science communication - humphrey program · 432 science communication 36(4) (“skeptics”) who...

http://scx.sagepub.com/Science Communication

http://scx.sagepub.com/content/36/4/428The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/1075547014534077

2014 36: 428 originally published online 19 May 2014Science CommunicationSara Shipley Hiles and Amanda Hinnant

of Objectivity When Covering Global WarmingClimate Change in the Newsroom: Journalists' Evolving Standards

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:Science CommunicationAdditional services and information for

http://scx.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://scx.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

http://scx.sagepub.com/content/36/4/428.refs.htmlCitations:

What is This?

- May 19, 2014OnlineFirst Version of Record

- Jul 13, 2014Version of Record >>

at American University Library on August 19, 2014scx.sagepub.comDownloaded from at American University Library on August 19, 2014scx.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://scx.sagepub.com/

http://scx.sagepub.com/content/36/4/428

http://www.sagepublications.com

http://scx.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://scx.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://scx.sagepub.com/content/36/4/428.refs.html

http://scx.sagepub.com/content/36/4/428.full.pdf

http://scx.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/05/19/1075547014534077.full.pdf

http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml



Science Communication2014, Vol. 36(4) 428 –453

© 2014 SAGE PublicationsReprints and permissions:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1075547014534077

scx.sagepub.com

Theme Article

Climate Change in the Newsroom: Journalists’ Evolving Standards of Objectivity When Covering Global Warming

Sara Shipley Hiles1 and Amanda Hinnant1

AbstractThis study investigated how highly experienced environmental journalists view the professional norms of objectivity when covering climate change over time. Elite journalists were sought, and all had a minimum of 10 years of experience in climate coverage. In-depth interviews revealed a paradox: Most still profess belief in objectivity even as they reject or redefine it. Participants said that journalists should use objective practices and refrain from revealing their own biases, including advocating for the environment. However, participants have radically redefined the component of objectivity known as “balance.” They now advocate a “weight-of-evidence” approach, where stories reflect scientific consensus.

Keywordsenvironmental journalism, climate change, sociology of news, objectivity, transparency

1Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

Corresponding Author:Sara Shipley Hiles, Missouri School of Journalism, University of Missouri, 108 Lee Hills Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, USA. Email: [email protected]

534077 SCXXXX10.1177/1075547014534077Science CommunicationHiles and Hinnantresearch-article2014

at American University Library on August 19, 2014scx.sagepub.comDownloaded from


Hiles and Hinnant 429

Climate change is arguably the world’s biggest environmental story—and for journalists, it may be the toughest (Ward, 2008). Not only is the story scien-tifically complex, it is politically treacherous. With American opinion about anthropogenic climate change polarized along partisan lines (Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 2012), journalists have suffered withering criticism left and right—even veiled death threats (Revkin, 2009). Traditionally, journalists could shield themselves from attack through prac-ticing “objectivity” (e.g., Mindich, 1998; Schiller, 1978; Schudson, 1978; Tuchman, 1978). A key component of traditional journalistic objectivity is “balance,” in which reporters try to tell “both sides of the story” (Tuchman, 1972, p. 665). With climate change, however, traditional balance led journal-ists and the public massively astray. Public relations (PR) firms and dissent-ing scientists funded by the fossil fuel industry sowed doubt and misinformation about the reality of human-caused climate change (Gelbspan, 2005; J. Greenberg, Knight, & Westersund, 2011), and journalists repeated the information in an attempt to be “balanced” (Gelbspan, 2005). This pattern led to the charge of “balance as bias,” in which Boykoff and Boykoff (2004) skewered the media for creating an appearance of significant scientific debate over anthropogenic climate change, when, in fact, there was little disagree-ment. This lopsided coverage falsely framed climate change as a “debate” in the public eye (Boykoff, 2010). Scholars have noted problematic climate coverage from the 1980s through about 2005 (Antilla, 2005; Brossard, Shanahan, & McComas, 2004, Liu, Vedlitz, & Alston, 2008; McComas & Shanahan, 1999; Trumbo, 1996; Zehr, 2000). However, not long after Boykoff and Boykoff’s (2004) influential study, coverage appeared to change. By 2007, Boykoff (2007a) found that media coverage more closely reflected scientific consensus. By 2010, Block (2010) noted that most jour-nalists had stopped covering climate change as a scientific controversy.

How do journalists perceive this shift? A number of previous studies have examined climate change coverage through content analyses of U.S. newspa-pers (e.g., Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004). This study asked journalists them-selves to explain the evolution—and to discuss what role their perception of journalistic norms played. More specifically, this study asked how an elite group of expert U.S. environmental reporters perceived the professional norm of objectivity when covering climate change and how they say this perception changed during a period of apparent shift from 2000 to 2010. Participants were probed on eight dimensions of traditional objectivity gleaned from the literature, such as neutrality and balance (e.g., Schudson, 1978). Results show that mainstream environmental journalists developed a modified norm of objectivity but do not claim to have abandoned it com-pletely. This discovery is important in an era when traditional notions of



430 Science Communication 36(4)

journalism are being challenged and new definitions are coming forward. Both journalists and the public deserve a thorough understanding of the val-ues that contributed to this most crucial story.

Before turning to the journalists’ perspectives, we provide a conceptual review of objectivity, a history of climate change coverage, and a review of research on environmental journalists.

Literature Review

Journalistic Objectivity

Scholars have been analyzing journalistic objectivity for decades (Mindich, 1998; Schudson, 1978; Tuchman, 1972). The norm of objectivity grew out of the empiricism of the late 1800s, leading to the supremacy of science and medicine and a focus on “fact-based journalism” (Mindich, 1998, p. 14). The shock of the First World War and the rise of professional PR led to the under-standing of reality as a social construct. Journalists saw they needed to employ a more sophisticated approach, and Lippmann’s (1922) scientific method of reporting emerged and flourished.

Sociology of news research has pointed out, however, that even with a scientific approach, a news story is the product of a social institution, trans-lated into concrete texts through newsroom routines (Tuchman, 1978). Schiller (1978) spoke of objectivity as part of the “invisible frame” bracket-ing news stories: “Objectivity facilitates the otherwise difficult belief that the newspaper ‘mirrors’ or ‘reflects’ reality” (p. 2). Major social upheavals, such as the struggle for racial equality, have been notoriously disserviced by the norms of objectivity, mainly through the tools of “balance” and “authority” (Meyer, 2004; Mindich, 1998). Many scholars and practitioners of journal-ism deny that objectivity is even possible to achieve (e.g., Herman & Chomsky, 1988).

Recent research has examined how these foundational ideas of objectivity materialize in contemporary media contexts. For example, Skovsgaard, Albæk, Bro, and de Vreese (2013) found that Danish journalists described the concept of objectivity variously as a “passive mirror role,” “watchdog role,” or “public forum role.” Vos, Craft, and Ashley (2010) analyzed how bloggers attacked the mainstream press for using the “veneer of objectivity” to create “false balance” and then fail the public “by never determining ‘who’s right and who’s wrong’” (p. 23). Online journalists who are not affiliated with a traditional news source have been found to adopt norms that differ from objectivity (Atton, 2004), such as through dialogue (Soffer, 2009) or through “moral witnessing” (Wiesslitz & Ashuri, 2011), which “allow them to go




beyond factual reporting and present their personal views and experiences about a reality they wish to change through their journalistic activity” (p. 1048). These previous studies have sought the perceptions of journalists about objectivity, thereby laying the groundwork for this research and offer-ing a site for comparison. More generally, we seek the “tacit knowledge” (Polanyi, 1958) or “tacit knowing-in-action” (Schön, 1983, p. 49) of sea-soned journalists (Dewerth-Pallmeyer, 1996; Gitlin, 2003; Hinnant & Len-Ríos, 2009) about objectivity as it relates to climate coverage, which is a knowledge these journalists possess and put to use but do not often articulate.

Climate Change Coverage

Media coverage of climate change has come under intense scrutiny, notably by scholars, bloggers, activists, and journalists themselves. However, com-plaints about uneven coverage are nothing new. A number of studies of cov-erage in the 1980s and 1990s found flaws in climate change coverage. Trumbo (1996), McComas and Shanahan (1999), and Brossard et al. (2004) found evidence of this cycle regarding climate change coverage in the 1980s and 1990s. Media coverage increased dramatically in the late 1980s (McComas & Shanahan, 1999; Trumbo, 1996) as media “discovered” the problem; then concern leveled off. American media also tended to emphasize scientific uncertainty and controversy (Brossard et al., 2004; Zehr, 2000). Zehr argued that this focus on uncertainty created an artificial boundary between scientists and the lay public, suggesting people should wait to act until scientists reached consensus on the matter.

By the early 2000s, there was some indication that media had stopped questioning the science as much. Antilla (2005) found that two thirds of the climate coverage in 2003-2004 constructed the science as “valid” and did not include the views of “skeptics.” The remaining third of the stories framed the science as “nonvalid,” portraying it as uncertain or controversial. In 2008, Liu et al. (2008) found that about three quarters of stories in regional news-paper coverage from 1992 to 2005 portrayed climate change as harmful, but some still portrayed it to be not harmful, mixed, or undetermined. It was not until 2004, however, that a landmark study caught the attention of the envi-ronmental press. In a frequently referenced work, “Balance as Bias: Global Warming and the U.S. Prestige Press,” Boykoff and Boykoff (2004) con-ducted a content analysis of global warming coverage in four major American newspapers from 1988 to 2002 and found equal weight given to those who denied climate change and those who affirmed it, despite the fact that the vast majority of scientists believed it was happening. The authors noted the emer-gence around 1990 of a small group of influential spokespeople and scientists




(“skeptics”) who refuted evidence of global warming, many of whom were later revealed to be funded by the fossil fuel industry. Meanwhile, emerging science continued to point to the existence of human-caused climate change. Science historian Oreskes (2004) found that not a single peer-reviewed study between 1993 and 2003 disagreed with conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that human activities have increased the concentra-tion of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The year after the Boykoff and Boykoff study (2004) was published, the journalism trade publication Nieman Reports devoted a section to coverage of global warming. In the publication, Boykoff (2005) argued that journalists had distorted the scientific consensus by granting roughly equal space to dis-sonant scientists. Gelbspan (2005), a retired newspaper journalist who had written a book on the fossil fuel lobby’s global warming disinformation cam-paign, said that the practice of extensively quoting scientists who denied the reality of global warming was “irresponsible” and “a violation of trust” (pp. 78-79). Dunwoody (2005) expanded on that idea by suggesting an alternative to the balanced approach: “Weight-of-evidence reporting” asks journalists not “to determine what’s true but, instead, to find out where the bulk of evi-dence and expert thought lies on the truth continuum and then communicate that to audiences” (p. 90).

There is evidence that noteworthy changes in climate coverage occurred after 2005. Returning to the same four newspapers he had studied earlier, Boykoff (2007a) noticed a marked shift in coverage of climate change. In 2003-2004, U.S. newspapers reflected a significant portion of explicitly “bal-anced” accounts, but in 2005-2006, the majority of stories more closely reflected the scientific consensus. Boykoff suggested that new scientific evi-dence and the landfall of Hurricane Katrina were among the reasons for the change. By 2010, Boykoff (2010) noted that coverage in the U.S. prestige press had changed significantly, but media continued to refer to the climate change debate, a term he found misleading. Boykoff also found abundant evidence for the false-balance problem on television newscasts. Both Boykoff (2010) and Block (2010) cited evidence that the “balance as bias” distortion was alive and well in the coverage of “Climategate”—the controversial e-mails hacked from climate scientists at East Anglia University in late 2009. Although some media reports framed the affair as scandalous, a number of analyses found that the e-mails revealed no fraud or scientific misconduct (Maibach et al., 2012).

Environmental Journalists

Several studies have analyzed how environmental journalists do their work and make meaning from it. Although environmental journalists are typically




veteran reporters with more than 13 years of experience, 7 of those on the beat, and often armed with advanced degrees (Sachsman, Simon, & Valenti, 2006), they still face the challenges of a lack of resources and time (Detjen, Fico, Li, & Kim, 2000). Environmental journalists also face pressure regard-ing how to portray their interest in the environment. Sachsman et al.’s (2006) respondents said that environmental reporters need to be as objective as any other reporter, but nearly a third said they should occasionally advocate for the environment. Respondents were split on whether environmental reporters were too “green” or biased in favor of environmentalism, but they agreed that environmental reporters were not biased in favor of industry (Sachsman et al., 2006). The Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), founded in 1989, addressed the issue by prohibiting members from being paid for lobbying or PR work on environmental issues (Palen, 1999). This compromise spoke to a functional definition of objectivity as independence from vested interests, as opposed to neutrality of opinion.

Environmental journalists also face the challenge of having scientists as primary sources. These two groups sometimes appear at odds, which may help explain some of the confusion and criticism surrounding climate change coverage. For example, Reed (2001) found that scientists and journalists both strive for their own versions of “accuracy” and “objectivity.” But scientists view their work as technical, neutral, and apolitical, whereas journalists value individualism, creativity, and skepticism of authority—even of scientific findings. From the scientists’ perspective, journalists tend to oversimplify scientific ambiguity and focus on sensational angles as “news hooks” to catch readers.

Another issue for science journalists is developing “interactional exper-tise” (Collins & Evans, 2008, p. 31), the intellectual fluency in a topic required to thoroughly assess and explain it. Journalists develop this knowl-edge through conversation with “contributory experts”—in this case, scien-tists—which allows the journalists to possess a sophisticated understanding of science, even if they are not doing the science themselves (Collins & Evans, 2008, p. 35). Journalists realize that they are translators of science, not practitioners; “hardly ever would science journalists make the explicit claim that they were trying to make scientific knowledge when they wrote their stories” (p. 121). The process of rendering science to the public can result in mischaracterization, however. For example, journalists may gloss over uncertainties, making scientific knowledge appear more “unambiguous and intractable” (Collins, 1987, p. 709). Journalists may also misconstrue scien-tific expertise, as in the case of the widespread questioning of the safety of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine in the early 2000s (Collins & Evans, 2008). As the MMR vaccine misinformation spread across general media, the




lack of “contributory experts” was noteworthy (Boyce, 2006). In coverage of both the MMR vaccine and climate change, the state-of-the-science gap was inflated to make it appear as if contributory experts were in debate, which is typical of a traditional “objective” approach of presenting conflict or compet-ing truth claims (Mindich, 1998; Tuchman, 1972). As a journalist gains inter-actional expertise, he or she can use this knowledge to put scientific claims into a broader context instead of relying on conflict. More recently, Nisbet (2013) has identified the rise of the “knowledge journalist,” a public intel-lectual who appears to move beyond interactional expertise to create a new synthesis of knowledge and often promote a specific point of view.

In summary, studies analyzing climate coverage have found that media frequently focused on scientific uncertainty over the existence of, cause of, effect of, and responsibility for climate change, especially from 1980 through approximately 2005. This trend appeared to change after 2005. Boykoff (2007a, 2010) found that the “balance as bias” phenomenon was no longer statistically significant in major U.S. newspapers after 2005. Environmental journalists have unusual assets and face a unique set of challenges in report-ing on their beats. The current research set out to examine environmental journalists’ insights on the norm of objectivity and have them discuss these noteworthy changes. Therefore, we pose the following research question:

How do highly experienced environmental journalists for mainstream print and online media understand the occupational norm of objectivity as applied to coverage of climate change? And how do they character-ize changes of those norms during 2000-2010?

This study looked to a group of elite journalists with high “interactional expertise” to compare their perceptions of objectivity with its traditional defi-nitions and to explore how their functional understanding of objectivity enables them to cover this complex subject.

Method

In-depth interviews were used because they enable researchers to understand “experience, knowledge, and worldviews” of others (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011, p. 173). Additionally, interviews do not require participants to be observed directly; they allow participants to provide historical information, useful for recounting climate coverage norms from 2000-2010. Common pitfalls, including leading questions (McCracken, 1988), were avoided. Many studies have used this method to analyze the work of science and health journalists (Avery, Lariscy, & Sohn, 2009; Berglez, 2011; Chew, Mandelbaum-Schmid,




& Gao, 2006; Hinnant & Len-Ríos, 2009; Stocking, 1999) and try to illumi-nate journalists’ own understanding of their role in producing the news (e.g., N. Greenberg, Thomas, Murphy, & Dandeker, 2007; Luscombe, 2009; Sumpter, 2000; Usher, 2009).

Sample

Criterion sampling was used (Yin, 1994), and participants (N = 11) were reporters for mainstream U.S. publications, defined as newspapers, maga-zines, or online publications, including general news websites, who had covered climate change for at least 10 years (see Table 1). Mainstream publications were defined as print and online media designed for a general audience and generally adhering to the tenets of objectivity that are the focus of this research. In other words, op-ed pages, blogs, and advocacy publications were not considered. Print and online publications, as opposed to broadcast radio or television, were the focus because reporters for these outlets made up the bulk of the professional environmental journalism corps during the time period in question (Detjen et al., 2000; Sachsman et al., 2006). Requiring the participants to have at least 10 years of experience ensured that they would have developed “interactional expertise” (Collins & Evans, 2008).

The relatively small sample size of 11 was limited due to the fact that few environmental journalists have the requisite experience and still survive in the ranks of mainstream media, which have been decimated in the past decade; yet it allowed for the accessibility of “master practitioners” (Ettema & Glasser, 1998). The long history of rich, in-depth research shows us that big ideas can be gained from small samples (Ettema & Glasser, 1998; Platon & Deuze, 2003; White, 1950; Wiesslitz & Ashuri, 2011). Also, the vast expe-rience of these elite journalists (our sample had a median of 29 years of expe-rience in journalism) gave us the ability to understand shared norms and explore differences while reaching conceptual saturation without a large sample. Saturation refers to the point when no new information emerges and when the concepts are fully developed (Rakow, 2011). In the spirit of Ettema and Glasser (1998), we interviewed a “few master practitioners rather than superficially survey a cross-section of practitioners” (p. 15).

The primary author, a longtime environmental journalist, used her mem-bership in SEJ, professional contacts, and years of observing the climate change beat to identify journalists who had extensive experience covering climate change and who would be willing to have a frank and detailed con-versation about their work habits, beliefs, and insights. This professional con-nection was especially important in gaining trust, given that those who have




covered climate change frequently have faced ridicule and personal attacks. The author sought input from participants and other longtime reporters and editors in the field as to the best people to approach. Thirteen invitations were extended via e-mail and phone calls, and 11 accepted.

Referring to the idea of interview research by a participant (Platon & Deuze, 2003), practitioner-scholars who have inroads with a particular group can use this route to increase understanding, gain access, and build confi-dence in participants. A person’s “tacit knowledge” (Polanyi, 1958) can be

Table 1. Journalism Experience and Characteristics of Study Participants.

Publication type Print newspaper/website 7 Wire service 2 Online only 2Region Northeast 5 Southeast 2 Midwest 3 Southwest 0 West 1Reporter gender Male 9 Female 2Reporter age, years Median age 48Reporter experience level Median years in journalism 29 Median years primarily covering environmental

issues15

Median years covering climate change 12Reporter educational level Bachelor’s degree 11 (8 in journalism, 1 in

journalism and science, 1 in English, 1 in biology)

Advanced degree 4 master’s (2 in journalism, 2 in science)

Science degree at any level 3 (1 bachelor’s, 2 master’s)Professional memberships Society of Environmental Journalists 11 Investigative Reporters and Editors 3 National Association of Science Writers 2




conveyed among those who have a shared understanding (Lam, 2000). To mitigate conflicts of interest, the first author did not interview coworkers, and the second author is not an environmental journalist, which provided critical distance when analyzing the data.

Although membership in the SEJ was not a criterion, it happened that all participants did have membership in the organization. This is not surprising given the large membership of legacy media environmental journalists in SEJ. This is a potential limitation in that environmental-beat reporters are socialized through organizations such as SEJ, which was founded by and is still influenced by journalists from legacy media. At the same time, this research specifically sought journalists with traditional mainstream experi-ence, so that they might be able to compare their own changing views of objectivity with perceived changes in mainstream media coverage between 2000 and 2010.

Procedure

In advance of the interviews in 2010, which ranged from approximately 60 to 90 minutes and were conducted over the phone by the first author, partici-pants provided recent articles covering climate change. During the semistruc-tured interviews, participants were asked to explain how they applied the norm of objectivity to covering climate change—including whether and how they attempted to be balanced or fair, what types of sources they should use, whether they felt they should be advocates for the environment, and so on. Once recorded interviews were transcribed, researchers coded the transcripts, using a constant comparative approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), which allowed the researchers to note conceptual saturation in a group by identify-ing patterns as they developed. The transcripts were organized into axial codes based on the eight dimensions of objectivity previously identified in scholarship (below). More specifically, statements relating to each of the eight dimensions were noted by hand in the transcripts, excerpted into a file, and then conceptually grouped with other dimensions by both researchers who discussed the groupings.

Conceptual Group 1: Quoting Authoritative Sources, Facticity, Avoiding Opinion in Newswriting. Schudson (1978) wrote, “The belief in objectivity is a faith in ‘facts,’ a distrust of ‘values’ and a commitment to their segregation” (p. 6). Tuchman (1978) described how journalists accept “facts” from legitimated institutions to spin a “web of facticity” that supports a story as an “objective” view of reality. Information attributed to a source maintains journalistic detachment and therefore the reporter’s objectivity (Gilligan, 2006).




Conceptual Group 2: Balance, Impartiality, Neutrality, Fairness. By the end of the 19th century, journalists had embraced the idea that “reality lies between competing truth claims” (Mindich, 1998, p. 14). Tuchman (1972) identified “presentation of conflicting possibilities”—or telling “both sides of the story”—as a strategic ritual to convey objectivity (p. 665). “Reporters believe that if they strive for balance and fairness in their stories, this will demon-strate their objectivity” (Gilligan, 2006, p. 10). Besley and McComas (2007) more recently examined how fairness works into notions of objectivity with political journalists.

Conceptual Group 3: Transparency. Rather than pretending that journalists have no opinions, biases, or faults, transparency demands openness and is sometimes viewed as an antidote to the ills of traditional objectivity (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007; Weinberger, 2009). Weinberger declared that “transpar-ency is the new objectivity” and brings reliability. Transparency may be practiced at several levels (Moore, 2009), such as sharing the process of con-structing stories and making editorial decisions, or disclosing conflicts, beliefs, and biases.

Findings

Before exploring climate change coverage as it relates to dimensions of objectivity, we provide necessary background on how these environmental journalists viewed climate coverage between 2000 and 2010.

Trends Journalists Have Observed in Climate Change Coverage

In every case, reporters cited the end of “false-balance” type story construc-tion as one of the most important changes evident in global warming cover-age between 2000 and 2010. The journalists said that in the late 1990s through the early 2000s, many climate change stories were mired in contro-versy, and they lamented the coverage typical of that era as displaying a “he said, she said Ping-Pong match.” One journalist said climate change was covered like a political campaign, with equal space given to both “sides.” Journalists acted this way out of a habitual dedication to balance. The jour-nalist said,

All the mistakes I see political reporters make, I saw reporters make with climate change, in pathetic fashion. A lot of the nuance and the uncertainty and the fine level of detail that a good science or environmental reporter would find was lost in the very simplistic “he said, she said” construction.




Another journalist saw his allegiances questioned:

When I started here in [the early 1990s], it seemed like if you were going to bring up climate change in a story, . . . you might as well put a sign around your neck saying you were a member of Greenpeace.

Several journalists cited as a turning point the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that cited “new and stronger evidence” that mankind was altering the climate. “It’s gone more from coverage being theory, to coverage being scientific consensus,” one journalist said. “I’d still argue it’s probably been way too conservative, trying to leave the open possibility” that scientific opinion could change yet again.

These journalists see the science “debate” as settled and have now moved to the policy and political debates in their coverage. “The science is fairly clear,” one journalist said. “You really can’t debate that man is contributing to climate change; you can debate exactly how much and what to do about it.” This perspective aligns with climate change becoming intensely political. Recent history includes a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency could regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and in 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency found those gases to be harmful to public health. In 2010, however, the U.S. Congress debated and then abandoned climate change legislation. “Politically, it’s gotten a lot more serious,” said one reporter who covers environmental politics.

Another change several journalists cited was a shift from seeing climate change as a far-off, theoretical, worldwide phenomenon best left to interna-tional experts to one that could be seen imminently from readers’ backyards. “Because it’s a global issue, always having been a local reporter, it was a little difficult to write authoritatively on climate change because it was so damn big,” one journalist said. Reporters worked to find observable impacts, whether that was by visiting Arctic scientists or tagging along with local bird-watchers.

Responses also indicated that reporters covering climate change receive an extreme amount of criticism, occasionally from sources and editors but most often from people who do not believe in global warming. Several jour-nalists said they are the target of “hate mail,” “hate blogs,” parody images, “whole websites attacking me,” conspiracy theories, angry phone calls, and nasty online comments. Other journalists mentioned that criticism can come from all sides—not just from the deniers but also from the environmentalists and scientists. Another reporter pointed out that those who cover climate change must be willing to take “personal abuse.” This has scared some




reporters and editors away from the story, which this journalist described as an effective part of the opponents’ campaign. In all, journalists described covering climate change as professionally challenging and sometimes per-sonally distressing.

Journalists on Dimensions of “Objectivity”

In the next section, we synthesize the eight dimensions of traditional journal-istic objectivity into three conceptual groups as evidenced in the environmen-tal journalists’ perspectives on climate coverage.

Quoting Authoritative Sources, Facticity, Avoiding Opinion in Newswriting. Relying on “facts” helps journalists build an “objective” story. Facts generally must be attributed to sources unless they are incontrovertible. There was a range of responses about what journalists’ roles are in verifying, asserting, and hedging “facts.” They expressed disdain for journalists who were merely “stenogra-phers,” transmitting what someone said with no regard for the information’s veracity. Reporters said they would not knowingly let a source make a false statement in a story without providing some rebuttal. One reporter explained that her viewpoint is different now than when she covered politics and would simply report on conflicting sides in a hearing. Now she adds outside perspec-tive. “Not just the who, what, when, where,” she said, “but the why, the motives, the context.” These journalists describe distinctions in experience that reflect Collins and Evans’s (2008) classifications of interactional experts and nonexperts.

As to whether the existence of anthropogenic global warming can be stated as a fact, journalists were divided, with some saying it should be treated as a freestanding fact and the rest saying it should be attributed to a source. On the former side: “Yes. It can be plainly stated as a fact. It’s just a reality.” Another journalist said he excludes the disclaimer saying that most scientists have found evidence of global warming. And he will not write that carbon dioxide is “linked to” warming. “No, it causes warming,” he said emphatically. Journalists who viewed global warming as a journal-istic “fact” were asked when it became acceptable to state it as such. “Somewhere in the early 2000s—maybe 10 to 15 years after scientists,” one journalist said. “Which is good. Let the science community get there first,” he said.

On the side of not stating global warming as fact without attribution, one reporter said he still refers to greenhouse gases as “being blamed” for global warming rather than stating the gases “cause” it. When asked why, the reporter said,




Maybe it’s because I’m not a scientist myself. . . . It still is a hugely complicated, complex subject, and I suppose in some ways it’s leaving some small amount of room for the possibility maybe they have it all wrong, however remote that is.

Another person said because a significant portion of the population does not believe in global warming, it is important to maintain credibility with readers and “to remind people this is something scientists have studied, and not something politicians pull out of thin air.” Another journalist said that although he is becoming increasingly comfortable with saying there is evi-dence of global warming, he continues to attribute it to scientists. “This may sound goofy, but I’m not the expert. The minute I think of myself as an expert, I’m committing a journalistic no-no,” he said. “My expertise, such as it is, is in journalism, not in atmospheric science.” These journalists touch on the crux of the difference between contributory experts (the scientists) and themselves as interactional experts, which is whether the fact of climate change needs to be attributed. The need to attribute material to the “real” or contributory experts distinguishes the journalists as un-expert, but it can also frame the science as a “debate.”

Journalists in this study generally said “skeptics” had no place in climate science stories. They might, however, be quoted in policy stories. “I don’t use the skeptics at all,” one reporter said. “I’m not going to write a story saying, ‘Is climate change real? Some say yes and some say no.’” Many journalists moved away from “skeptics” as these sources became discredited by connec-tions to fossil fuel interests and industry PR campaigns. For the sake of fair-ness, however, opponents cannot be ignored, even if they are in the minority, one said. Besides scientific “skeptics,” reporters must deal with politicians, activists, and members of the general public who might also be considered “skeptics.” “If they are elected officials—governors, congress people—you certainly are bound to quote them,” one reporter said. “You should also point out what the science says.” One reporter compared it to writing about evolu-tion: “If I write a science story about evolution, I don’t feel bound to call up a creationist,” he said. A skeptic might still qualify as a source if the person were actually a scientist doing active research and proposing testable hypoth-eses. “That makes them legitimate in my book because they’re actively work-ing on the problem,” one reporter said.

Activists for any cause—whether representing industry or the environ-mental movement—are to be approached with caution. Several journalists said climate change sources must be especially thoroughly vetted. Resources such as SourceWatch.org help identify which sources might have question-able ties, such as past work for the oil industry. “You have to ask them who they’re funded by,” a reporter said. “The perception of prejudice or




perception of conflict of interest is a very dangerous one.” Another pointed out the challenge of trying to find sources who are not only authoritative but also impartial. “It’s hard, if not impossible, to find the perfect, lily-white, pure disinterested source,” he said. The journalists’ rules and reflections on which sources to use are a sign of their experience as interactional experts and approach Nisbet’s (2013) idea of the “knowledge” journalist. Their refusal to use skeptics or those with a conflict of interest reveals the “watch-dog” nature of the process of verification.

Participants described their reporting today as being more interpretive and analytical than in the past. One said he wanted to be a “curator” of informa-tion because his readers can’t sift through original research. Several used the term writing with authority to describe what they do now. “We’re not writing opinion, but we’re writing with more of a voice, and using our expertise to make these calls.” Another added: “Opinion journalism can be incredibly lazy; anybody can say it. Writing with authority means you’ve actually stud-ied your subjects, read the records, studied the reports.”

Balance, Impartiality, Neutrality, Fairness. Reporters described an evolution in their thinking on the issue of climate change in the decade between 2000 and 2010, starting with balance as bias (Boykoff, 2005, 2007a, 2007b; Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004)—a term specifically mentioned by one journalist. “By giv-ing both sides—which is what you do in political reporting—that connotes the two sides are equal,” he said. Today, the environmental journalists say they write science stories that reflect “the preponderance of evidence.” Reporters might have to stand up for themselves within the newsroom to do so. “You tell your editor this is a science story, not a political story,” another said. If the story is actually about politics or policy decisions, the old rule still applies, which implies a tacit knowledge of how the traditional beats in news-papers function. Another said that because he works in a coal-dependent state, he often has to report on the coal industry and its positions relative to global warming. One journalist rejected the need for explicit balance: “If you covered a story on an avalanche, and people were buried under it, you wouldn’t feel the need to balance it by quoting someone saying it didn’t hap-pen,” he said. In summary, these journalists rejected balance, excepting polit-ical stories, and many of them reflected on their experience to explain why they might have once relied on balance.

To one journalist, being fair means admitting, “what you don’t know and what the scientists don’t know”—not overstating the story or glossing over uncertainties. Several journalists said being fair means listening to critics and “skeptics” even though the weight of evidence has been established. “You still have to hear the naysayers and denialists; you still have to keep reading




that stuff,” one said. “Essentially it’s adopting the attitude of a scientist, which is to say, ‘I’ll keep looking at this, I’ll keep testing this.’” This specific quote echoes Lippmann’s (1922) scientific model of reporting or Kovach and Rosenstiel’s (2007) “principles of a science of reporting” (p. 89). It’s impor-tant to note that these journalists said they keep listening to—not repeating—the skeptics.

All journalists in this study said they should be impartial when covering climate change. One journalist said she defines impartiality as applying her knowledge base equally to every source on her beat—whether it’s General Electric, BP, the Sierra Club, or NRDC. “Some days I want to piss everybody off equally. Then I’m doing my job,” she said. “Nobody gets a free pass.” All participants said yes, journalists should be neutral in terms of policy deci-sions or political outcomes—whether to support a particular piece of cap-and-trade legislation, for example. But they disputed the idea that they should not care about the environment in general. “I think journalists would not be human if they didn’t have a concern about the fate of the planet,” one said.

Political reporters, it’s OK for them to embrace democracy. It seems to be OK for business reporters to embrace capitalism. It seems to me that it should be OK for a reporter who covers the environment to want to live in a clean and healthy environment.

One compared covering the environment to covering education, a beat she previously held. “Once you accept the basic truth that education is a good thing, you don’t sit around writing stories about how we shouldn’t invest in schools,” she said. Another said he avoids donating to environmental causes, does not sign petitions, is a registered independent, and will not post anything to Facebook that could be construed as biased. However, he considers it his right to want a good environment for his children. “I do not cede my right as a parent or a human being just because I’m a reporter,” he said. Another said he had to dismiss his own feelings about climate change to avoid an over-whelming sense of doom. “If I let the science freak me out, I probably never would get to sleep at night,” he said. Although the reporters did not want to advocate specific policy positions, they seemed to think having a general proenvironment ethic was acceptable and did not compromise journalistic neutrality.

As to whether journalists should be advocates for the environment, most said no—never. One said those who do advocacy give mainstream environ-mental journalists a bad name. This reaffirms the Sachsman et al. (2006) survey finding that environmental reporters were split on whether they them-selves were too “green.” One reporter said that journalists should simply put




a spotlight on or hold a mirror up to whatever reality people need to see. “You can certainly tell them some of the solutions the experts are saying, but ulti-mately, you’re the messenger. You’re not the policy maker,” he said. With the reference to policy makers, this journalist is noting another type of con-tributory expert from which journalists need to remain distinct.

The two who disagreed that journalists should always avoid advocacy said climate change was such a serious challenge that it merited a slightly differ-ent approach than most news stories. “I think it’s OK to advocate for saving the planet,” one said. But he added, “My approach is to say climate change is happening and let people know what’s going on, rather than to personally advocate for it.” Another said he wondered whether climate change was the moral issue of our time, like the civil rights movement was in the 1960s. “This does affect people all over the world—the poor mostly—mass migra-tions, lack of water. The U.S. and industrialized nations are causing it,” he said. “There comes a time when you say this is right or wrong.” This debate about advocacy ties back to Wiesslitz and Ashuri’s (2011) finding about online journalists establishing the norm of “moral witnessing” that seeks to change a reality through journalistic activity.

Transparency. Only one journalist said she would support full-blown trans-parency on any topic, one said he was “agnostic” about it, and the rest said they would support varying degrees of disclosure that did not include reveal-ing the reporter’s personal opinions. “I don’t think it’s lacking transparency to keep your feelings and thoughts and opinions to yourself,” one said. “I think it’s being professional.” Another said he would not want to say, for example, how he voted. The reporter’s opinion does not matter at all, one said. “Our job is to be a mirror,” he said. One took pride in writing stories in such a way that people would not be able to figure out what his personal opinion was.

Even though most reporters acknowledged that they had opinions on cli-mate change, all said they kept those opinions to themselves. One journalist said, “It should be asking good questions, marshaling good facts and letting readers draw their own conclusions. That’s how it’s always been. Journalists are in the fact business.” Another compared environmental writing to sports reporters not cheering in the press box. “I try to maintain my reputation as a credible, objective journalist, which I feel I absolutely am,” he said. “You have opinions on any subject you’re covering, but you do your best to leave those at the door.” Others pointed out that the very act of choosing a certain story or a certain source is a subjective decision. “The best way to show your commitment is to write about it, in an intelligent way, in a fair way, and when the situation calls for it, in a balanced way.”




Reporters who wrote blog items or columns, in addition to their “straight” news stories, said those pieces tended to use a slightly different tone. “Some of my opinions or ideas may leak out or sneak out” in the blog, one said. Another added, “What I try to do is dance right up to the line that separates fact from opinion and not go over it.” This echoes the findings of those study-ing objectivity on digital platforms who find the rules of objectivity are dif-ferent or largely subverted (Atton, 2004; Wiesslitz & Ashuri, 2011). Another said his columns are more like news analysis:

Any good column should have a point of view, but that doesn’t mean you’re writing an editorial. You can lead readers down a certain path. Make sure it’s a salient point you’re trying to make,” but “have it come through somebody else’s voice.

The idea of distancing oneself and one’s opinions from the finished product embodies the concept of detachment (Gilligan, 2006; Mindich, 1998).

Reporters distinguished between sharing personal opinions from showing readers where they got their facts. One defined transparency as delineating the reporter’s expertise and background research on a subject. One journalist mentioned transparency in funding. His nonprofit publication discloses its grant providers, some of whom are proenvironmental groups. The journalist who favored the concept of transparency said that journalists should be com-pletely open if they expected others to do so. In essence, journalists should not hold themselves above others.

Support for a New Form of Objectivity

Most of the journalists said they should be objective, but their definition of objectivity no longer meant “opinion free” in fact gathering. Instead, through the tacit knowledge accrued over years of environmental coverage, many have developed a process of verification that allows them to use authority or “opinion” when evaluating sources (though opinion stays out of the final story). On the other hand, a few said that objectivity was impossible and/or pursuing it led to the false-balance problems described above. In the main, these veteran reporters still regarded objectivity—as they now defined it—to be essential. Several said objectivity is “a lofty goal,” or the “cornerstone of real journalism.” One reporter who had covered international climate change conferences abroad found it fascinating to observe foreign journalists who have no qualms about exposing their personal views. “British journalists have such opinions and they don’t hide them at all. There was booing from different reporters. That’s an eye-opening experience,” he said. He said he




preferred the American way, which he saw as healthy and informative. Proponents of objectivity said it is more important now than ever to provide an alternative to cable TV, biased bloggers, and the fragmentation of view-points and hoped there would always be a market, perhaps a small one, for people who want independent reporting. “Credibility is one of the few things newspapers still have going for them,” one said. “There’s some effort by a professional to weigh different sides and try to come to an independent con-clusion about what’s going on in the world,” another said.

Those who did not think journalists should be objective rejected the defi-nition of the term. They said true objectivity was “impossible” or “unachiev-able.” They also pointed to problems arising from the pursuit of objectivity. “Sometimes [. . .] people use this idea of so-called objectivity as a cloak for lying. ‘Print my lies; otherwise you’re not objective.’ Well, that doesn’t serve anybody, except the person who’s lying,” one said. Another said objectivity “implies a cold detachment” and that “journalism is not a license to shed yourself of your humanity.” For the most part, respondents agreed that inter-pretation borne out of journalistic experience and extensive research is an acceptable form of objectivity, which rejects the notion of the journalist as a “passive mirror” (Mindich, 1998, p. 141).

Discussion

This study investigated how experienced environmental reporters understand the concept of objectivity and apply its maxims to the coverage of climate change, reflecting on their work between 2000 and 2010. In-depth interviews revealed something of a paradox: Most of these journalists continue to pro-fess belief in objectivity even as they reject or redefine it. More specifically, these veteran reporters, by and large, find great comfort and pride in uphold-ing the revered traditions of newspapers, but they have adapted those tradi-tions to the demands of climate change coverage and, as a result, frequently find themselves trying to claim a space on the subjectivity/objectivity con-tinuum. All participants in this study said they had revised their views on objectivity since 2000.

Among this group of journalists, some elements of traditional objectivity retain strong support and others have been modified or abandoned com-pletely. A major finding of this research is that these environmental journal-ists have radically shifted their view of what makes a story “balanced,” which has relevance for a broader understanding of renegotiations of objectivity as journalism evolves and becomes redefined. These experienced environmen-tal reporters now advocate applying a “weight of evidence” (Dunwoody, 2005) approach to covering climate change science, where the findings of




mainstream scientists are the focus of global warming science stories and “skeptics” are given little, if any, ink. Several reporters said this approach should apply to all science stories. In other ways, however, this research indi-cates some dimensions of traditional objectivity have become even more entrenched under the withering attacks journalists face. For example, the journalists have abandoned the old “balance” approach to climate science stories, but they still feel they must apply “balance” to climate change policy or political stories. Therefore, when a story is codified as political, the jour-nalists return to “he said, she said” tactics, a dilemma of journalistic process the study participants did not acknowledge. The journalists’ system of clas-sifying stories as science, policy, or politics would be considered by Tuchman (1972, 1978) to be a “strategic ritual,” which allows them to avoid blame for political ramifications but creates the same balance traps they have worked to avoid. Another blame-avoiding “strategic ritual” is the practice of not stating the existence of anthropogenic global warming as “fact.” The simple act of attributing that fact to a source portrays it as debatable and allows the journal-ist to strategically defer authority.

The reporters expressed support for many of the other traditional dimen-sions of objectivity: quoting authoritative sources, relying on facts, being impartial, staying neutral, keeping opinions out of newswriting, and being fair. In each case, however, the subjects defined the terms in a way that fit with their experiences. There was only limited support for transparency. Disclosing information about methods and sources was good, but most jour-nalists did not feel comfortable revealing their personal opinions. This relates to most of the journalists’ belief that a personal proenvironment ethic is acceptable, but they should never advocate for environmental policies. The transparency solution (Mindich, 1998; Moore, 2009; Weinberger, 2009) puts these journalists in the awkward position of wanting to help the environment but not wanting to be open about those desires. In essence, they want to main-tain that they can work uninfluenced by their own biases. This relates to Ettema’s (2005) point: “Journalism, supposing that it would lose itself in self-contemplation, is characteristically hostile to the mere mention of reflex-ivity” (p. 146). The fact that most will not explicitly reveal their own subjec-tivity for readers to evaluate is perhaps not surprising given the intimidation tactics climate journalists already face.

Several reporters said it was covering climate change that forced them to reevaluate objectivity. One said he used to approach climate change like a political story with two sides. “As I studied it, I realized . . . science is not like politics.” Another reporter said this experience cemented his view that objec-tivity was a sham. “Climate change is the story that led me to those conclu-sions that I had slowly been coming to anyway,” he said. “It became obvious




after covering that story that objectivity isn’t serving readers.” Interestingly, the two reporters came to opposite conclusions about objectivity: The first one emphatically calls himself an objective reporter; the second one says, “There was a time I thought you could be objective, but you really can’t.”

The results suggest, however, that journalists have become increasingly aware of the subjective nature of the news agenda and the way stories are framed. Participants felt duped by the agenda-building efforts of the fossil fuel industry into covering the climate change story as a controversy. After becoming aware of this mistake, many vowed not to be misled again by the fossil fuel lobby or any partisan enterprise. This realization appears to have led to an even stricter, more traditional view of what constitutes an authorita-tive news source. Among these journalists, government and university scien-tists are the favored sources now, and industry representatives and environmental activists appear more questionable. The result may be more dependence on publicly funded scientists, whom the journalists perceived to have fewer conflicts of interest.

Limitations for this research include the fact that environmental reporters tend to be older and more experienced. These factors mean that reporters who are asked to cover climate change—known as one of the toughest stories in the newsroom—may tend toward a more conservative, traditional view of objectivity. Another limitation is the reliance on journalists’ memory to cap-ture recent occurrences, and memory can be selective or faulty.

Suggested areas for future study are manifold. First, journalists indicated that there needs to be a lag time of 10 to 15 years after which scientists reach a consensus before journalists can report something as fact, which could be in part due to the length of time that it takes for a journalist to develop “inter-actional expertise” (Collins & Evans, 2008) about a topic. As the climate coverage history has shown, that lag time can introduce a set of problems that confound future coverage of the issue. Is there a way to reduce that lag time without compromising journalistic processes? Another point worth further exploration is the role of editors in climate change coverage. Several journal-ists interviewed reported getting interference from editors on their climate change reporting—usually in the direction of making anthropogenic climate change appear to be less certain. This points to a distinction from Collins’s (1987) argument about science stories making scientific discovery unambig-uous. Future research could analyze how editors and producers decide when to emphasize scientific uncertainty versus certainty in science stories.

A final thought-provoking research possibility stems from the fact that one of the journalists said he considers himself a scientist, and many advocate a “weight of evidence” approach, both of which echo Lippmann’s (1922) scientific method of journalistic inquiry. Scientists who are interested in




communicating to the public and supporting journalists as translators for a lay audience would benefit by understanding that journalists have their own process that involves weighing evidence and expertise. Getting the “contribu-tory experts” to understand the perspective and process of “interactional experts” (Collins & Evans, 2008) could lessen the cultural divide between journalists and scientists and lead to solutions for science communication.

The journalists in this research understood that they were key communica-tors in a global discussion. One reporter described climate change as the most challenging environmental issue of our time because it touches on so many aspects of life, such as energy, development, food production, and popula-tion. “Global warming is challenging people’s fundamental values; it threat-ens their very way of life. The climate issue has become kind of a magnifying glass—you’re bringing all those rays of light together in a fairly intense focus,” he said. Moreover, journalists are now dealing with an audience that has been primed by years of “balance as bias” coverage that journalists them-selves inadvertently cultivated. The story of climate change is a useful lens through which to examine whether traditional journalism values—particu-larly the bedrock of objectivity—can accommodate the needs of science and society.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-cation of this article.

References

Antilla, L. (2005). Climate of skepticism: US newspaper coverage of the science of climate change. Global Environmental Change, 15, 338-352.

Atton, C. (2004). An alternative Internet: Radical media, politics and creativity. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.

Avery, E. J., Lariscy, R. W., & Sohn, Y. (2009). Public information officers’ and journalists’ perceived barriers to providing quality health information. Health Communication, 24, 327-336.

Berglez, P. (2011). Inside, outside, and beyond media logic: Journalistic creativity in climate reporting. Media, Culture & Society, 33, 449-465.

Besley, J. C., & McComas, K. A. (2007). Reporting on fairness in civic life. Journalism Practice, 1, 339-355.

Block, B. (2010). Covering climate change. World Watch, 23(2). Retrieved from http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6373




Boyce, T. (2006). Journalism and expertise. Journalism Studies, 7, 889-906.Boykoff, M. (2005). The disconnect of news reporting from scientific evidence.

Nieman Reports, Winter 2005, 86-87. Retrieved from http://www.nieman.har-vard.edu/reports/article/100593/The-Disconnect-of-News-Reporting-From-Scientific-Evidence.aspx

Boykoff, M. (2007a). Flogging a dead norm? Newspaper coverage of anthropogenic climate change in the United States and United Kingdom from 2003 to 2006. Area, 39, 470-481.

Boykoff, M. (2007b). From convergence to contention: United States mass media representations of anthropogenic climate change. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32, 477-489.

Boykoff, M. (2010, February). U.S. climate coverage in the ‘00s. Extra! Retrieved from http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/u-s-climate-coverage-in-the-00s/

Boykoff, M., & Boykoff, J. (2004). Balance as bias: Global warming and the U.S. prestige press. Global Environmental Change, 14, 125-136.

Brossard, D., Shanahan, J., & McComas, K. (2004). Are issue-cycles culturally con-structed? A comparison of French and American coverage of global climate change. Mass Communication and Society, 7, 359-377.

Chew, F., Mandelbaum-Schmid, J., & Gao, S. K. (2006). Can health journal-ists bridge the state-of-the-science gap in mammography guidelines? Science Communication, 27, 331-351.

Collins, H. M. (1987). Certainty and the public understanding of science: Science on television. Social Studies of Science, 17, 689-713.

Collins, H. M., & Evans, R. (2008). Rethinking expertise. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Detjen, J., Fico, F., Li, X., & Kim, Y. (2000). Changing work environment of environ-mental reporters. Newspaper Research Journal, 21, 2-12.

Dewerth-Pallmeyer, D. (1996). The audience in the news. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Dunwoody, S. (2005). Weight-of-evidence reporting: What is it? Why use it? Nieman Reports, 54(4), 89-91.

Ettema, J. S. (2005) Crafting cultural resonance. Journalism, 6, 131-152.Ettema, J. S., & Glasser, T. L. (1998). Custodians of conscience: Investigative jour-

nalism and public virtue. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Gelbspan, R. (2005) Disinformation, financial pressures, and misplaced balance.

Nieman Reports, Winter 2005, 77-79.Gilligan, E. (2006, June). A re-examination of reporters’ norms and the routines

used to maintain them. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Dresden International Congress Centre, Dresden, Germany.

Gitlin, T. (2003). The whole world is watching: Mass media in the making and unmaking of the New Left (1st ed., with a new preface). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago, IL: Aldine.




Greenberg, J., Knight, G., & Westersund, E. (2011). Spinning climate change: Corporate and NGO public relations strategies in Canada and the United States. International Communication Gazette, 73, 65-82.

Greenberg, N., Thomas, S., Murphy, D., & Dandeker, C. (2007). Occupational stress and job satisfaction in media personnel assigned to the Iraq War (2003). Journalism Practice, 1, 356-371.

Herman, E., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York, NY: Pantheon.

Hinnant, A., & Len-Ríos, M. E. (2009). Tacit understandings of health literacy: Interview and survey research with health journalists. Science Communication, 31, 84-115.

Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2007). The elements of journalism: What newspeople should know and the public should expect. New York, NY: Random House.

Lam, A. (2000). Tacit knowledge, organizational learning and societal institutions: An integrated framework. Organization Studies, 21, 487-513.

Lindlof, T. R., & Taylor, B. C. (2011). Qualitative communication research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Lippmann, W. (1922). Public opinion. New York, NY: Macmillan.Liu, X., Vedlitz, A., & Alston, L. (2008). Regional portrayals of global warming and

climate change. Environmental Science & Policy, 11, 379-393.Luscombe, A. (2009). Radio journalists and how they describe their written copy.

Journal of Media Practice, 10, 5-15.Maibach, E., Leiserowitz, A., Cobb, S., Shank, M., Cobb, K. M., & Gulledge, J.

(2012). The legacy of Climategate: Undermining or revitalizing climate science and policy? Climate Change, 3, 289-295.

McComas, K., & Shanahan, J. (1999). Telling stories about global climate change. Communication Research, 26, 30-57.

McCracken, G. (1988). The long interview. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Meyer, P. (2004, September 20). As media audience fragments, trust—not objectivity—

is what matters. USA Today. Retrieved from http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-09-19-opcom_x.htm

Mindich, D. (1998). Just the facts: How “objectivity” came to define American jour-nalism. New York: New York University Press.

Moore, M. (2009, September 14). Transparency in journalism—a new meme? [Martin Moore blog]. Retrieved from http://martinjemoore.com/transparency-in-journalism-a-new-meme/

Nisbet, M. C. (2013). Nature’s prophet: Bill McKibben as journalist, public intel-lectual and activist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Oreskes, N. (2004). Beyond the ivory tower: The scientific consensus on climate change. Science, 306, 1686.

Palen, J. A. (1999). Objectivity as independence: Creating the Society of Environmental Journalists, 1989-1997. Science Communication, 21, 156-171.

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. (2012, October 15). More say there is solid evidence of global warming. Washington, DC: Author.


http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-09-19-opcom_x.htm



Platon, S., & Deuze, M. (2003). Indymedia journalism: A radical way of making, selecting and sharing news? Journalism, 4, 336-355.

Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy. London, England: Routledge

Rakow, L. F. (2011). Commentary: Interviews and focus groups as critical and cul-tural methods. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 88, 416-428.

Reed, R. (2001). (Un-)Professional discourse? Journalists’ and scientists’ stories about science in the media. Journalism, 2, 279-298.

Revkin, A. (2009, October 20). Thought experiments on birth and death [Web log post.]. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/thought-experiments-on-sex-and-death/

Sachsman, D. B., Simon, J., & Valenti, J. (2006). Regional issues, national norms: A four-region analysis of U.S. environmental reporters. Science Communication, 28, 93-121.

Schiller, D. (1978). Objectivity and the news: The public and the rise of commercial journalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Schudson, M. (1978). Discovering the news: A social history of American newspa-pers. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Skovsgaard, M., Albæk, E., Bro, P., & de Vreese, C. (2013). A reality check: How journalists’ role perceptions impact their implementation of the objectivity norm. Journalism, 14, 22-42.

Soffer, O. (2009). The competing ideals of objectivity and dialogue in American jour-nalism. Journalism, 10, 473-491.

Stocking, S. H. (1999). How journalists deal with scientific uncertainty. In S. M. Friedman, S. Dunwoody, & C. L. Rogers (Eds.), Communicating uncertainty: Media coverage of new and controversial science (pp. 23-42). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Sumpter, R. (2000). Daily newspaper editor’s audience construction routines: A case study. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 17, 334-346.

Trumbo, C. (1996). Constructing climate change: Claims and frames in U.S. news coverage of an environmental issue. Public Understanding of Science, 5, 269-283.

Tuchman, G. (1972). Objectivity as strategic ritual: An examination of newsmen’s notions of objectivity. American Journal of Sociology, 77, 660-679.

Tuchman, G. (1978). Making news: A study in the construction of reality. New York, NY: Free Press.

Usher, N. (2009). Recovery from disaster. Journalism Practice, 3, 216-232.Vos, T., Craft, S., & Ashley, S. (2010, August). New media, old criticism: Bloggers’

press criticism and the journalistic field. Paper presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Denver, CO.

Ward, B. (2008). Communicating on climate change: An essential resource for jour-nalists, scientists and educators. Narragansett: Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting, University of Rhode Island.


http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/thought-experiments-on-sex-and-death/



Weinberger, D. (2009, July 19). Transparency is the new objectivity [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/07/19/transparency-is-the-new-objectivity/

White, D. M. (1950). The gatekeeper: A case study in the selection of news. Journalism quarterly, 27(4), 383-390.

Wiesslitz, C., & Ashuri, T. (2011). “Moral journalists”: The emergence of new inter-mediaries of news in an age of digital media. Journalism, 12, 1035-1051.

Yin, R. (1994). Case study research: Design and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Zehr, S. (2000). Public representations of scientific uncertainty about global climate

change. Public Understanding of Science, 9, 85-103.

Author Biographies

Sara Shipley Hiles, MA, is an assistant professor at the Missouri School of Journalism. She worked as an environmental reporter for newspapers and magazines before becoming an academic. Her research interests include environmental journalism, sci-ence communication, and sociology of news.

Amanda Hinnant, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Missouri School of Journalism. Her research interests include health journalism, social determinants of health, sociol-ogy of news, and public understanding of science. Articles have appeared in Health Communication, Health Education Research, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Communication Research, and Science Communication.



science communication - humphrey program · 432 science communication 36(4) (“skeptics”) who...

Documents