Backgrounders

For journalists covering major energy- and environment-related stories and natural disasters, the visually gushing BP Gulf of Mexico oil leak easily supplanted climate change and other national stories in the steadily shrinking news hole. Yet there are striking parallels between the sudden and in-your-face Gulf BP spill and the incremental and nonlinear climate change issue.

Did the American media fall short on stories about stolen/leaked scientists' emails and IPCC report errors? To gauge expert opinion on that question, SEJournal surveyed four close observers and analysts of the way that climate issues are covered.

SEJ has long called climate change the story of the century. Geoengineering is the new twist in this story and will be a key element — for good or bad — in decades to come.

Freelance journalist Naomi Lubick offers tips from journalists who travel internationally to do their reporting. They all suggested that before you set off on your voyage, you have to be prepared — mentally, technically and physically.

The media may play a role in misleading the public, especially when journalists attempt a "false balance" in stories, giving equal treatment to climate science skeptics who question the validity of climate science studies.

The digital age of environmental journalism has brought with it an ugly underbelly characterized by increasingly bitter personal exchanges and accusations and a sucking-up of countless hours of productive reporting time and effort. How reporters handle these distractions may shape how well the American public understands, or doesn't understand, the climate challenge they and future generations will face.

For purely journalistic reasons, reporters could periodically write about those things they had decided not to cover: Their rationale and providing links, even, for those wanting to know more. They can thereby open the doors to their own internal news decision-making, let the public see in, all in the interest of their better understanding the news-making process.

Making fuel from cellulose? Will it be the fuel of the future and how is the U.S. system promoting or haring it? New political carrots and sticks are leading the biofuels industry into a second generation phase, and many critics of the biofuels industry think it's long overdue. The question for the industry, though, is whether the science is ready to scale up.

In the wake of newly declared newspaper bankruptcy declarations in Minneapolis and Philadelphia…and shut-downs of print editions in Seattle and Denver — we have a challenge — the nation's media must do a responsible job in covering the coming climate change debates in Washington.