The Role of Journalism in Democracy

I’m a pacifist and so is my friend who is majoring in Nuclear Physics. In the future, he will help design rockets, missiles and other nasty projectiles. He once told me he felt guilty that he is going to help create weapons of mass destruction, and I told him to shut up. I’m majoring in journalism, I said, and words have killed way more people than bombs ever have.
Perhaps people have forgotten how potent the press can be. Long, bloody wars have been started because of the written word. The Yellow Press encouraged the Spanish-American War. Mein Kampf was Hitler’s ladder to power. The Communist Manifesto gave Lenin the push he needed. Yes, in the wrong hands, the written word has killed many.
Indeed, journalists need to be mindful of what they publish. It is often all too easy to influence the world with even the simplest reporting. In recent history there have been enumerous junk science reports that caused panic over nothing. Examples are SARS, the West Nile Virus, Anthrax, the Y2K virus, and the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
All of these scares had some truth in them, that’s for certain, but it doesn’t explain why all of these issues were blown out of proportion. The consequences were loss of large amounts of money and at times, loss of life.
The role of journalism in a democratic society is to report the truth, with minimal harm, and no outside interest. It should also be held accountable to its readers. Journalists are not filling this role by reporting half-truths that send people into a panic.
Those in the media will apologize for spelling and grammatical errors, but no one apologized for these outrageous hypes. The media continues to go unchecked, still spreading fear and propaganda without remorse. Perhaps these are all innocent mistakes, but that doesn’t change what happened.
I don’t think issues are exaggerated on purpose. I do think the media needs to man up their mistakes. If an issue was not a threat as previously thought, apologize. Next time, be careful how you word or place your article. There may be a range of ideas why the media doesn’t do this. First, it may make them seem without credibility. Second, reporting mistakes doesn’t grab as many viewers or readers as reporting an incredible new threat. If you want to make money, advertise something that scares people into buying it.
If this is done unintentionally, it could be a simple matter of what events get the most coverage, the slant and tone of a story, where the subject is published, and how it is treated graphically. The best way to illustrate this is to give an example.
Second to the Iraq invasion, global warming is the biggest issue in today’s news. It often gets more coverage than suicide bombings or genocide. The focus is no longer on lives being lost on foreign soil, but on the weather, of all things.
From a scientific point of view, the earth has been warming, but a little more than a degree. The theory is that levels of carbon dioxide, which are released into the air by car exhaust or coal power plants are causing the planet to heat. This is a problem because the polar ice caps will melt and flood the planet, although this detail is incorrect because melting sea ice does not actually raise ocean levels.
No one knows whether the earth is being warmed by human activity or not. There is no proof either way. Still, the media presents this issue one-sided and does not address the other holes in this theory.
The Earth’s atmosphere is a combination of Nitrogen and Oxygen, which makes up 99 percent of it. The other gases are argon, neon, helium, krypton, xenon, and hydrogen. These are labeled as permanent gases while water vapor, ozone, aerosols, nitrous oxides, methane and carbon dioxide are labeled variable gases.
Carbon dioxide makes up 0.0375 percent of the atmosphere. To picture this, imagine you had 10 liters of black sand that averages you about 1.5 million grains. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is equal to 3 grains of sand, or 1 per 500,000 grains. Can levels of something so small really be the cause of a global epidemic? Well, if levels are rising, perhaps. But are they rising? Do not forget, CO2 levels fluxuate as well as the average global temperature. No one on either side can generalize, because we do not know enough about our own environment.
Simply put, no one knows what is causing global warming, and no one knows if “greenhouse gases” cause it either. We know that the earth has risen in temperature by one degree. Is that really so big that everyone should panic and drive hybrids?
There isn’t a lot of conclusive data on global warming, yet the media continues to publish data about it as if it were fact and not speculation or theory. Even attempts at diversifying the issue are poor. I reference the August 13th, 2007 article “The Truth About Denial” in Newsweek. The article called itself a balanced look at the debate on global warming and was anything but fair. It attacked anyone who was a “global warming denier” as either stupid, ignoring facts, or that their research was funded by industry.
The irony in all this is that none of the “deniers” claimed global warming was nonexistent, just not caused by human beings. So far, this is true. According to Newsmax, “the expenditure of more than $U.S.50 billion on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one." It goes on to say that skeptics receive only $19 million in funding a year. Compare that to the $50 billion other climatologists receive and it doesn’t seem like “balanced journalism” to be pointing fingers about funding.
This article is only one example of an entire movement of incorrect portrayal of the facts. The November 11, 2007 edition of the Arizona Republic was another such article about global warming skeptics. The newspaper painted them as people who are ignoring facts and hyping on details. It was a front page article that took precedence over six United States troops being killed in Afghanistan. That’s right, opinion is more front-page news than human life.
In general, this type of reporting on global warming clearly goes against the SBJ Code of Ethics. This type of reporting does not “test the accuracy of information from all sources” or “exercise care to avoid inadvertent error.” This type of reporting does not “support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant”. This type of reporting does not “distinguish between advocacy and news reporting”. I find reporting like this dangerous and irresponsible, if it’s reporting at all.
Unless newspapers change their attitude about how they report global warming it will just be like with Y2K, everyone panicking, buying up the bottled water, bunkering down for a non-existent crisis. The role of a newspaper in Democracy is to report fact as fact, speculation as speculation and hold itself responsible for what it publishes. If not, we can expect the same cycles of fear and embarrassment, we can expect large loss of money, we can even expect the loss of life. The fact is, the power of writing is not something to take lightly.



Sources:

Blodgett, H. Robert & Keller, Edward A.,(2006). Natural Hazards. Pearson Education, Inc.

McKinnon, Shaun. (2007, November 11). Skeptics Raise Doubt on Global Warming. The Arizona Republic, p. 1

Morano, Mark. (2007, August 6). Newsweek’s Global Warming Blunder. Newsmax,. Retrieved November 13, 2007, from http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/8/6/100434.shtml.

Purtill, Corinne. (2007, November 11). Outspoken ASU Prof draws ire. The Arizona Republic, p. 1

Walsh, Bryan (2007, October 15).Meltdown. Time, 170, 16.