Journalistic Norms and Environmental Issues - #SciCommLSU Lecture 6

1. Journalistic Norms –
Environmental Issues
Lecture 6 – by Paige Brown
#SciCommLSU
Paige Brown & Zeynep Altinay

2. History of Science News Coverage
 Early 1900s: science journalism was characterized by a ‘gee-whiz’
and translational mode of reporting (Rensberger, 2009).
 1930s/40s: newspaper reporters viewed their role as
persuading publics that science was the salvation of society
(Lewenstein, 1992).
 1950s: science reporters covered the details of scientific
discovery, rather than science’s political or social implications
(Rensberger, 2009).
 1960s: science reporting becomes more critical, reflecting a
muckraking age of journalism, questioning the motivations and
political objectives of scientists.
 1970s: Reporters become more sympathetic to a rising
environmental movement.
 1980s: Rise of PR and promotional science reporting.

3. History of Science News Coverage
 1990s: Return to a more critical stance of reporting on science.
 2000s:
 Rise of blogs and online science news
 Polarization of news environment on scientific issues?
 2014?
 Scientists and amateur science bloggers / journalists cover science
in both traditional and alternative formats
 Decline of full-time science journalism opportunities
 Rise of participatory, dialogic science journalism in blogs and more
innovative digital science news sites.
 Divergence of entertaining science news & critical coverage?
 A focus on the audience information wants & needs?

4. History of Environmental
News Coverage
 1960s: Corporate PR hides
degree of industry pollution, etc.
 By early 1970s, both the media
and the general population
knew there was such a thing as
an “environmental issue”
 1969 – New York Times creates
an environment beat and
NatGeo offers a 9,000 word
article on man’s environmental
problems

5. History of Environmental News Coverage
 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill ”was covered by television as a
human-interest story of young people trying to save oil-soaked
birds on the beach. The moving pictures of students in tears
with dying birds in their arms were seen ’up close and
personal’ [on TV].” – Environment Reporters in the 21st Century

6. Today’s Environmental News Coverage
 Today “almost every news reporter may be called on to cover
breaking stories about the environment.” – Environment Reporters
in the 21st Century
 In the 21st century, environmental coverage, especially of climate
change, became very political and polarized.
 Niche media have emerged around environmental coverage:
ClimateWire, Grist, Mother Nature Network, Yale Environment 360
 The public have become more aware of environmental issues like
climate change and sustainability in general.
 Environmental stories can have many different angles:
government, human interest, business/economic, pollution,
nature/wilderness, science/technology, political, health, risk
assessment.

7. Why does it matter how US
media covers climate change?
 US is a top emitter of greenhouse gases that lead to climate
change.
 We produce more then 25% (!) of greenhouse gases
worldwide, but we only have 5% of the world’s population.
(2006).
 The media is one of the key “public arenas in which social
problems are framed and grow.”

8. Carbon Cycle (US Dept of Energy)

9. Ways we don’t want the media
to cover climate change:
 A subject of scientific uncertainty or even dispute
 Scientific findings are often full of caveats and limitations. They are
rarely absolute. On the other hand, journalists prefer to
communicate in unambiguous terms.
 A drama of conflicting personalities
 A “He Said She Said” debate
 “End of the World” “Fear-mongering”
 Discrete, unconnected events (covering only one-off natural
disasters as opposed to an ongoing physical as well as social
issue).
 Reporting on environmental issues requires a commitment to
facts, an understanding of large data trends, and takes time.

10. News values & environmental reporting
 “In their coverage of environment risk the [TV] networks are
guided more by the traditional determinants of news and the
availability of dramatic visual images than by the scientific risk
of the situation involved. They are also guided in their
coverage by geographical factors (such as cost and
convenience) much more than by risk” – Greenberg et al. 1989
 Journalistic news values focus reporters more on events than
issues, more on the spectacular and the dramatic than on the
chronic.

11. Traditional Journalistic Norms
 Objectivity
 Fairness
 Accuracy
 Balance
*Note: New media may be changing some of these norms,
especially the norm of objectivity, which is increasingly less
important among online journalists/bloggers.

12. News Values
Factors of Newsworthiness
 Size, Scale or Scope of the Event
 Threshold, Magnitude
 Conflict/Negativity
 Negativity, Drama, “Bad News”, Conflict,
Deviance
 Positivity
 Success, “Good News”, rescues and cures, etc.
 Impact or Significance
 Importance / Relevance to readers, Social
Significance, Interest

13. News Values
Factors of Newsworthiness
 Time
 Recency, Timeliness
 Proximity
 Nearness (might be geographical, but
might be cultural, etc.), Meaningfulness
to the audience, Ethnocentricism,
Cultural Relevance
 Novelty
 Unexpectedness (often used in science
news), Novelty, Surprise, “Man-Bite-Dog”
 Prominence
 Elite (elite nations, elite people),
Celebrities, the Powerful
http://anjagoller.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/what-makes-a-story-interesting-to-readers/

14. News Values
Factors of Newsworthiness
 Personalization
 Showing the human side of an issue or event, Personalities, Familiarity
 Human Interest
 Entertaining and Emotional aspects
 Sensationalism
 News Writing Objectives
 Unambiguity (clarity in presenting the meaning or interpretation of an
event/issue)
 Simplification
 Brevity
 Colour
 Clarity
 Brevity
 Satisfaction
 Story quality

15. The case of ‘prefabricated’ stories
in science
Bad Science in the Headlines:
http://embor.embopress.org/content/7/12/1193

16. The Embargo System
 “an embargo is when a journal, researcher or
public information officer (PIO) gives reporters a
copy of a journal article before the article is
published – but bars those reporters from
releasing any stories about the journal article until
it has been published.” – Matt Shipman
 “The embargo system has led to a process
whereby a handful of journals set the news
agenda, even though there are hundreds of
publications. Reporters tend to cover the same
stories so as not to miss out, and, even then, their
reporting is marked by Eureka moments,
portraying science as a process of discoveries.”
- Revitalizing Science Journalism for a Digital Age

17. Example Embargo Policy

18. Embargoes – More Reading
 The Pros and Cons of Embargoes:
http://www.scilogs.com/communication_breakdown/embargo-pros-
and-cons/
 Embargoes as Self-Defense, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Live with Embargoes:
http://www.scilogs.com/communication_breakdown/using-embargoes/

19. News Values applied to Science
 What makes any particular story about a scientific discovery or a
scientific process newsworthy?
 Different fields of science receive different amounts of news
coverage in general, with health, medicine and behavioral science
dominating newspaper stories, including best-selling coverage in the
New York Times (Clark & Illman, 2006).
 Badenschier and Wormer (2012): Other factors that may influence
the selection of science stories by the media include
 (1) importance factors - political, economic, social, cultural, ethical
and/or scientific importance
 (2) surprise factors - unexpectedness and exotic nature of the information
 (3) usability factors - whether the science provides advice for daily life.

20. Badenschier, F., & Wormer, H. (2012). Issue
Selection in Science Journalism: Towards a
Special Theory of News Values for Science News?
 Important news factors specific to science”
 Unexpectedness / Astonishment
 Significance (total population affected)
 Conflict / Controversy
 Influence and Prominence (news involving the scientific elite)
 Science journalists report on “spectacular discoveries,
laureates, and marketing opportunities but the daily routine of
scientists, the merit of competitors, or the background of
research promotion remain unknown” (Badenschier and
Wormer, 2012, p. 68).

21. “This is a very
cool study and
demonstrates
what many of us
have been
saying—that we
will get surprises.”
http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2014/08/plants-have-unexpected-response-climate-change

22. Shoemaker, P. J. (2006). News and
newsworthiness: A commentary.
Communications, 31(1), 105-111.
 “News content distracts people with bits of information taken
out of context, which makes concentrating on issues,
problems, and solutions more difficult” (p. 106)

23. Science OF News Values
 News factors do not serve exclusively as journalistic criteria, but
as human selection criteria, based on psychology of
perception. (Eilders,1997)
 Factors that affect selective retention (i.e. memory) of news
items by audiences: controversy, elite persons/prominence,
personalization, unexpectedness, relevance/reach.
 News factors can be regarded as efficient selection criteria in
both media use and the retention of news items by the
audience.

24. Analyze This
http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-antarctic-sea-ice-20140830-
story.html#page=1 [Link] or http://ow.ly/BbwLP
Pair up.
Identify the news values in
this story. Why might it
have made the news?
Give your opinion:
Which news values add to
the quality of reporting?
Which detract?
How is the story, and the
science, framed?

25. Analyze This
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/06/climate-change-children-health-nature-
outdoors_n_5761906.html [Link] or http://ow.ly/Bbwr4
Pair up.
Identify the news
values in this story.
Why might it have
made the news?
Give your opinion:
Which news values
add to the quality
of reporting?
Which detract?

26. Analyze This
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/29/brain-eating-ameba-
Pair up.
now-in-louisiana-drinking-water/ [Link] or http://ow.ly/Bbxe5
Identify the news values in
this story. Why might it
have made the news?
Give your opinion:
Which news values add to
the quality of reporting?
Which detract?
What is missing from this
story? How would you
change it?

27. News Values vs.
Environmental Science
 Many news factors, as well as external factors such as
competition, commercial pressures on the news organization,
preference for prefabricated events and predictability, work
against regular coverage of science and environmental science.
 Science PR professionals and scientists often have to present their
science in terms of relevant news values to enhance news
coverage.

28. Bypassing News Values
 On a more positive note, scientists and science writers
are increasingly bypassing traditional news outlets (and
need for news values) by blogging and tweeting about
science.
 “Digital environments are creating an ‘overlapping
information and communication space’ (Trench, 2009:
167) in which scientists, journalists, advocates, and the
people formerly known as audiences are all content
contributors, each with varying knowledge, background
and perspectives.” (Fahy & Nisbet, 2011: 782).

29. Personalization
 Personalization: “the tendency to downplay the big
social, economic, or political picture in favor of the
human trials tragedies, and triumphs that sit at the
surface of events”
 Can translate into news that focuses on the conflict
between personalities (climate scientists and politicians,
etc.) as opposed to larger scale social issues
 “focusing on the individual claims-makers who are
locked in political battle.”

30. Discuss: Personalization
Why is focusing on the personalities and
individual-level experiences and claims an
issue when it comes to climate change?
*Hint – Climate change is a social issue.

31. Dramatization
 Emphasis on conflict or crisis
 May either lead to:
 the blocking out of news that does not hold an immediate
sense of excitement or controversy (not enough talk about
climate changes or climate change science in the media
unless it is “dramatic”
or
 Sensationalized, “alarmist” reporting
Both of these have issues for proper public understanding of
climate change and proper action.

32. Novelty
 The “repetition taboo”
 “allows persistent, and growing, environmental problems to
slide out of sight if there is nothing ‘new’ to report” (Stocking
and Leonard, 1990, p. 40)
 The underlying causes and long-term consequences of climate
change are often overlooked in the media in a focus on news
pegs.
 Coverage of one-off disasters (a hurricane, etc.) more likely
than sustained, contextualized coverage of climate change
impacts.

33. Balance
http://scienceprogress.org/2007/11/out-of-balance/
 The norms of presenting “both sides” and giving “both sides
equal attention”
 How can this be an issue for climate change?
*Hints: “false” balance; setting non-experts against experts.

34. Boykoff & Boykoff
 1988-2004 Newspaper coverage of climate change
 Adherence to first-order journalistic norms (personalization,
dramatization, novelty) and second-order norms (authority-order
and balance) may lead to poor coverage of climate
change.

35. Boykoff & Boykoff
In order to make it to
the top of the mass
media’s agenda,
environmental
problems must
“piggyback on
dramatic real-world
events”
Result: ‘Spastic’
coverage following
newsworthy events
and issues. (hurricanes,
droughts, political
events, elections, etc.

36. Boykoff & Boykoff
 Summary: “by employing the norms of professional journalism,
the mass-media can adversely affect interactions between
science, policy, and the public. Adherence to the norms of
dramatization, personalization, novelty, balance and authority-order
is part of a process that eventuates in informationally
biased coverage of global warming.”

37. Brainstorm – What might cause
climate change ‘make’ the news?
 An extreme weather event
 A new scientific study
 A political statement or event pertaining to climate change
 An unexpected finding / turn of events
 Related events (newly found environmental threats, the
extinction of a species, etc.)
 A tragic event, such as an oil spill, etc.
 A new graphic or image (i.e. powerful new visuals)
 Can you think of anything else?

38. Getting Better?
 Boykoff (2007) looked at newspaper coverage of climate change
from 2003 – 2008
 “When it comes to reporting on global warming in the United
States, "phony media balance," though once a serious problem,
actually appears to have declined.” – Chris Mooney, 2007

39. Boykoff, 2007
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publica
tion_files/2007.39.pdf

40. Boykoff, 2007
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publica
tion_files/2007.39.pdf

41. Getting Better?

42.  “One of the most common complaints lodged against journalists these
days is the notion of “false balance”. Journalists, so the critics say, too often
present fringe scientists in a misguided effort to balance stories about
genuine science. Or it can mean "balancing" experts against people who
don't know what they're talking about.”
 “False balance seems more likely to plague broadcast coverage of
science than print. Print reporters sometimes get the chance to evaluate
claims from sources before they get into print. But false balance can trip up
any reporter when there isn’t time to fully investigate a story. Often stories
end up with a he-said-she said structure even though both sides can’t
possibly be right.”
 “The best way to avoid false balance is dogged research, fact checking
and adequate time devoted to vetting the credentials and sniffing out
conflicts of interest that might color statements sources make. And in
interviews, a good reporter should force subjects to be specific. Don’t let
them get away with vague, fuzzy statements, contradictions, or sweeping
conclusions beyond what’s supported by evidence.”
https://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2014/07/report-accuses-bbc-journalists-of-false-balance-
in-climate-change-coverage/

43. Thoughts on Readings
 What did you think of this Q&A?
 What kind of environmental
coverage resonates with you?
 Did the realize before reading
this how much environmental
reporters have to consider
politics, the human side of their
stories, health impacts, etc. as
well as the environmental
science itself?

44. Discuss – Blog or Tweet your
Responses.
 “[T]he role of science journalism is not simply to act as a
'translator' who conveys the findings of scientists in a language
understandable to lay people. Rather, good science
journalism will provide the public with a realistic impression of
what is well established in science and what are current 'hot
topics', uncertainties and controversies. It will also discuss the
methods and social context of the scientific endeavour. There
is ample evidence that in the area of climate science,
journalism too often is failing to deliver this realistic picture to its
audience, despite many good science journalists.”
 Answer this question: What would YOU do (as a journalist,
writer, etc.) to deliver a more realistic picture of environmental
issues like climate change? How could we improve coverage
of environmental issues in Louisiana, for example?