Media Standards Trust

Mr Justice Burton ruled last week that though “broadly accurate”, Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth was not balanced and that some of its points were alarmist. But is it possible to be balanced about climate change? And how does the media avoid being alarmist when most scientific predictions are, quite literally, alarming?

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Two verdicts on An Inconvenient Truth

Mr Justice Burton examined Al Gore’s film after Stewart Dimmock, a lorry driver and school governor, brought a case against its use in schools (for a legal insight into the ‘the promotion of partisan political views’ in schools see Joshua Rozenberg). It has since come to light that Mr Dimmock’s challenge was funded by a lobbying group, set up ‘to attack environmentalists’ claims about global warming’ (from Jamie Doward, The Observer).

The judge concluded that the film was “broadly accurate” and could be used in schools (see text Dimmock vs Secretary of State for Education and Skills). However, he also said the film presented a “one-sided” argument and that nine of the points made by Al Gore were incorrect (see David Adam for nine cited ‘errors’). For this reason, the judge said, the film had to be distributed with guidance notes.

Two days later the Nobel Committee decided to give Al Gore, and the IPCC, the Nobel Peace Prize, for their work in communicating the dangers of climate change to the world.

 

And a third verdict… the press find Gore guilty

Many commentators pointed to the judge’s identification of nine errors as reason enough to dismiss the film’s value. Lewis Smith said the movie was ‘littered with… inconvenient untruths’. The film, Michael Hanlon writes, ‘is riddled with quite elementary errors’.

Some went further and took Mr Justice Burton’s verdict as proof against the growing consensus on the causes of climate change. ‘The Great Global Warming Scare of the Noughties’ Richard and Judy write in the Express, ‘will one day rank alongside the Great Ice Age Scare of the Sixties and the Great Oil Scare of the Seventies’.

Yet the minister for schools, Kevin Brennan, said the judgment would not affect the government’s decision to send the film to all secondary schools in Britain.

Richard and Judy were furious that the film was to be ‘rammed down our schoolchildren's throats’. While Jeremy Clarkson said that the government’s failure to reverse its decision to send the film to schools shows ‘the inconvenient truth is that truth doesn't matter any more’.

Mark Lynas and Johann Hari came to Gore’s defence, Hari suggesting the judge was wrong about at least three of his nine criticisms. Gore himself told the Press Association that he was excited his film would be shown in schools, and that the judge had only pointed to a handful of errors amid “thousands of other facts in the film'”. (For more analysis of the supposed errors see Tim Lambert's blog).

 

Is it the media’s job to convince people of the dangers of climate change?

In February 2007 David Milliband, now Foreign Secretary, said 'The debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over." The previous month Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general, said that “Environmental management is everybody's responsibility”.

Yet though the overwhelming weight of scientific opinion agrees that humans are causing global warming, a large number of British journalists remain sceptical.
And even the BBC has since got cold feet, cancelling its planned day on Planet Relief after Peter Barron, the editor of Newsnight, argued "It isn't the BBC's job to save the planet".

This scepticism is reflected in public attitudes towards climate change. An Ipsos-Mori poll in July revealed that ‘The public remains unconvinced about warnings that the climate is being affected by global warming’ (from BBC).

 

What does ‘balance’ mean to the media in relation to climate change?

From the perspective of many within the media, balanced coverage means questioning the causes of global warming, rather than its effects and repercussions.

Richard Littlejohn, for example, argues in the Daily Mail that ‘It should only be shown in schools if it's balanced by Martin Durkin's The Great Global Warming Swindle’. Lord Monckton, ex-journalist and former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, agrees, and has promised to send the much criticised Channel 4 film to every school in Britain (for accusations that the Durkin film falsified data see Steve Connor).

But should the media still be balancing the debate about whether climate change is happening and whether human beings are to blame, given the overwhelming consensus within the scientific community?

 

Is it possible to talk about climate change without being alarmist?

Those convinced of the dangers of climate change, and its causes, cannot help but be alarmist about it. ‘If we listen to the deniers,’ Mark Lynas writes in the Guardian ‘we are taking a very dangerous gamble - a bit like playing Russian roulette with five bullets and only one empty chamber.’

Those unconvinced about the dangers believe this alarmism is both unnecessary and shows how resistant environmentalists are to open debate. ‘[B]elief in global warming is a form of faith,’ argues David Sexton in the Evening Standard, ‘with all the attributes of a faith’. Richard Littlejohn accuses Friends of the Earth of pursuing a ‘quasireligious crusade’ without any regard for the truth.

 

Is there any way forward?

‘The question that matters isn't yea or nay with alleged fairness and balance, it is where the hell we go next’ writes Peter Preston.

 

Will the media ever set aside their scepticism and accept climate change is happening as a result of human activity?

Is Mark Lynas right when he accuses journalists of dashing for cover when presented with ‘the great moral question of our age’?

Should An Inconvenient Truth be shown in schools, or should it be ‘parked in the school library… filed under fiction’ (The Express)?

 

Mr Justice Burton's judgement: Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education & Skills, 10 October 2007

Some sections of the media are determined not to report the extremely
high level of scientific agreement over two basic aspects of climate change:
(a) that humans are largely responsible for the global warming
observed over the last half century
(b) that if we continue on our current trajectory of greenhouse gas
emissions, there will be severe impacts on very large numbers of
people and ecosystems
This high level of agreement is reflected in the latest '4th
Assessment Report' (4AR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), which involved over 3500 researchers worldwide. It is
important to realise that the 'Summaries for Policymakers' of the 4AR
were approved by scientific representatives of more than 100
governments including the climate sceptic ones of the USA, Australia
and Saudi Arabia. If that level of evidence is not good enough for
certain journalists, I have to wonder whether any evidence will satisfy them.

What does this mean in terms of 'balanced' reporting? At the very
least it means that, if a journalist wants to write an article on a
climate sceptic's view, they really must point out in that article
that the overwhelming agreement among climate scientists is as I
state above - if they don't, they are not being balanced at the most
basic level.

On the issue of 'An Inconvenient Truth', it should be remembered this
is an environmental campaigner's film, not a film by climate
scientists - but nevertheless a (non-scientist) judge could only find
9 occasions (in 90 minutes running time) where Al Gore did not
reflect the IPCC conclusions. I have to ask the question whether any
climate sceptic film (eg Channel 4's 'The Great Global Warming
Swindle') could come anywhere close to matching that level of
scientific accuracy. The answer is, of course not. The judge's ruling
- that the film can be distributed to schools with guidance notes on
the areas of contention - seems reasonable, and I have to wonder why
the media has made such a fuss about it.

On the concern about some reporting of climate change being 'too
alarmist', my immediate thought is that the many sections of the
media are regularly alarmist over crime, terrorism, health etc - so
why is the reporting of climate change being singled out for
criticism? There is considerable room for improvement in the accuracy
of reporting in many areas, and I would welcome improvement in all of
them. But I would argue that, on the issue of climate change, the
first step is to get the basics right - the scientific evidence
overwhelmingly points to humans causing recent climate change and if
we don't do much more to tackle it, the consequences are going to be
very severe.

The Inconvenient Truth does have some errors or arguable assertions but its core argument is right. A UK MP put it to me the day afterwards that the detail of the Judge’s ruling will “do more than anything else” to confirm that on four central points Gore was right about global warming. The problem is that very few people will read the ruling, or see the detail, whereas the reports of Gore’s film being found wanting by a judge will be read as Gore being found “wrong”.

An aside in the BBC story about the case mentioned that the case had been triggered by Mr Stewart Dimmock, a school governor who was a member of the ‘New Party’. When I looked up the New Party on Google I quickly found what presumably many politicians know but very few teachers or viewers of the BBC will know, that the ‘New Party’ is a fringe political party funded by a very rich businessman who has been campaigning against environmentalists (as well as drunk-driving laws and various other social restriction), and climate change campaigns in particular, since the 1990s.

So in terms of what viewers will understand – what they will see as truth – there are two problems here.

First, they may see it as evidence that Gore was wrong and possibly that climate change is not a threat. By kicking its criticism into a court of law, with a formulaic framing of a decision on ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, the New Party campaigners succeeded in marking Gore as “wrong” overall.

Second, viewers may see it as ‘a school governor’ – ie representing ‘education’ – opposing Gore’s influence in schools. Whereas in fact it was a political campaign tactic.

So in both these respects, the BBC’s reporting of the High Court hearing was not truthful, in that it told less than the truth, and arguably, (as could be measured by what people “took from it”), may have reversed the truth.

No doubt every word the BBC used was accurate and truthful – the problem is that the construction of the story, the meaning of the players, the actors, even the role of the BBC itself, created a different meaning. It failed to tell a truthful tale, to give a true picture.
So here’s a charge against the BBC which I think sticks: they are not telling the truth about the scientific consensus on climate change, because they are not constructing their news stories in a way which shows this consensus.

If you want more evidence, I’ve written about this at greater length at the link below.

First I'd like to say I believe it is really important to avoid alarming people, particularly if you want them to be convinced that there is a problem, because scare stories encourage them to 'switch off' - they are frightened, and don't want to accept what is being said because of how much change and threat lies in it. If you are panicing, you cant think clearly. So help us think clearly.

In order to help people be calm:

- Report on positive stories: "Balance" could be about balancing 'problem' stories with 'solution' stories. Not just 'balanced' arguments and debates between opposing points of view. There is a huge amount of positive change going on, people can feel safer if they can see something is being done to solve the problems. For example people often say 'oh well, China arent going to do anything so we are all doomed anyway". That just isn't true. There is a lot of progress in China on this issue and that should be encouraged by positive reporting in the Western press.

Positive stories also reinforce the message that some people out there are taking it seriously and doing something about it. So much of the papers are taken up with scary, creepy stories that actually have little relevance to most people's lives. This is deeply unhealthy and not at all constructive. I think its really important the media address the issue of positive news. I know that many in the media (some friends included) believe that if its good news, its not news. But this is just a perception, its not true at all. If your cousin has a baby that's (usually!) good news, and it is news! Why not tell us if a big business converted to green energy? (Balanced against the business that dumped a load of toxins in the river, if you like).

- Give the wider context. For example we (humanity/all life) live in a finite system (the earth) and have to share a finite set of resources. Yet we seem to have built an entire society on the crazy false belief that we can all just keep growing our wealth forever. (I think in the future they will look back and think we are as stupid as the people who thought the earth sat on the back of a tortoise, and greedier). This to me is a more fundamental problem and lies behind the climate change issue and many others. It would be nice to see the deeper issues discussed more in the media.

- The wider context can also include comparison with times in history, of different cultural approaches to economics and nature, bring in philosophers comments, arts as well as the sciences, these things will help us take a wider view and be a bit more calm.

- Use a "discussions" approach - use many voices, not just one "against" another

This can be more meditative and help to reduce anxiety and anger generated by the narrow "is it or isn't it" apocalyptic story and the antagonistic 'debating' model. We clearly need a big social discussion to cope with the huge changes in environment, population and society happening these days. Pushing people to think in terms of yes or no is restrictive and again creates a sense of claustrophobia and panic, of black-and-white thinking. If you can open up to many voices, that can be a lot more creative and constructive.

I'm interested in the media's reticence to be 'alarmist' over climate change, when they show no such reservations for alarming the public about terrorism/ paedophiles and so on.

Balance is provided through approaching a subject from all angles, not omitting details through fear of shocking people. This approach to climate change by the media is, quite frankly, hypocritical. What is the real reason for the media to be afraid of actually reporting on climate change?

In matter of fact, climate change IS alarming. I can handle that, and it's about time everyone started to do something about it.

The media, environmental coverage and 'belching cows' -
Last November the FAO produced a report - the long shadow of livestock. It was a report about industrial agriculture and the impact it has on the environment. One of the conclusions was that cows, when in an industrial farming situation, were incredibly bad for the environment. This was the result of a complex carbon calculation that included deforestation to create grazing land and to grow feed; motorised agricultural machinery and transport; and fossil fuels used to make commercial fertiliser. It also indicated that the cows' themselves emitted a high level of CO2 when they belched. A crucial part of their digestive system.

The headlines were all about belching cows. "They're worse for the environment than 4x4's", "Cows are killing the planet" etc. Very few articles actually bothered to mention all the other elements involved in the calculation. And none looked at investigating whether it is our production systems, and not the cows, that are actually the issue. And the debate has continued, with animal rights organisation adding fuel to the fire, and university research being released about how they can stop cows belching etc. Even today, Joanna Lumley wrote an article in the Times "Holy Cow! We're crazy to farm livestock like this!" which did address the issue of it being about production system but with a focus on reduced meat consumption rather than changing such systems.

With a name like Send a Cow we have had a lot of flack as a result. Yet we believe that, in a small scale sustainable system, livestock can be beneficial for the environment. In fact we know that, certainly in our systems, it is. A recent environmental evaluation of our programmes indicated that the benefit of a cow far outweighs its emissions - 2.5 as much carbon being sequestered as is emitted. (manure = fertile soils that better trap carbon. Fertile soils = more crops being grown so more carbon can be absorbed. 100 fast growing trees per cow = a sustainable source of fodder and firewood (more carbon absorbed) etc. etc.)

We will be launching our research findings soon. It will be interesting to see if journalists pick it up. We might have missed the opportunity - cows and the environment will probably be old news by then!

We would happily share our experience, talk about the reaction we get when trying to pitch in positive stories about our work (but aren't cows just bad idea?) and discuss how they could spend a bit more time listening to all sides of the story and giving a few column inches to provide the counter argument

The popular debate about climate change has failed to address what is increasingly becoming the elephant in the living room of climate change deforestation its role as one of the key causes of greenhouse gas emissions and as one of the most immediate and cost effective forms of reducing global carbon emissions.

The climate change debate has become so skewed towards energy and clean technology that deforestation barely makes it above the parapet. Yet the latest IPCC report, the Stern Report and the recent study by the consulting firm McKinsey all conclude that over the next two decades the most effective way to control climate change is to keep carbon locked in the worlds forests.

With the world's tropical forests vanishing at ever increasing rates it is vital that environmental organisations start working together to ensure deforestation takes its rightful role at the centre of the climate change debate before it is too late.

Monbiot's dismantling of various journos such as the Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips should be clear evidence that too many of them have no grasp of, or interest in, the truth and they completely abuse the position of real power they hold in manipulating the public mindset with their self-interested words. Should there be greater regulation of the press to ensure that they are not just allowed to spout opinion as though it were fact, because that's what people generally take it as, unless they know for definite it isn't.

It is the responsibility of the media to report on key issues such as climate change in a balanced way. They should be part of the ongoing discussion process. Too often today the media is only interested in sensationalism and not real journalism, and when most of the scientific community accepts the science of climate change, they pandered to the skeptics last week causing more confusion in the public.

The question is where are the serious journalists? Only a few in the media have reported accurately on the melting Artic Sea but why should that bother them?

Climate change is a diversion from the real issues. It is sensationalist and media friendly but, irrelevant of
the truth or not of apocalyptic models, doesn't deal with the real problem. In an overpopulated world we either over-consume or aspire to over-consume. Reduction in consumption and population will lead to a more balanced and sustainable world. It will also lead to the reduction in oil use (Of course if we have passed peak production of oil, whatis there to discuss? Use of hydrocarbons will decrease).

Then there is the issue of legislation and international targets. The more we expect government to lead the less we are likely to do ourselves. Education and personal responibility are vital to really address the issues. With people quite rightly turning away from carbon offset and debate over the facts of climate change it is the media's responsibility to discuss consumption rather than a changing climate. If the climate is changing there is nothing we can do about it other than decrease the
amount we consume.