UMD professor calls media's coverage of climate change "journalistic malpractice"

From 2009 to 2014, the percentage of Americans who believe human activity caused global warming dropped from 49 percent to 40 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.

In that same time frame, the percentage of Americans who believe climate change doesn’t exist rose from 11 percent to 18 percent.

Despite the public’s views, climate change is regarded as fact in the scientific community.

In 2009, 84 percent of scientists surveyed said human activity caused global warming, according to the Pew Research Center.

Today, more scientists, not less, believe in climate change.

“There’s about 95 percent agreement among the best thinkers...that climate change is an issue,” said University of Maryland Professor Dr. Wayne Slater. “It’s not going away.”

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Slater teaches in the College of Education but works with scientists on a regular basis.

There is obviously a disconnect between what the scientists think and what the general public believes.

Why?

The media treats both sides of the climate change debate equally and creates a false equivalence issue

Part of the problem is the media’s coverage of the issue, Slater said.

In the issue of fairness, journalists devote as much time and space in stories to climate change skeptics despite the lack of evidence in their favor.

This is false equivalence, writes Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine.

Heuvel defined the term in an article for The Washington Post in 2014 as “giving equal weight to unsupported or even discredited claims for the sake of appearing impartial.”

In 2014, the BBC concluded such coverage can create a “false balance” in the public’s mind since both sides are being equally represented in coverage.

“We have this amazing agreement across the science community that’s pretty consistent in relation to findings,” Slater said. “Journalists tend to report almost anything that’s out there and they sort of talk about the notion of equal coverage and fair coverage…

…Well actually those of us outside of journalism might say that’s journalistic malpractice.”

But journalists aren’t the only ones who are to blame, Slater said.

Politicians and scientists fail to properly inform the public on climate change

While Slater said media coverage is one reason why fewer Americans believe human activity caused global warming in 2014 than 2009, he also blamed politicians.

“In certain parts of our country and from certain political philosophies they have in effect come to a belief that the scientists are wrong,” Slater said. “Something else will take care of it.”

Even the scientific community is at fault, Maryland professor Dr. Tim Canty said.

Scientists are struggling to effectively communicate with the public, said Canty, who works in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science.

But even then the media, and organizations like CNN, are part of the problem. 

“Why is it that Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye seem to be the people they interview on CNN to get the science perspective," Canty said. "Neil Degrasse Tyson is an astronomer and Bill Nye is a science teacher."