All Blog Posts from Public Eye

"If you rely on the media and the distorted way in which the media is reporting what’s going on there, you’re not going to get a very good idea of what’s really going on. I can remember so well spending one whole trip in the Sunni triangle, in Fallujah, just talked to the troops there ... And the former brigade commander that hated Americans—he was a brigade commander for Saddam Hussein—now, after having experienced embedded training with our Marines over there, has totally changed his mind. He loves them. He actually cried when the rotation came. I mean, these things are actually happening over there. He renamed the Fallujah security forces the 'Fallujah Marines.'”

--Senator James Inhofe, talking about coverage of the Iraq war in 2005.

New York Times science reporter Andrew Revkin was on "On The Media" this weekend to talk about global warming – and the way the media covers it. The whole thing is worth reading or listening to, but I wanted to highlight a couple of comments. First is this one, in which Revkin talks about the uncertainty in the impact of global warming, at least in the near term:

"When you look ahead at the Arctic later this century, there's not a scientist around studying this stuff who doesn't see the prospect of basically a blue pole at the top of the world for the first time in human history, meaning summertime open water ocean, just like the Atlantic or the Pacific, all the ice gone," says Revkin. "But when you look at the near term, there's been a lot of melting, a lot of strange things going on with the sea ice that they can't ascribe this particular year to our influence on the climate system. They know it's contributing to change but there's enough variability in the Arctic that you can't make a slam dunk case. So that's a nightmare for the media. You know, my editors -- the one thing that makes them glaze over immediately is the word 'incremental.' That's like, at The Times, and I'm sure any other newsroom, that's a death sentence for a story. And global warming is kind of like the Social Security and national debt of the environment. It's there, we all recognize it's some kind of big bad thing, but it's always kind of a 'someday, somewhere story.'"

Revkin argues that journalists should resist the urge to tie climate change stories to natural disasters like hurricanes, since there is legitimate debate by scientists about whether such a connection exists. He says that the real "breaking news" in climate change is that "humans are transforming the way the world works." He continues:

"It's breaking news in terms of the scope of the history of human life on earth, right, which is for most people, a snooze," says Revkin. "I guess it gets down to what is journalism about..."

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Right now, the Environment and Public Works Committee is holding a committee hearing on "Climate Change and the Media." Up for discussion is "how the media has presented scientific evidence regarding predictions of human-caused catastrophic global warming," according to the Washington Times.

The Times got this comment from committee Communications Director Marc Morano: "Senator [James M. Inhofe] believes that poorly conceived policy decisions will result from the media's nonstop hyping of 'extreme scenarios' and dire climate predictions. This hearing will serve to advance the interests of sound science and encourage rational policy decisions."

Inhofe, who chairs the committee, called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" in a July 2003 speech. Chris Mooney has labeled him the "U.S. Senate's leading abuser of science" and argues that Inhofe ”brazenly…ignores what scientists know with confidence about global warming."

I watched the opening of the hearing, which can be viewed online. In his opening statement, Inhofe spoke of the media's "overhyped" and "one sided reporting," specifically pointing to a number of reports, including those by "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley. (We spoke to Pelley about his global reporting reports here and here. Inhofe cited Pelley's comments to us in this Sept. 25 speech.)

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