News outlets demanded false balance on climate because backers and advertisers bought it
Evidence
I used to spread the blame uniformly until, when I was about to appear on public television, the producer informed me that the program “must” also include a “contrarian” who would take issue with claims of global warming. Presenting such a view, he told me, was a common practice in commercial television as well as radio and newspapers. Supporters of public TV or advertisers, with their own special interests, require “balance” as a price for their continued financial support. Gore’s book reveals that while more than half of the recent newspaper articles on climate change have given equal weight to such contrarian views, virtually none of the scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals have questioned the consensus that emissions from human activities cause global warming. As a result, even when the scientific evidence is clear, technical nit-picking by contrarians leaves the public with the false impression that there is still great scientific uncertainty about the reality and causes of climate change. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 162
Categorization
- SEED: Angles for an essay on how ‘balance’ as a commercial product, not a norm, manufactures public confusion — the price of neutrality is paid by readers in epistemic damage.
- ADDENDUM: Connects thematically to the broader ‘moral panic’/manufactured-controversy writing thread.
- XREF: connects to: Major news outlets abandoned false-equivalence coverage of climate change — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 317; Fossil fuel funding manufactured doubt that made climate change a partisan media issue — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 160; Media false balance gave a discredited vaccine claim lasting public credibility — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 261 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Evenhanded journalism can itself bias public scientific belief
#exemplifies(0.90) — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 61 - Media false balance gave a discredited vaccine claim lasting public credibility
#exemplifies(0.85) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 261 - Corporate climate misinformation differs categorically from conspiracist fabulation
#responds-to(0.75) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 245