Journalism: Betteridge’s law of headlines
News headlines that end with a question mark are signaling the story is bull shit, click-bait or propaganda messaging. Is this what the experts say? (Heh)
Journalism: The first “message” received is the one remembered, even if later proven as false.
Reports of a polar bear spray painted with “T-34” on its side were greatly exaggerated. The tagging was done by scientists, not pranksters. The bear had been rummaging a garbage dump and scientists wanted to see if it was returning. They tagged it with a short duration ink; this was not graffiti by pranksters as initially reported. Typical of this type of report, the original source for the video was unknown, the back story was unknown, and the video was shared on social media by an environmental activist. Media then used social media as a primary source. What could possibly go wrong?
Journalism: Basically, every fact in the story was wrong
Other than most facts in the story were wrong, it was a fine news report. Not.
Both the AFP and Reuters have withdrawn/retracted the story claiming 100,000 children were in immigration detention due to Trump Administration policies because the data, which didn’t mean what they thought it meant, was from 2015, during a different president’s administration.
Climate communications: “The Trouble With Climate Emergency Journalism | Issues in Science and Technology”
A paper in a journal published by the National Academy of Sciences faults journalists for focusing on dystopian, catastrophic, fear inducing dramatization of future climate projections – while failing to present the likelihood (or lack of likelihood) of such scenarios and the uncertainty presented in the science papers and conferences. It is gratifying to see others at a higher pay grade than I are also seeing that stories designed to create emotional outrage and responses are a turn off and counter productive to effective climate communications.
Climate communications: Time Magazine changes headline three times, uses false headline “How Asthma Inhalers are Choking the Planet”
Time Magazine engaged in deliberate, and false, propaganda messaging to influence readers to take action. After contacting the magazine, they did, at least, revise the headline (for the 3rd time). They began with the accurate headline “How Asthma Inhalers are Contributing to Climate Change” but immediately changed it and promoted this rude and 100% false headline: “How Asthma Inhalers are Choking the Planet”.
First, making crude humor of asthmatics “choking” is not funny and is rude and insensitive. Second, it is physically impossible for inhalers to be “choking the planet”. In homes where someone uses an inhaler, annual inhaler usage produces about 1% of the total CO2-equivalent gases emitted by the home and life activities during the course of a year. If all inhalers were eliminated tomorrow, there would be no measurable impact on weather or climate over the next 100 years. A worst case inhaler, using data cited by Time and BMJ, produces about half the CO2-equivalent GHC as does a person breathing and exhaling CO2. Seriously. Just breathing is a bigger threat than using inhalers.
Time eventually changed the headline to the better, but still misleading “How One Commonly Used Asthma Inhaler is Damaging the Planet”. Their fiction story also referenced the wrong gas used as a propellant, cited an exaggerated greenhouse gas effect multiplier from an environmental activist group rather than the more modest IPCC AR5 science-based estimate, and then omitted many article changes from their Corrections List. The text itself continues to climate shame asthmatics with the false “Choking the Planet” claim.
This is an example of garbage journalism and how not to do do climate communications.
Journalism: “1 in 4 Americans defaulted on their student loans” is misleading
The claim that “1 in 4 Americans defaulted on their student loans” is a misleading headline from CBS News. The actual number is less than 1 in 20 Americans defaulted – and this was narrowly during the period of The Great Recession, the worst economic collapse since The Great Depression. They have worded the headline to use the method of “anchoring” – when we see this, we immediately think “1 in 4 Americans” have defaulted, which is not true. This appears to be propaganda in support of wiping out student debts.
Climate communications and Journalism’ish: Crisis, Emergency, Deniers and the language of propaganda in The Guardian
The Guardian announces that it requires their staff to use pejorative propaganda terminology rather than the facts of atmospheric CO2 levels rising, sea level ice and temperature changes, ice mass changes and so on. Anyone who does not 100% adopt The Guardian’s perspective is to be labeled a “denier” (name calling, transference from “Holocaust denier”, get on the bandwagon). The word “climate” should be associated with “crisis”, “emergency” or “heating” (transference, fear). Shrill terminology designed to inflame and create emotional outrage is a turn off and causes readers to tune out from the issues.
Journalism: Every attribute in this story is reported as a negative even though most are positives
We live among the best of times in world history yet even positive economic news, as in this article, are all translated into negatives. Journalism focuses on negativity, causing anxiety and a culture of outrage where everyone is upset all the time. The linked article is an amazing example showing how the news was deliberately spun into negatives; each item listed is then rewritten in the positive, dramatically improving the emotions of the reader.
Climate Communications: Repeated falsehoods cause us to tune out and turn off
If you want to get people to tune out and turn off news and information about climate, keep doing this. Per the peer reviewed literature, the claim highlighted above is bull shit. People see that – and not the facts – and just turn it all off. This is not how to present concerns about climate.
Great example of 100% false news (an oldie)
The illustration graphic is false, although you might believe it is true because most of the news media reported this topic, as illustrated in the graphic.
The reported information, however, is 100% false and is readily shown as false by a simple example (click through to read why its false). This incorrect information was widely reported and established as a fact. This occurred either because reporters had no understanding of what they report on (far too often to be the case) or because they deliberately misled their readers and viewers.