Mainstream media free of climate misinformation — study
Sep 12, 2023
During their investigation, scientists working for the Alliance for Science read through over 300,000 media coverage pieces on climate change published over six months.
Kenyan President William Ruto (centre), surrounded by African leaders, delivers his closing speech during the closure of the Africa Climate Summit at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre.
Jacky Achan
Journalist @New Vision
___________________________ Sacred Heart SS students consulting each other during a debate.
Recent research findings indicate that misleading information on climate change has virtually vanished from the mainstream print and digital media globally.
During their investigation, scientists working for the Alliance for Science read through over 300,000 media coverage pieces on climate change published over six months.
At the time of the presentation on the new findings at the Climate Action Zone, a side event of the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya on Tuesday, the primary author, Mark Lynas, said: “Climate denialism is dead as a news media phenomenon.”
Lynas, who is the head of research at the Alliance for Science, in addition to being the author of several books on climate change, observed that 99.98% of the media coverage studied did not contradict the scientific consensus on the truth and seriousness of climate change caused by humans.
He revealed that the number is practically a counterpart to the 99.6% consensus uncovered while serving as the primary author of a recent comprehensive survey of the peer-reviewed literature on climate change.
Lynas made this discovery when he was working as the lead author of the survey. “The debate about whether climate change is real is well and truly over, and is now almost entirely relegated to the lunatic fringe and, of course, social media,” he said.
“The consensus is well over 99% in both the scientific literature and the world’s media.” Lynas continued by saying the debate about whether climate change “is real is well and truly over”.
It is now abundantly evident that the era of false balance, during which it was customary for news coverage to always include both a climate skeptic and a scientist, has reached its conclusion.
To ascertain the prevalence of climate misinformation in the world’s press, this study evaluated six erroneous climate-skeptic themes that evolved on social media and studied their ‘breakout’ occurrence rates in wide-circulation global news items.
It found that just 59 articles out of 321,553 climate-related publications contain uncorrected misinformation on these subjects.
This results in a rate of only 0.02% having inaccurate information. However, it is estimated that even the 0.02% reached 4.4 billion people as a result of the vast quantity of media coverage that was done on climate change.
“The debate about whether climate change is real is well and truly over, and is now almost entirely relegated to the lunatic fringe and, of course, social media,” he said.
“The consensus is well over 99% in both the scientific literature and the world’s media.” Lynas continued by saying the debate about whether climate change “is real is well and truly over”.
It is now abundantly evident that the era of false balance, during which it was customary for news coverage to always include both a climate skeptic and a scientist, has reached its conclusion.
To ascertain the prevalence of climate misinformation in the world’s press, this study evaluated six erroneous climate-skeptic themes that evolved on social media and studied their ‘breakout’ occurrence rates in wide-circulation global news items.
It found that just 59 articles out of 321,553 climate-related publications contain uncorrected misinformation on these subjects.
This results in a rate of only 0.02% having inaccurate information. However, it is estimated that even the 0.02% reached 4.4 billion people as a result of the vast quantity of media coverage that was done on climate change.
‘Fake’ catastrophe
This is the assertion that the current climate catastrophe is “faked” because the warming that has occurred up to this point has been “mild” and that kOLIHRQ (DUWKpRXULVKHG and was much greener when carbon dioxide (CO2) levels were at OHDVWoYHWLPHV higher than they are today.”
The study results indicate that the people who advocate the continued use of fossil fuels are the ones responsible for spreading this fallacy.
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