Anyone who still holds to the old-fashioned idea that journalists should seek to inform their readers by being inquiring and independent (as well as a pain in the butt at times) will likely weep a little to read the recent thoughts of American journalism professor Renita Coleman. She recommends engaging with ‘climate sceptics’ by cutting out references to ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’, and replacing them with ‘weather’. By these means, she suggests sceptics will seek out news about climate change, and they would be likely to “take steps to help mitigate its damage”.
The idea, of course, is idiotic. It is impossible to write a coherent story about the climate changing over a period, along with temperatures rising or falling, by confusing such trends with one-off weather events. But confusion seems to reign supreme in the academic world inhabited by Professor Coleman. “We need to think a little more nuanced, if you will, about what kinds of things we are doing to make people think we are trying to persuade them when we know we are not,” she adds. Can I leave this with readers to work out what she is saying – it beats me.
As does a sentence in her paper’s abstract that runs: “An experiment shows this frame works by reducing persuasion knowledge and increasing perceived behavioural control, resulting in science sceptics being significantly more likely to intend to take action, engage with the news, and agree with the story’s perspective.”
Nope, still can’t make head or tail, but reference to behavioural control and taking action, along with agreeing with the story so-called perspective, doesn’t inspire confidence. Coleman is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Before she went into academia, she is said to have had a 15-year career in journalism in North Carolina and Florida. How the copies of the Raleigh News and Observer and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune must have flown off the shelves, back in the day.
Professor Coleman wrote her recent paper with another journalism professor, Esther Thorson from Michigan State. The paper is behind a paywall, although detailed comments were published by NiemanLab, an operation backed by the Nieman Foundation whose stated mission is to promote and elevate the standard of journalism. In addition to the ‘weather’ change, the authors suggest that journalists “avoid mentioning who or what causes climate change”.
Again, old-school journalists might note that just one sentence knocks out two of the five investigatory ‘W’ questions that should be in every writer’s armoury – ‘Who? What? When? Where? Why?’, (I say old-school journalists, but this line of examination can be traced back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics). Of course it is assumed that human-caused climate change is a settled matter, not to be challenged or investigated in any way. Journalists are told to “focus heavily on solutions, or what the public can do to prepare or adapt to the impacts of climate change”.
In fact the paper proposes radical changes to the way climate change is reported. To date, most mainstream media has elected to spread misinformation, doom and alarm by using phrases such as ‘global heating’ and ‘climate breakdown’. The researchers found that changing language made a difference. “Removing any references to what causes climate change reduced perceptions that the news stories were trying to manipulate or persuade readers,” it was noted. Surely the Washington Post, BBC and Guardian do not try to manipulate their audiences. You could have knocked your correspondent down with a feather.
However, the climate science site Watts Up With That? sees problems for the new approach. Leaving out trigger words like ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ might lead to less engagement among climate alarmists. WUWT proposes a possible solution – maybe journalists need to publish two different versions of the same story. Or can they aim to engage different audiences on different weeks, it asks.
But it concludes: “Here’s a radical thought – perhaps journalists could ease back on the trigger words and other attempts to manipulate the emotions of their audience, and just try presenting the facts.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
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Disgusting, foul, vile, inhuman zombie cruelty.
I absolutely agree with you – but I wish you wouldn’t sit on the fence!
If some miracle happens and legally backed restrictions end, the legacy of the madness will last for years as organisations choose to be “cautious”, making life difficult for anyone sane who wants or needs to have anything to do with them. Fine where there is a choice and you can choose organisations that get back to normal, but there will not always be a choice.
The SAGE and govt psychopaths have opened Pandora’s Box and even if they wanted to they could not close it. They may not even have spent any time thinking about the long term societal damage to a society already weighed down by often irrational safetyism.
I used to work in a building where our council does marriage ceremonies so I was curious what the rules are. It is quite a small room, so they limited it to 15 people, usually it would hold 36.
The registrars and a photographer are additional, and prams and pushchairs are not allowed (what about wheelchairs or walkers?)
Guests are not allowed to use the on-site toilet facilities, but have to go down the road to the public one in the park.
So silly.
Considering the mother in question here will expect many guests who are one household, the venues insisting on restrictions just shows how scared they are of the extreme unlikely event that something happens or they get snitched on.
A list of funeral locations that will follow new guidelines should be made know so people can appropriately send off their loved ones. Hope someone is working on such.
Well, I used to think our “traveller communities” were a bit out of order in their view of the law.
But they don’t stand for this rubbish. They turn up in thousands at funerals which matter to them, and the police are so outnumbered and intimidated they stand aside.
Time to learn from them.
Last year in April a well know local died (not of or with Covid).
I can’t remember what the limit was then but very small. Over 200 locals descended on the church! As far as is known there was no super spreader event. Surprise!
Having had to go through the horrible processing of hand picking 30 people to attend mum’s funeral back in November, I can only sympathise and relate to this.
It’s also causing rifts in friendships in all areas. My birthday on Sunday and the local pub can only accommodate 2 x tables of six in the rain and wind outside. So I’ve had to turn down three dear friends because they didn’t respond fast enough. It’s just horrible. Esp. when there is an empty pub inside and we’ve been Covid free for two months.
Spot on.
We can expect a whole range of jobsworths and organisations who will not want to let go of their new-found control and make up all sorts of silly rules to bolster their anti-social sense of self-importance.