quantitative content analysis is an empirical method used in the social sciences primarily for analyzing recorded human communication in a quantitative, systematic, and inter-subjective way. This material can include newspaper articles, films, advertisements, interview transcripts, or observational protocols, for instance. Thus, a quantitative content analysis can be applied to verbal material, and also to visual material like the evening news or television entertainment. Surveys, observations, and quantitative content analysis are the main three methods of data collection in empirical communication research, with quantitative content analysis the most prominent in the field. In other disciplines like psychology or sociology quantitative content analysis is not used as widely. Ole R. Holsti (1969) defines quantitative content analysis as "any technique for making inferences by objectively and systematically identifying specified characteristics of messages." Bernhard Berelson (1952) speaks of "a research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication." There has been much debate on this classical definition of quantitative content analysis: what does the word "manifest" mean, and is it possible to analyze latent structures of human communication beyond the surface of the manifest text. Time Frame for Data Collection: The total duration of time in which data was recorded was four weeks from (April to May 2010). The first week went in establishing base line and collecting information. Information was then collected and analyzed for consistencies by real newspaper reports. Data Collection: In this project based research, the researcher has observed real newspapers and newscasters, taking field notes of their ways through the use of open-ended questions in order to obtain consistent information. Collecting data through observation has allowed more specific insights into the subject and how they address climate change. Critical Analysis of Data: The data was analyzed by carefully reviewing notes taken from different newspapers. The media has no doubt exaggerated the problem by giving unnecessary seriousness and attention to the subject of climate change. It is right to tell people about the phenomena but to disperse the news in such a chaotic style is utterly wrong. The news agencies have exaggerated the agenda at hand and have deliberately created discomfort, tension and mayhem among people. Their way of reporting the news needs proper reconstruction. BBC news rightly puts in by saying that, "their style of climate change discourse is that we maximize the problem and minimize the solution" says Solitaire Townsend, Futerra. Tabloids and newspapers have an important influence on public opinion in the UK as they have average daily circulations as much as ten times higher than many broadsheet newspapers. Assessments of UK media influence on science-policy interactions have tended to focus on the broadsheet or 'quality' press sources - the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times and Times of London," said Boykoff. "However, we argue that these analyses have suffered from a blind spot in considerations, by overlooking what are called the 'tabloid press' - The Sun (and News of the World), Daily Mail (and Mail on Sunday), the Daily Express (and Sunday Express), and the Mirror (and Sunday Mirror)." The report from the Labour-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says over-use of alarming images is a "counsel of despair". It says they make people feel helpless and says the use of cataclysmic imagery is partly commercially motivated. However, newspapers have defended their coverage of a "crucial issue". The IPPR report also criticizes the reporting of individual climate-friendly acts as "mundane, domestic and non-compelling". "The climate change discourse in the UK today looks confusing, contradictory and chaotic," says the report, entitled Warm Words. Delimitations of the Study: The first limitation was that only few newspapers were reviewed in this study, which limited the overall interpretation of this study to be considered. There may be some issues about which nothing can be done, that require special intervention from further resources. Discussion, Conclusions, and Recommendations: Discussions: This study gathered and analyzed the stories of few nationally recognized exemplary online newspapers which are well known, reputed news agencies these days. Their way of reporting has been discussed in the literature review and in Data Analysis. The study revealed that most newspapers exaggerate or give unnecessary attention to climate change. Conclusion: The newspapers nowadays do not only alarm the public but are very harsh in their approach. They are presenting it as a "Horror Film". Keeping into view the Following research and understanding of the subject, news agencies need to put in order a proper way to communicate to people about the changing climate, its effect and cause and how it can be prevented, but without creating disturbance, confusion discomfort and horror among public. Recommendations: Suggestion for further research is recommended. Good quantitative research should produce more questions than it answers. This study produced a number of questions that prompt the need for further research. References: Ary, Donald, Lucy Cheser Jacobs, and Asghar Razavieh. (2002). Introduction to Research in Education. Sixth ed. Belmont CA: Wadsworth. 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