Climate Journalism Hypnosis
The media’s incessant, inaccurate climate change coverage has put the general public into a dangerous hypnotic state.
“A theory that explains everything, explains nothing.” - Karl Popper
Going into Election Day in 1948, the outlook for incumbent President Harry Truman was bleak. His approval ratings were abysmal, and many pundits were predicting a decisive win for his Republican opponent, Thomas Dewey. Early exit polls and results seemed to indicate that the pundits were right.
With pressure mounting to meet a press deadline the night of the election, the Chicago Daily Tribune decided to run a headline declaring Dewey the winner. Unfortunately for the Tribune, Truman managed to secure an unforeseen comeback. The resulting "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline has become an infamous symbol of premature and inaccurate reporting.
For journalists, the blunder served as a lesson on the perils of jumping to conclusions with limited information and on the risks of reporting with bias (the Tribune wasn’t exactly impartial… it had famously referred to Truman as a “nincompoop”). For the general public, it underscored the fallibility of fast-paced journalism and the need to think twice when reading headlines.
Judging by the proliferation and acceptance of “climate journalism,” we’re skeptical that we learned anything from the "Dewey Defeats Truman" debacle. Media coverage of climate change has many of the same characteristics as the Tribune’s 1948 election reporting — inherent bias, reductionism without considering the full context, and an emphasis on speed over accuracy. While the primary outcome of the 1948 incident was a funny picture, the outcomes of climate journalism are much more insidious. Let’s take a moment to reflect on the state of today’s coverage and the problems it’s causing.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that media coverage of climate change is pervasive and growing. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), coverage of climate-related stories across 59 countries grew from about 47,000 articles in 2016-17 to about 87,000 in 2020-21.
As coverage has grown, tone has shifted. We’re no longer dealing with “climate change” or “global warming.” We’ve got a climate crisis on our hands. The Guardian even changed its official style guide in 2019, preferring the terms “global heating” and “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” over “global warming” and “climate change.” Maybe they forgot about “global boiling”? Headline after headline in formerly reputable outlets are following this language shift.
A reasonable first reaction from those less entrenched in the energy and climate world might be: “Hmm seems reasonable. Aren’t we truly in a crisis? And if so, wouldn’t the increased media coverage be an improvement?”
The reality is that the increasingly dramatic coverage of climate change is not reflective of the current state of climate science. Rather, there’s a widening gap between media narratives and peer-reviewed research. Do you think the average American knows that much of the fear mongering in the news is based on research relating to an implausible emissions scenario? The media is tricking people, many of them children, into thinking that the future is grim.
To be clear — this piece is about climate journalism, not climate change itself. It’s essential that we understand the true state of climate science. There’s a role for climate change communicators to accurately explain that true state, but today’s coverage is biased, oversimplified, and rushed.
Everyone lovesss talking about bias in the news. Well, everyone loves talking about the other side’s bias. Despite believing that they’re a neutral party reporting “The Science,” climate journalists are biased toward calamity.
The first reason for this bias isn’t a knock on climate journalists, per se. It’s just the if-it-bleeds-it-leads nature of the news. The media biz is an eyeballs biz and it’s no secret what leads to more clicks and views. Every weather event is an opportunity to increase ratings and lucky for media executives, it’s always weather-ing somewhere.
The fundamental nature of the media business will always bias stories to the extreme, regardless of what the individuals initially reporting the news actually believe. You have to stay in business, after all. If the first reason for bias is the system, the second is the individual. Journalists are people. Like most people, they want to make the world a better place.
If you think society is on the brink of collapse, making the world a better place requires calling attention to the problem and garnering support for action. Journalists consume journalism. The more out of touch mainstream journalism gets with reality, the more journalists convince themselves that the world is truly in an apocalyptic state. It’s the blind leading the blind.
For journalists saving the planet, what’s a better strategy — detail or simplicity? Here’s how Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider frames the dilemma:
…we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
Both sources of bias — system and individual —lead to climate reductionism. If you want to attract eyeballs or advocates, you can’t get into the incredible nuance of the global climate system. You have to dumb it down. An example of this reductionist approach is the “warming stripes” image that gained widespread adoption on social media.
Here’s how the stripes’ creator describes them (emphasis added):
Climate change is a complex global issue, requiring simple communication about its effects at the local scale. This set of visualisations highlight how we have witnessed temperatures change across the globe over the past century or more. The colour of each stripe represents the temperature of a single year, ordered from the earliest available data at each location to now. All other superfluous information is removed so that the changes in temperature are seen simply and undeniably.
No vertical or horizonal axis. No detailed description. Just a series of colored bars. The approach worked as more than a million people downloaded the image from its source site within a week of its launch in 2019. Never mind how many more people die of cold-related deaths than heat (10x more). Or how many less people die of climate related disasters today vs 100 years ago (>98% less). Red = bad. That’s all you have to know, nuance be damned.
In addition to being more effective, simplifying allows the media to move more quickly. No one wants to be late to the break(dance)ing news party, so there’s a tendency to copy & paste stories as quickly as possible. Given the interconnected nature of the digital world, this is how one story can cascade into thousands and thousands of copycat posts in a matter of hours. Journalists repeat the story of the day because the pressure to publish requires so. If you’re a passive reader of the news, this creates the overwhelming illusion of consensus.
Unfortunately, the climate media doesn’t appear to be self-correcting. Sure, go ahead and proselytize disaster but at least tell us when you get updated information. Remember how polar bears were going extinct? How about the dying Great Barrier Reef?
Turns out, there’s no observational evidence that the polar bear population is declining - it’s believed to be at its highest in six decades. The scary headlines were based on model forecasts, not real-world data. In 2022, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) reported the highest levels of coral cover across two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in over 36 years. There’s no shame in being incorrect sometimes, but we never hear, "oops, we were wrong.” The few reporters that admit it are drowned out by the climate crisis story of the day.
The most concerning outcome of today’s climate journalism is that, like hypnosis, it reduces peripheral awareness. Climate change is a side effect of using energy. It’s akin to focusing on the side effects of medicine without ever giving air time to how effective it is (very) or to the disease it’s intended to prevent (poverty). We’re lulled into only seeing red and blue lines, skinny polar bears, and colorless coral; not the fact that human prosperity and climate safety have never been higher. We see impending doom, not manageable risk.
At best, today’s fearmongering climate journalism makes the general public energy illiterate. At worst, energy indifferent. The only thing worse than thinking you can power a prosperous society with intermittent energy is thinking you can do so with limited to no energy.
Luckily, there are rising voices in climate science offering a more thoughtful, nuanced, and reasoned perspective. Hopefully these voices snap people out of their dangerous hypnotic state.
Thanks for reading!
I really liked you penultimate paragraph!
At best, today’s fearmongering climate journalism makes the general public energy illiterate. At worst, energy indifferent. The only thing worse than thinking you can power a prosperous society with intermittent energy is thinking you can do so with limited to no energy.
Thanks!