Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Red top in the morning, global sheperd's warning

A nice link I have been sent: ‘Ye Olde Hot Aire’*: reporting on human contributions to climate change in the UK tabloid press

Brilliant, but shame it did not have a management summary!

Addendum -

No sooner posted than sorted. A kind addition from a fellow forum member. A lot better, but still, a mouthful:

IOP PUBLISHING ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Environ. Res. Lett. 3 (2008) 024002 (8pp)
Abstract

This letter explores daily print media coverage of climate change in four United Kingdom (UK) tabloid newspapers: The Sun (and News of the World), Daily Mail (and Mail on Sunday), the Daily Express (and Sunday Express), and the Mirror (and Sunday Mirror).

Through examinations of content in articles over the last seven years (2000–2006), triangulated with semi-structured interviews of journalists and editors, the study finds that UK tabloid coverage significantly diverged from the scientific consensus that humans
contribute to climate change. Moreover, there was no consistent increase in the percentage of accurate coverage throughout the period of analysis and across all tabloid newspapers, and these findings are not consistent with recent trends documented in United States and UK ‘prestige press’ or broadsheet newspaper reporting. Findings from interviews indicate that inaccurate reporting may be linked to the lack of specialist journalists in the tabloid press. This study therefore contributes to wider discussions of socio-economic inequality, media and the environment. Looking to newspapers that are consumed by typically working class readership, this article contributes to ongoing investigations related to what media representations mean for ongoing science–policy interactions as well as potentialities for public engagement.

Sorry if I missed it if it was in there. Sadly not always the time to go through all such things in detail, which is kind of the whole problem suggested. Though I suspect many tabloid editors do go through... and then choose to take certain directions anyway.

There is of course the base stance being taken as read as well. I'd also note in passing that though the audience for this is specialist, there may be an argument to try and package key points in a way to get the desired message across a tad more easily.

My old mantra of the fault being not so much with those you don't convince, but with you for failing to convince them.

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