Who’s Who
& What’s What
N a v i g a t i n g T h r u t h e
M a z e o f N e w M e d i a i n a
P o s t C l i m a t e g a t e Wo r l d
J. Madeleine Nash
June 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
• Mass Media, Old & New
• Climate Science Goes Viral
• Lessons Learned?
• Resources on Science & the Media
Saturday, May 29, 2010
It Used To Be (Fairly) Simple
Wire Services, AP & UPI
Newspapers, a Long List
New York Times
Wall Street Journal
Washington Post
Christian Science Monitor
Chicago Tribune
San Francisco Chronicle
Miami Herald
La Times
Saturday, May 29, 2010
It Used To Be (Fairly) Simple
Magazines
Time, Newsweek, US
News & World Report
The New Yorker
The Atlantic
etc
Saturday, May 29, 2010
It Used To Be (Fairly) Simple
Radio &
Television
Image Credit: Nasa
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Good Old Days?
“Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts
are lost forever, even to the
protagonists.” Norman Mailer
“Journalists cover words and delude
themselves into thinking they have committed
journalism.” Hedrick Smith, New York Times
“Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to
discriminate between a bicycle accident and
the collapse of civilization.” George Bernard Shaw
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Good Old Days?
“I find television to be very educating. Every
time somebody turns on the set, I go in the
other room and read a book.” Groucho Marx
“Television: A medium - so called because it is
neither rare nor well done.” Ernie Kovacs
“Every time you think television has hit its
lowest ebb, a new type program comes along
to make you wonder where you thought the
ebb was.” Art Buchwald
Saturday, May 29, 2010
That Was Then...This Is Now
“The news business has both expanded and fragmented in
the post-Cronkite, post-Fairness Doctrine era. The news
monopoly the three broadcast networks enjoyed for two
decades has been shattered by the three cable news
networks.... The Web... has only reshattered the shards.”
By Jack Shafer
http://www.slate.com/id/2223288/
Saturday, May 29, 2010
This Is Now
“Journalism changed forever starting in early 2004. At
that time, there were about a million people worldwide
writing the online personal diaries called blogs.There
was no MySpace, no Facebook, no Digg and no
YouTube. Apple's iPod had sold less than a half-million
units. The Internet was emerging from a two-year
hangover....”
Paul Gillin, Media Consultant
http://journalismethics.ca/feature_articles/journalism_in_a_wikified_world.html
Saturday, May 29, 2010
This Is Now
US metropolitan dailies closed since March, 2007
Tucson Citizen
Rocky Mountain News
Baltimore Examiner
Kentucky Post
Cincinnati Post
King County Journal
Union City Register-Tribune
Halifax Daily News
Albuquerque Tribune
South Idaho Press
San Juan Star
Honolulu Advertiser
Paul Gillin, http://newspaperdeathwatch.com
Saturday, May 29, 2010
This Is Now
Has the Apple iPad saved journalism from extinction? We'll see
It certainly has the potential to make digital reading a joyous experience. And that has to be a good thing
Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian, Friday 29 January 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
This Is Now
“[One of]the most watched minute[s] of video made in the
last five years shows baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger.
(Twice!) That minute has been watched by more people than
the viewership of American Idol, Dancing With The Stars,
and the Superbowl combined. (174 million views and
counting.)”
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/
Saturday, May 29, 2010
This Is Now
“I got to a point where the hamster-wheel quality of being
a news reporter, where you are on this little cage thing
and it’s spinning faster and faster, and trying to mesh the
print work with the blog work, which I started two-and-ahalf years ago, was really challenging...Although, here I
am continuing to blog.... So I guess I must either have a
thick skin or be really stupid...”
Andy Revkin, Interview with Yale 360
Saturday, May 29, 2010
This Is Now
Video Shows U.S. Killing of Reuters Employees
WASHINGTON — The Web site WikiLeaks.org
released a graphic video on Monday showing an
American helicopter shooting and killing a Reuters
photographer and driver in a July 2007 attack in
Baghdad.
WikiLeaks
Saturday, May 29, 2010
This Is Now
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Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press (RCFP)
The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE)
The Associated Press - world wide news agency, based in New York
Citizen Media Law Project - Harvard university
The E.W Scripps Company - newspapers, TV, cable TV etc.
Gannett Co. Inc - the largest publisher of newspapers in the USA, including USA Today
The Hearst Corporation - media conglomerate which publishes the San Francisco Chronicle
The Los Angeles Times
National Newspaper Association (NNA)
Newspaper Association of America (NAA)
The Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA)
The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ)
Public Citizen - founded by Ralph Nader together with the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO)
Jordan McCorkle, the University of Texas
WikiLeaks
Saturday, May 29, 2010
This Is Also Now...
Posted by Jeff Id on February 2, 2010
“Since these files first came out, there has been a lot of
speculation as to the source of them. ...In my opinion, this
was done by a couple of students (they said “we” a couple
of times in the comment they left at tAV). They were
probably right there on the premises, looking right at the
box.”
Jeff Id is a pseudonym for Patrick Condon, an
aeronautical engineer from Morris, Illinois.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
CliSci Goes Viral
Tom Fuller...has written
technology commentary for The
International Herald Tribune's
Italy Daily and consulted on
green technology for the UK
government. About half of what
he writes here will be a liberal
skeptic's view of environmental
issues.
Steven M. Mosher graduated Northwestern University and attended
UCLA for graduate studies in literature. He later joined Northrop Aircraft
where he worked as a threat analyst and director of analysis.. Since 1995 he
has specialized in the development of new consumer technologies ... Since
2007 he has worked in the open source community and has been active
leader in the effort to get open access to the data and code underlying
climate science.
http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2010m1d14-Climategate-The-CRUtape-Letters
Saturday, May 29, 2010
CliSci Goes Viral
Updated November 24, 2009
Why You Should Be Hot and Bothered About 'Climate-gate'
By John Lott
- FOXNews.com
A coordinated campaign to hide scientific
information about climate change appears
unprecedented. Could it wind up costing us trillions?
John R. Lott, Jr. is a FoxNews.com contributor....an
economist...author of Freedomonics.. senior research scientist at
the University of Maryland Foundation, College Park...and
blogger.
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/
Saturday, May 29, 2010
CliSci Goes Viral
Blogs
Media coverage of the "Climategate" story by various outlets.
Credit: Randy Olson & Ryan Mitchell, The Benshi
Saturday, May 29, 2010
CliSci Goes Viral
Release of cru emails
“The issue-attention cycle defines a cyclical process, in which a new public
issue arises after some triggering event. Coverage and attention to this issue
rises quickly, and then declines, as it is seen as no longer novel or unique...”
Robert Brulle, Drexler University Sociologist
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Blogosphere
http://www.realclimate.org/
http://climateaudit.org/
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Blogosphere
http://climateprogress.org
Best. Headline. Ever.
April 4, 2010
UEA Climate Scientist: “possible that…I.P.C.C. has run its course”
This is a surprise. Professor Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia suggests that the “I.P.C.C. has
run its course”. I agree with him. We really need to remove a wholly political organization, the United
Nations, from science.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Blogosphere
Dueling blogs ... can actually enhance public trust in the
science as they see both sides of the arguments being
discussed. Debating science with skeptics should be the spice
of academic life, but many climate researchers lost this
somehow by mistakenly thinking that skeptical arguments
would diminish the public trust in the message coming from
the climate research establishment.
Judith Curry, Chair, Georgia Tech School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/climate/policy.htm
http://blogs.physicstoday.org/politics/2010/02/opinion-can-scientists-rebuild.html
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Blogosphere
Huh? You may not agree with everything I write, but at
least it is grounded in the actual scientific literature... I
rarely “duel” with Watts, since he’s not making a serious
effort to understand and report on the science...If Curry
seriously believes that WattsUpWithThat in any way,
shape or form is contributing to increasing the credibility
of climate research...then we could not possibly disagree
more.”
Joe Romm, Editor of Climate Progress
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Blogosphere
“I asked Dr. Judith Curry if I could repost her letter which
she originally sent to Climate Progress....Dr. Curry gets
props from the skeptical community because she had the
courage to invite Steve McIntyre to give a presentation at
Georgia Tech, for which she took criticism. Her letter is
insightful and addresses troubling issues. We can all learn
something from it. – Anthony”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/27/an-open-letter-from-dr-judith-curry-on-climatescience/
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Mainstream
The Observatory — December 03, 2009 06:53 PM
The Observatory — February 15, 2010 10:04 AM
Hacked E-mails and “Journalistic Tribalism”
U.S. Press Digs Into IPCC Story
Climate coverage is imperfect, but is it ideologically biased?
Articles still fall short of ambitious work in the U.K.
By Curtis Brainard
By Curtis Brainard
“The mainstream media tends to abhor complicated stories
on areas of scientific uncertainty .... This tendency is not
exclusive to science reporting—most editors tend to prefer
distilled and simple 'news bites.’ The consequences, as
Mike Hulme put it...are false narratives: “Either the
evidence for man-made climate change is all fake, or else
we are so sure we know how the planet works that we can
claim to have just five or whatever years to save it.”
Curtis Brainard, Columbia Journalism Review
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/hacked_emails_and_journalistic.php?page=all
Saturday, May 29, 2010
guardian.uk.com
Battle over climate data turned into war between scientists and sceptics
Fred Pearce: In 2002 when Steve McIntyre emailed Phil Jones asking for weather station data, so began
the tribalism among scientists that led to 'climategate' 131 comments
How the 'climategate' scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics' lies
Fred Pearce: Claims based on email soundbites are demonstrably false - there is manifestly no evidence of
clandestine data manipulation 123 comments
Hockey stick graph took pride of place in IPCC report, despite doubts
Fred Pearce: Emails expose tension between desire for scrupulous honesty, and desire to tell simple story
to tell the policymakers 40 comments
Climate change debate overheated after sceptic grasped 'hockey stick'
Fred Pearce: Steve McIntyre pursued graph's creator Michael Mann, but replication of his temperature
spike has earned credibility 56 comments
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Who’s To Blame?
“Despite all the talk a few years ago about ‘the debate being
over’…the forces of anti-scientific disinformation were just
lying dormant....I guess what we all underestimated was the
degree, the depth of dishonesty, dirtiness, and cynicism to
which the climate change denial movement would be willing
to stoop to advance their agenda.”
Michael Mann, Interviewed by Chris Mooney, Point of
Inquiry
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/7175
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Who’s To Blame?
A Call for More Transparency, Less Tribalism
“In summary, the problem seems to be ... the circling of the
wagons strategy... Particularly on a topic of such great
public relevance, scientists need to consider carefully
skeptical arguments and either rebut them or learn from
them. Trying to suppress them or discredit the skeptical
researcher or blogger is not an ethical strategy and one that
will backfire in the long run.”
Judith Curry, Chair, Georgia Tech School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences,
ClimateAudit.com
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/climate/index.htm
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Who’s To Blame?
Chill Out: Climate scientists are getting a little too angry
for their own good.
“The latest batch of e-mails reflects a bunker mentality
among climate scientists, forged during the Bush
administration and reinforced by the recent attacks on their
credibility...But urgent calls to escalate the war against
climate skeptics may lead scientists and their organizations
into a dangerous trap, fueling further political
disagreement while risking public trust in science.”
By Matthew C. Nisbet
http://www.slate.com/id/2248236/pagenum/all
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Who’s To Blame?
March 29, 2010
“Some people have suggested that scientists need to wise up,
and learn how to present themselves better on the public
stage....[But] no scientist can be an effective communicator in
a world where those with vested interests will do everything
they can to destroy his or her reputation... What we really
need is for newspaper editors, politicians, and business
leaders to start acting responsibly...and shift the discourse
from endless dissection of scientists’ emails onto useful,
substantive discussions of the policy choices we’re faced
with.”
Steve Easterbrook, University of Toronto
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Who’s To Blame?
“...There has been what can only be described as a media
frenzy (mostly in the UK) with regards to climate change in
recent weeks. The coverage has contained more bad
reporting, misrepresentation and confusion on the subject
than we have seen in such a short time anywhere... Perhaps
this is driven by editors demanding that reporters come up
with something new (to them)... Or perhaps it is driven by
the journalists desperate to maintain their scoop by
pretending... that this nonsense hasn’t been debunked a
hundred times already? Who knows? ”
Gavin Scott, RealClimate
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/whatevergate/#more-2806
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friendly Fire
“The deniers' campaign of lies, grotesque as it is, does not
justify secrecy and suppression on the part of climate
scientists. Far from it: it means that they must distinguish
themselves from their opponents in every way. No one has
been as badly let down by the revelations in these emails as
those of us who have championed the science. We should
be the first to demand that it is unimpeachable, not the
last.”
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friendly Fire
MEDIA
Climate Scientists’ E-mails Hacked, Posted; So What Does it All Mean for the Climate?
By Bud Ward | November 22, 2009
“There is, one might regret to say, an appearance of some
there there. And appearances, as we’ve often learned but
too seldom remember, are reality when it comes to making
policy in Washington on complex public policy issues.”
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friendly Fire
“If you care about an issue and want to make it your life’s
work, don’t cut corners! It’s disheartening for people inclined
towards the scientific method, and it’s catnip to these guys
who are going to end up celebrating tonight, drunk, roaming
the Arctic Circle trying to skull f$#@ polar bears!”
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friendly Fire
“The very fact that Climategate was newsworthy is evidence
that reporters hold scientists to a much higher standard than
they hold denialists, even if they won’t admit it in their quest
to report a controversy.”
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/mann_bites_dog_why_climategate_was_newsworthy
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friendly Fire
jfleck at inkstain
A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico
“My frustration is that some of the smartest and most talented
people in this discussion seem obsessed with the warfare right
now, with smacking down every thing said on the Internet
that they view as wrong, as if a) they could somehow succeed
in ending bunk, and b) if all bunk ended, then their preferred
political/policy solutions would follow.”
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Lessons Learned?
Energy & Environment
E-Mails Show Scientists Planning Push-Back Against
'McCarthyite' Attacks on Climate Science
By ALEX KAPLUN of Greenwire
March 5, 2010
“U.S.
scientists are planning to counter criticisms directed at
them during the "Climategate" scandal and congressional
debates The e-mails obtained by E&E show the scientists are
considering launching advertising campaigns, widening their
public presence, pushing the National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) to take a more active role in explaining climate
science.” http://www.eenews.net/gw/
...
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Lessons Learned?
“The failure of the University of East Anglia to respond
substantially to the avalanche of invective from climate
skeptics has been a PR disaster that undermined the
reputation of science as well as the institution itself. One
angry media insider says: ‘Their response will be taught in
university communications courses. Because I’m going to
make sure it is.’’
Fred Pearce, Yale Environment 360
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Big Question
March 8, 2010, 11:51 AM
Should Scientists Fight Heat or Stick to Data?
By
ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/should-scientists-fight-heat-or-stick-to-data/#more-15243
Saturday, May 29, 2010
A Fine Line
“I learned early in my career that it is far better to address
the issues raised by global warming skeptics head on rather
than ignore their attacks and let public sentiment evolve in
an information battleground that has been ceded to their
arguments. I feel that as climate scientists we must put
ourselves at the very center of the discussions... In doing
so, some may come dangerously close to policy advocacy,
but to recuse ourselves from the raging international
debate would be a great loss for humanity.”
Guest Commentary: An Open Essay on “ClimateGate”
Kim Cobb, Georgia Tech
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/kim-cobbs-view/
Saturday, May 29, 2010
A Fine Line
“Some communications experts...have suggested that
climate scientists now should begin ‘framing’ their
comments in such a way to appeal better to the
public. In effect, this approach is no different than
that of the deniers and places researchers in the role
of advocates instead of experts. There's a fine line that
scientists need to walk, losing their stereotypical
persona of unemotional expert focused solely on the
data but not adopting any advocacy role that would
place them opposite of the naysayers in a he says/she
says story. This will be far tougher to pull off than
most of them will think it will be.”
Earle Holland, Assistant Vice President for Research Communications
Ohio State University, email communication
Saturday, May 29, 2010
A Fine Line
“The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is
occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant
disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems,
social systems, security and human health are likely to
occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases
beginning now....The APS also urges governments,
universities, national laboratories and its membership to
support policies and actions that will reduce the
emission of greenhouse gases.”
National Policy
07.1 CLIMATE CHANGE
Adopted by American Physical Society on November 18, 2007
(
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Resources
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/index.php
http://ksjtracker.mit.edu/
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Resources
http://www.nature.com/climate/index.html
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Resources
FRAMING SCIENCE
WHAT'S NEXT IN PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT?
http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/
http://www.pointofinquiry.org/
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Resources
http://leopoldleadership.stanford.edu/
Communicating on Climate Change:
An Essential Resource for Journalists, Scientists, and Educators
Bud Ward Edited by Sunshine Menezes
http://www.metcalfinstitute.org/Communicating_ClimateChange.htm
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Resources
The Historical Perspective:
Science Advisors or Policy Advocates?
Saturday, May 29, 2010