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Tuesday, January 4, 2011

2010 in review: The year climate coverage by the mainstream media 'fell off the map"

2010 in review: The year climate coverage 'fell off the map.'

press
Journalists at a press conference during the United Nations climate talks in Cancun in December. The number of media stories on climate change were down considerably in 2010. Photo courtesy United Nations/flickr

After spiking upward in response to Copenhagen talks and the 'climategate' uproar, media coverage of climate change plummeted to levels last seen in 2005, according to DailyClimate.org's archives and other media databases

by Douglas FischerDaily Climate editor, January 3, 2011
[Readers, we should all be appalled at these numbers.]


Media coverage of climate change in 2010 slipped to levels not seen since 2005, after spiking in in late 2009 in the run-up to the much-hyped United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen and the release [what release? the computer was hacked and they were stolen] of private emails from climate scientists stored on a English university server..
Analysis of DailyClimate.org's archive of global media coverage shows that journalists published 23,156 climate-related stories in English last year – a 30% drop from 2009's tally.
Those stories came from 8,710 different reporters, columnists and editorial writers at 1,552 different media outlets. Last year, according to the Web site's database, more than 11,000 reporters tackled the subject – a 22% drop for 2010.
Despite the trend, some outlets and reporters remain prolific. Reuters again lead the pack, publishing 1,683 stories last year – 4.6 stories a day. The New York Times had 1,116; the London Guardian, 941; the Associated Press, 793.
But for network news and other mainstream outlets, the trend was down, down, down.
Brulle-TVdata

Drexel University professor Robert Brulle has analyzed nightly network news since the 1980s. Last year's climate coverage was so miniscule, he said, that he's doubting his data.
"I can't believe it's this little. In the U.S., it's just gone off the map," he said. "It's pretty clear we're back to 2004, 2005 levels."
Coverage of December's United Nations climate talks in Cancun is Exhibit A: Total meeting coverage  by the networks consisted of one 10-second clip, Brulle said. By contrast, 2009's Copenhagen talks generated 32 stories, totaling 98 minutes of airtime. "I'm trying to check it again and again," Brulle said of the 2010 data. "It's so little, it's stunning."
Overall, based on preliminary data, the networks aired 32 stories on climate change last year, compared to 84 in 2009 and 144 in 2007, when former Vice President Al Gore released his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a key assessment on climate change. The two shared the Nobel Peace Prize that year.
"The cycle of media interest in climate change has run its course, and this story is no longer considered newsworthy," Brulle said.
The Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, which has tracked media coverage of climate change since 2000, finds a similar slide in five major U.S. newspapers.
US-NovAfter spiking to more than 450 articles in December 2009 – almost equal to the 2007 peak – coverage dropped precipitously in early 2010, falling to levels last seen in late 2005.
DailyClimate.org's archives extend reliably only to 2007. Year-to-year comparison shows a steep decrease in 2010 climate coverage for many of the world's major media outlets – off 51% in Toronto's Globe & Mail, 44% in the Wall Street Journal, 21% in the New York Times, 33% in the London Guardian, based on DailyClimate.org's database.
That, perhaps, is not unexpected given the hype leading up to the Copenhagen talks and the frenzy created by the [stolen] e-mail release in late 2009.
The Copenhagen meeting drew heads of state from nearly 200 nations, including President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Indian President Manmohan Singh. It ended in chaos, with the body able only to "take note" of a slim agreement that climate change is a problem and that deep cuts in global warming are necessary.
The so-called "climategate" scandal proved similarly flashy: hundreds of e-mails, pilfered from a server at the University of East Anglia, from climate scientists supposedly discussing "tricks" [actually one so-called "trick" was discussed -- which everyone knew about and used because it had been out there for about 10 years] to make their data fit and casting dispersions on critics. Yet half a dozen investigations by various governments and universities failed to find evidence of serious wrong-doing or tainted science.
But while the climate story may have fallen from the mainstream media's headlines over the course of 2009, a handful of outlets paid increased attention to the issue in 2010. 
New York-based Bloomberg News was a notable exception, one of the only major outlets to churn out more climate stories in 2010, jumping to 332 pieces last year versus 270 in 2009. 
E&E News, publisher of ClimateWire and GreenWire, also saw increased coverage, as did ABC News in Australia and the Edinburgh Scotsman.
And there remain a cadre of dedicated reporters churning out stories: DailyClimate's archives show 66 reporters wrote more than 30 stories apiece over the course of the year.
Of course, byline counts are an imprecise – and flawed – way to measure a journalist's productivity. A ground-breaking investigation often requires weeks or even months of research and reporting. 
But those 66 reporters accounted for 3450 stories last year – 15% of the total. Andy Revkin, the former New York Times reporter who now runs the paper's DotEarth blog, lead the list with 145 posts and stories. Politico's Darren Samuelson was second with 129 articles, followed by the Daily Telegraph's Louise Gray with 119 and Reuter's Alister Doyle with 108.
Below is a list of the most prolific 50, with affiliation and number of stories in Daily Climate's archives.
Daily Climate aggregates mainstream news from around the world seven days a week. A team of about 40 researchers and editors working for the Web site's publisher, Environmental Health Sciences, searches the Web evening and morning using specific criteria. The aim is not to capture every story on the topic, but a broad sample.
ReporterAffiliation2010 stories
Andrew RevkinNew York Times146
Darren SamuelsohnPolitico130
Louise GrayLondon Daily Telegraph119
Alister Doyle Reuters 108 
Robin Bravender Politico85 
Suzanne Goldenberg London Guardian 81 
Matthew L. Wald New York Times 81 
Todd Woody New York Times 81 
Mike De Souza Postmedia News77
Timothy Gardner Reuters74 
 John M. BroderNew York Times 74 
Richard Black BBC 71 
John Vidal London Guardian 71
David Biello Scientific American 69 
Margo Roosevelt Los Angeles Times 68 
John Collins RudolfNew York Times68 
Fiona HarveyFinancial Times 65 
James Murray Business Green65 
Fred PearceFreelance 64 
Jenny Fyall Scotsman62
Bryan Walsh Time59 
Richard Cowan Reuters55 
Jeremy HanceMongabay.com55 
Juliet Eilperin Washington Post51
Adianto P. SimamoraJakarta Post51 
Tom Arup Sydney Morning Herald50 
Adam Morton Sydney Morning Herald50
Nina Chestney Reuters48 
Ben WebsterLondon Times47 
Tiffany HsuLos Angeles Times46
Michael D. LemonickClimateCentral.org46 
Pete HarrisonReuters45
Ariel SchwartzFast Company44 
James KanterNew York Times44 
Evan LehmannE&E News43 
Rick DaysogSacramento Bee 43 
David FogartyReuters 42 
Ben CubbySydney Morning Herald41 
David AdamLondon Guardian40 
Juliette JowitLondon Guardian 40 
Jeff YoungLiving On Earth39 
Lenore TaylorSydney Morning Herald38 
Kate SheppardMother Jones 38 
Thomas ContentMilwaukee Journal Sentinel36 
Eli KintischScience 36 
Peter BehrE&E News35 
Tyler HamiltonToronto Star35 
Terry MacalisterLondon Guardian35 
Jim TankersleyChicago Tribune34 
Lisa FriedmanE&E News34 
 Anne C. MulkernE&E News34

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