In the latest issue of Science, Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK and a group of social scientists have a letter of complaint [subscription] regarding media coverage of the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change, held March in Copenhagen, and point in particular to Science’s own coverage from the event.
I and my colleague Oliver Morton covered the Congress here. Its overall aim was to update the assessment of global warming ahead of the UN negotiations on climate change taking place in the same venue in December.
Hulme et al. point out that the dominant mode of media reporting after the event was of impending doom, even though nearly half of the research presented at the Congress was from scholars in the social sciences and humanities offering new insights on how to avoid the catastrophic outcomes foreseen by biogeophysical scientists,
They’re right, of course, and I think it’s worth thinking about why there was a bias in the type of material covered by the media from the Copenhagen Congress. Is it simply that reporters like to be scaremongers or that editors are only interested in hard figures? Admittedly, there could be some truth in both of those statements, but I think it’s more complex than that.
Partly, the issue is that the responsibility for coverage also lies with those communicating the science – a point that was overlooked by some both during and after the event.
The stated aim of the conference was to update the science on global warming since the IPCC’s 2007 assessment. So the first question on every reporter’s lips was ‘What’s new?’. A partial answer to that question came on the first day in the form of a press conference with climatologists Konrad Steffen, Stefan Rahmstorf and others giving revised estimates of sea-level rise based on new evidence. Needless to say, this resulted in a slew of media reports on the topic – and more than a few dismayed attendees wondering why the media had focused almost exclusively on sea level, at the expense of all other topics on offer. Well, that was hardly surprising considering that sea-level rise was the only topic during the Congress that had a press conference devoted to it.
Some might argue, or course, that by covering this, reporters were simply picking the low-hanging fruit rather than seeking out diverse news stories amid the numerous (57) sessions on offer (each with about 10 presentations). But if you have to file on deadline, then getting a heads-up on new exciting research with sources in attendance isn’t a bad strategy.
More importantly, there’s the issue of what is regarded as news, and the fact that hard numbers on Amazon dieback and Arctic sea ice loss are more appealing to both editors and readers than stories such as ‘scientists suggest a new system of global governance’. Though equally important, the latter is less likely to make news.
But just because the social science aspects of the Copenhagen congress weren’t reported directly as news, that doesn’t mean they were ignored by the media in attendance. I, for one, found the social science sessions ripe with ideas for features and commentary. And I’m sure that the reporters at the conference who are working on longer-term projects no doubt found invaluable sources at those sessions. Whether those pieces permeate through to mass culture is another issue, of course.
Olive Heffernan