Abstract
This chapter outlines the ethical issues in science and climate change reporting. It discussed what role journalism and media should play in the global challenge that unfolds as humanity adapts to a changing climate caused by anthropogenic climate change.
The chapter begins by outlining the ethical obligations journalists have in accessing and communicating science. How there is a long-standing understanding and journalistic practice of how science should be identified, summarized, curated and reported. The chapter then moves on to illustrate the importance of journalists critically understanding the scientific peer review process, as illustrated by two case studies.
In the conclusion, the global media ethics framework will be applied to science and climate change reporting. The key concepts considered will be transparency, audience engagement and inclusion.
Keywords
- Journalism
- Climate change
- Science journalism
- Ethics
- Media climate change
- Peer review
- Global media ethics
- Balance as bias
- Peer review
- MMR vaccine
- Science journals
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Notes
- 1.
Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible, 3.
- 2.
Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt.
- 3.
Boykoff, Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change.
- 4.
Boykoff and Boykoff, “Balance as Bias.”
- 5.
Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages.
- 6.
Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge.
- 7.
Lewenstein, “Was There Really a Popular Science Boom?”
- 8.
Robbins, “Science and the Media—An Uncomfortable Fit,” The Independent, paragraph 3.
- 9.
Editorial, “Wakefield’s Article linking MMR Vaccine and Autism was Fraudulent,” The British Medical Journal.
- 10.
Novella, “The Lancet retracts Andrew Wakefield’s Article.”
- 11.
Boykoff and Boykoff, Global Environmental Change.
- 12.
Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt.
- 13.
Chubb, Media Meets Climate.
- 14.
Chubb, Power Failure.
- 15.
Head and Alford, “Wicked Problems: Implications for Public Policy and Management.”
- 16.
Asayama et al., “Who Captures the Voice of the Climate?”
- 17.
Lidberg, “Australian media coverage of two pivotal climate change summits.”
- 18.
Reporter A and reporter D, interviews.
- 19.
Lidberg, “Australian Media Coverage of Two Pivotal Climate Change Summits.”
- 20.
Chubb, Media Meets Climate.
- 21.
Bradshaw, “‘Calm down, it’s just Facebook.’”
- 22.
Grynbaum, “Trump Calls the News Media the ‘Enemy of the American People.’”
- 23.
Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions.
References
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Novella S (2010) The Lancet retracts Andrew Wakefield’s article. Science-Based Medicine, Feb. 3, 2010. At https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/lancet-retracts-wakefield-article/
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Lidberg, J. (2021). Science Communication: The “Weight of Evidence” Approach and Climate Change. In: Ward, S.J.A. (eds) Handbook of Global Media Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32103-5_36
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32103-5_36
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