“… not even a postage-stamp-size space for coverage of climate - or the environment as a whole, for that matter.”
That wording is how reporter-turned-blogger Andy Revkin characterized a new and useful illustration depicting how much - make that how little - coverage climate change received throughout much of 2009, based on a Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) compilation of news summaries.
Picture it this way: Envision a floor plan, wider east and west than it is tall north to south.
Now picture several dozen individual rooms in that plan, each in proportion to the amount of space they take up. The more space - make that the more journalism coverage in our example - the larger the individual room.
Now fill in the individual rooms. No, not with terms like “hallway” and “bedroom” and “kitchen” and “home office.” But rather with terms like “Health Care Reform” and “Economic News” and “Auto Industry Collapse” and “Blagojevich Scandal.”
Oh yes. Don’t forget to leave ample space for news dealing with things like “Michael Jackson Death” and “Balloon Boy.” This is news in the infotainment age after all.
If, indeed, a picture is worth 1,000 words (more than some media apparently dedicated to serious coverage of climate change, one fears), no need to envision all this yourself. Instead, click here and here to see the hard data and the “floor plan” graphic (also shown below) that data inspired.
In short, and as captured in PEJ’s supporting headline “Global Warming Generates Little Heat in the Media,” coverage of global warming garnered just 1.5 percent of the studied newshole in 2009 up through December 6. That’s down from a paltry 1.7 percent in each of the previous two years.
The big news week in 2009? From November 30 to December 6, with the upcoming Copenhagen climate meeting and the hacked e-mails providing much of the grist. (The data did not extend beyond December 6, when the Copenhagen talks began, so the influence of that coverage is not reflected.) That early December week was “one of the largest weeks” for environmental coverage since PEJ started tracking three years ago. “And it wasn’t that big a number,” the group said.
Surprise, surprise: “In no single week, has the environment generated the level of attention (6.4 percent of the newshole) that the Tiger Woods scandal attracted.”
The PEJ chart shows newspapers giving the highest percentage of their newshole to environment/global warming - 2.7 percent. For network TV and cable, the percentages were 1.3 and 0.8 percent, respectively.
The challenge ahead? Increasing not only the quantity of climate change coverage reaching American audiences … but also, and perhaps even more importantly, the quality of that coverage.