Role of the Mass Media in Shaping Perceptions and Awareness of ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Session A2ture chart. Hansen said 1988 already was the hottest year ever. Woods Hole Research Center scientistGeorge Woodwell predicted a warmer climate.The Inside Sunday edition of the CBS Evening News for June 26, 1988 featured a very unusual eight-minuteenvironmental story that led with the greenhouse effect, linking it to the high temperatures of the 1980s. TheGoddard Institute’s David Rind and climatologist Thomas Karl warned of future warming and discussed theneed to decrease the production of carbon dioxide. ABC did the greenhouse effect story in a four-minute pieceon July 27, 1988.Three scientists and an environmental activist were featured, all very worried about the greenhouse effect. Twoof the sources were NASA scientist James Hansen and Woods Hole scientist George Woodwell, both of whomhad spoken before Congress in June and had been featured on NBC at that time. The third was MichaelMcElroy of Harvard University.The NBC Evening News for October 12, 1988 mentioned global warming as a Campaign ’88 political issue.ABC mentioned it in a November 14, 1988 segment on important issues. All three networks on May 8, 1989did greenhouse effect stories based on Senate sub-committee hearings in which NASA scientist James Hansentold Senator Al Gore that he had been ordered by the Bush administration to change the conclusions in writtentestimony regarding the seriousness of global warming. On May 12, 1989, CBS reported that President GeorgeBush was endorsing a proposed global warming treaty and ABC said that President Bush wanted the U.S. to takethe lead in solving global warming. Both networks repeated Hansen’s statement that his written testimony hadbeen softened by the administration, and ABC included a comment by Gore that Bush had been dragged slowlyto the right position.CBS on July 8, 1989 mentioned global warming in an economic summit story, and ABC on August 24, 1989carried comments on global warming by actor Robert Redford. The CBS News for September 19, 1989 as partof its Hurricane Hugo coverage carried a story by reporter David Dow that scientists were predicting that thegreenhouse effect would play a role in creating stronger and more dangerous hurricanes in the future. MeteorologistKerry Emanuel presented the theory. Scientist Michael McElroy said action was needed to curtail globalwarming. Robert Livezey of the National Meteorological Center disagreed with the theory.Global warming is a chronic environmental issue. It is a long-term problem that was about the same last year asit is this year. It measures temperature changes across decades. It is a stretch for scientists to say that thegreenhouse effect is responsible for higher temperatures in a given year or even decade and it is an even biggerstretch to propose a theory linking global warming to the intensity of hurricanes. Journalists are alwayslooking for good news pegs. In the 1970s and through most of the 1980s, global warming and greenhouseeffect stories were usually chronic environmental science features or government, political, or congressionalhearing stories. But scientific discussions and government meetings on global warming are neithervisual nor dramatic news pegs. In the 1980s some scientists seemed to be linking the greenhouse effect tocurrent high temperatures. If this were true - and even if it wasn’t - it gave some reporters a reason to linkglobal warming to the acute, front-page issue of heat waves.Coverage of global warming increased enormously in the 1990s. The three television networks carriedaround one hundred news stories about global warming from 1990 through 1999 judging by a count ofglobal warming abstracts from the Vanderbilt News Archive. This compared to a handful of related storiesin the 1970s and about twenty stories in the 1980s, using the same measure. Global warming was aninternational political story in the 1990s with the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in1992 (featuring the signing of the UN global warming treaty) and the Kyoto, Japan global warming conferencein 1997. The NBC Evening News of March 29, 1990 carried a 30-second report that NASA scientistssaid, “that there has been no long-term global warming” (Vanderbilt University), but such doubts were notthe norm on the nightly news.June 2000Climate Change Communication ConferenceA25
Session A2The ABC Evening News for June 16, 1990 carried a story on the search for a link between the greenhouse effectand the thinning of the ice in the Arctic. On December 20, 1991 CBS reported that concern existed that globalwarming may be shrinking the Antarctic ice pack, possibly endangering penguins. ABC on February 27, 1995covered British scientists who blamed global warming for the creation of a giant Antarctic iceberg. The crackingAntarctic ice shelf also showed up on cable television in a February 5, 1997 global warming story on CNN.NBC did a heat wave story on July 22, 1991 in which Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental DefenseFund brought in the greenhouse effect. The network reported the possible connection between global warmingand recent extreme weather patterns on July 8, 1996 and again on April 7, 1997 (in a Washington, D.C. story byRobert Hager). NBC covered one hundred television weather forecasters on October 1, 1997 who were invitedto the White House for a briefing on global warming policy. By this action the Clinton administration appearedto be linking the greenhouse effect to today’s weather.NBC’s Robert Hager reported from Washington on January 8, 1998 that 1997 had been the hottest year onrecord. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Admiral Tom Karl and government meteorologist Joe Friday blamedglobal warming. While ABC was going with the Antarctic ice block news peg (in an April 17, 1998 story), NBC,CBS, and CNN ran stories on April 22, 1998 about a report that the climate had been warming since the1400s. NBC explained the greenhouse effect, CBS linked the temperature increase to the industrial revolution,and both NBC and CBS included University of Massachusetts scientist Michael Man talking abouthow hot the weather was getting. On May 9, 1998 CNN covered a Worldwatch Institute report linkingdrought and hot weather to the greenhouse effect.The global warming Arctic Circle news peg was worth a trip to Ice Station Sheba for reporter Jerry Bowen and atwo-part story (May 27 and May 28, 1998) for CBS. Meanwhile NBC was showing underwater scenes from theGreat Barrier Reef in a May 31, 1998 story connecting dying coral to global warming. On June 8, 1998 NBC,CBS, and CNN covered a government report on global warming and on El Nino-related weather patterns. LaNina was mentioned. All three networks carried Vice President Gore, who compared or connected El Ninoweather and global warming weather. ABC joined in on July 14, 1998 explaining the impact of global warmingas part of a four-minute story on the current nationwide heat wave. It had been the “hottest June in recordedhistory” (Vanderbilt University). In the fall, NBC (October 20, 1998), CBS (November 2, 1998), and NBC(November 15, 1998) carried Arctic global warming stories and on March 4, 1999, CBS did a Greenland ice capglobal warming report.Where once global warming had been treated predominantly as a long-term chronic environmental issue thatwas generally unrelated to specific events other than scientific announcements and government meetings, by thelate 1990s, the television networks, at least, regularly were linking the greenhouse effect and global warming withcurrent, event-oriented news pegs such as heat waves and melting polar ice. In 1999, most of the networknews stories on global warming carried a current event-oriented news peg such as: the warm weather ofwinter 1998 (CBS June 2, 1999); the effect on insects and natural disasters (CBS June 24, 1999); highertemperatures and more extreme weather (NBC and CBS June 29, 1999); and melting ice (ABC December 3,1999). Network television news stories generally appeared to accept the existence of global warming as anevery day phenomenon that can be measured in terms of current weather conditions. On July 31, 1999,however, CNN environmental reporter Natalie Pawelski reminded her viewers that there were scientists onboth sides of the heat wave question by including Jim St. John of Georgia Tech, who “says heat waves aloneare not evidence of global warming” (Vanderbilt University).Does global warming affect hurricanes? On May 11, 2000 Associated Press reporter Randolph E. Schmid useda form of journalistic reverse English to tie hurricanes to global warming: “While some climate experts have beenblaming the increase in tropical storms in recent years on global warming, [Bill] Gray [of Colorado State University]says the trend is cyclical and not related to warming” (p. A3).A26Climate Change Communication ConferenceJune 2000
Page 8 and 9: Session A2Is global warming now an
Page 10: Session A2the growth of specialized
Page 13 and 14: Session A2The ozone hole asserted i
Page 15 and 16: Session A2Sociological Quarterly 33
Page 17 and 18: Session A2them of the nature of the
Page 19 and 20: Session A2rates, food and electrici
Page 21 and 22: Session A2Figure 3: Distribution of
Page 23 and 24: Session A2ENDNOTES1. All data in th

Role of the Mass Media in Shaping Perceptions and Awareness of ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?