The Island of Doubt

It is therefore fair to say that the media has (sic) helped turn public opinion in favor of action on climate change. And this attitude has seeped into the negotiations that began with the 2007 Bali meeting and continued in Poznan, Poland, late last year.

...

There is also every reason to believe that the way the media engages with this issue over the next six months will have a major impact on the outcome of the UNFCCC talks in Copenhagen later this year, when international climate negotiators will establish a new global climate deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

What provides hope, and is particularly refreshing about the media's actions so far, is the fact that many journalists have shown remarkable scholarship and a penchant for in-depth analysis in their coverage, providing objective and unbiased analyses of the IPCC's findings.

Compare and contrast with yesterday's post on how one newspaper covered the Goals Coal protest earlier this week. And then consider that I should have been happy the arrest of James Hansen even got a mention. Coverage of the protest by the national media in the U.S. and Canada was almost non-existent. In the England, it took the BBC 10 paragraphs to mention that Hansen had been arrested. The previous nine were built around the arrest of co-protester Daryl Hannah, of course. And that was in an 11-paragraph item filed under "entertainment."

In Canada, neither of the country's two main news sources, the CBC and the Globe and Mail, bothered with the story. The once-reputable Hamilton Spectator did pay attention, but look at its treatment. First, here's a scan of one of it's Entertainment section pages from today's paper:

And here's the circled item:

Indeed, outside of the blogosphere (Andy Revkin of the NYT and Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker) I could find no example of responsible reportage).

What am I missing here? As I wrote yesterday, of course Daryl Hannah's arrest will attract the gutter press. But when the country's chief climatologist decides to put his reputation on the line by getting arrested to protest the slow pace of progress on the very subject the government pays him to study, surely that warrants our attention.

Meanwhile, a vote on Waxman-Markey is scheduled for tomorrow. Coverage? Scant. During Barack Obama's press conference on Tuesday, the president raised the subject, but the press asked no questions, preferring instead to quiz him on his efforts to quit smoking.