Following are excerpts from a six-part series titled “Unreliable Sources: How the Media Help the Kochs & ExxonMobil Spread Climate Disinformation,” authored by Elliott Negin, Director of News & Commentary, Union of Concerned Scientists. I urge you to read the full series at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin.
Twenty-five years after NASA scientist James Hansen testified at a Senate hearing that scientists know with a 99 percent certainty that burning fossil fuels–not natural climate variations–is warming the planet, there are many reasons why Congress has yet to take significant steps to curb U.S. carbon emissions. The hundreds of millions of dollars oil, coal, auto and manufacturing industries have donated to federal candidates is certainly a factor. So are the hundreds of millions of dollars they’ve spent to lobby them once they’re elected.
But the news media are also to blame. Too often they have provided a platform for fossil fuel industry-funded think tanks and advocacy groups to make spurious claims about global warming and renewable energy and allowed them to pass themselves off as independent, disinterested parties promoting free markets and limited government.
Over the years, journalists have consistently relied on these groups to provide the “other side” in climate and energy stories when, in fact, there is no other side–at least not on the science or the fact that we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels to avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change. All too often, however, the news media have presented these two sides as equivalent, despite the fact that one rests its argument on peer-reviewed climate science while the other promotes the distortions of industry-funded contrarians, most of whom are not climate scientists–or even scientists at all.
The news media give fossil fuel industry-funded think tanks too many opportunities to deceive the public.
Every time journalists cite contrarian scientists or industry-funded think tank spokespeople, they validate them as a trustworthy source. And every time journalists fail to disclose where contrarians get their funding, they fail to explain whose interests they serve.
Despite the limitations of newsgathering, journalists have the responsibility to point out when funding sources may bias a source. They also have the responsibility to provide the facts when their sources distort them. When journalists abdicate that obligation and become mere stenographers, they corrupt the public debate.
The other option, of course, is to stop quoting climate contrarians altogether. Do they really deserve a seat at the table? Are they really qualified to comment on this issue? After years of giving contrarians a free ride, perhaps it’s time journalists left them out of their stories. These unreliable sources have caused enough damage, and we can’t afford to waste any more time.
