A Little Climate Change Reporting With Your Daily Forecast?
Over at Salon, Linda Baker has a piece lamenting the fact that weather reporters don't much talk about climate change. Here's her argument in a nutshell:
Most Americans get their information about the weather and climate from TV meteorologists, who in turn provide forecasts to local newspapers. So the weather report would be a fitting, if not exclusive, place to inform the global warming discussion.I'm not sure I understand the logic here. Don't most people check the weather on TV so that they know what it's going to be like outside that day? Seems to me that an issue as large and long-term as global warming would be the purview of a special report. It would be nearly impossible to get into any serious discussion of global warming in the two minutes or so most weather reporters are given to put out a forecast.
That said, there is something to Baker's argument that the skill sets of newsroom meteorologists are being wasted. Perhaps, instead of trying to shoehorn global warming reports alongside forecasts, weather reporters could do something more in depth in another part of the broadcast. That presents its own challenges, however. As we've seen, global warming is an issue that arouses passions on both sides, and news directors are reticent to risk alienating viewers. Center for Media and Public Affairs media director Matthew Felling told Salon, "The last thing any station wants is an activist weatherman."