As I watched the film and monitored audience reaction, I grew convinced that although Expelled’s claims have been thoroughly debunked, the documentary’s long term impact remains dangerously underestimated.

In the film, the comedic actor Ben Stein plays the role of a conservative Michael Moore, taking viewers on an investigative journey into the realm of “Big Science,” an institution where Stein concludes that “scientists are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator.” Expelled goes so far as to outrageously suggest that Darwinism, as Stein calls evolution, led to the Holocaust, and that today scientists have been denied tenure and that research has been suppressed, all in the service of hiding the supposedly fatal flaws in evolutionary theory.

Expelled employs several techniques common to political advertising. First, Stein’s narrative relies heavily on the use of metaphor. For example, his version of the “3 a.m. phone call” is to bookend the film with historic footage of the Berlin Wall and a repetitive emphasis on freedom as a central American value. The sinister message is that “Darwinism” has led to atheism, fascism, and communism. As a corollary, if Americans can join Stein in tearing down the wall of censorship in science it would open the way to religious freedom and cultural renewal.

Expelled also strategically employs emotion while playing on low levels of knowledge among movie-going audiences. As a way to trigger anger, Stein misleadingly defines celebrity atheists such as Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens as the representatives of “establishment science.” In interviews, as these scientists compare religion to fairies, hobgoblins, and knitting, the implication for viewers is that in order to leave room for God in society, the concept of intelligent design (ID) needs to be taken seriously.

In the screening I attended, somewhat predictably, there were chuckles and positive laughter in reaction to Stein while there was audibly negative emotion directed at the comments of Dawkins and the other scientists. As the film credits rolled at the end, there was even a strong round of approving applause.

Expelled’s misleading emphasis on atheist punditry as representative of science even had film critics bristling. In reviews otherwise harshly dismissive of the documentary, Jeffrey Kluger of Time magazine described Dawkins and Myers performance as “sneering, finger in the eye atheism,” while Justin Chang of Variety referred to Dawkins’ commentary as “atheism taken to hateful extremes."

There is no way to tell how nationally representative the Washington, DC opening night audience might have been, although I have observed similar emotional reactions among university students with whom I have tested Expelled’s YouTube clips. At various other locations across the country, several bloggers have reported that they were the only person in the theater for a Sunday matinee or a weekday evening show. One thing, however, is for sure: By documentary box office standards, Expelled has made its mark.

With more than $7.5 million earned at the box office, Stein’s propaganda film ranks as either the sixth or seventh top grossing public affairs documentary of all time. Only Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, and Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, and Bowling for Columbine have grossed more than Expelled. (After controlling for inflation, add Moore’s 1989 Roger & Me.)

Premise Media Inc, the production company that marketed Expelled, targeted two key demographics for the film. Predictably, a main segment included Evangelicals and social conservatives, with the production company advertising heavily on political talk radio stations and by way of Christian media and church networks. But in running advertising spots during The Daily Show and on CNN, the company also hoped to appeal to less religious thirty- and twenty-somethings, an audience more familiar with Ben Stein as a comedic actor and satirist than with the recent political skirmishes over evolution.

Yet despite these savvy marketing efforts, Expelled was unlikely to break the forces of ideological selectivity that have snared even the most successful documentaries. For example, polling data shows that the theater audience for Fahreinheit 9/11, which earned $120 million dollars at the box office, skewed heavily liberal and was more likely to live in “blue” rather than “red” counties of the country. Moreover, a recent study finds that rather than converting movie-goers into supporting John Kerry during the 2004 election, the effects of the film were most likely to reinforce and intensify already strong anti-Bush sentiment. In short, Fahrenheit 9/11 helped activate and mobilize the existing anti-Bush segment rather than persuading new converts.

Survey data specific to Inconvenient Truth and Sicko reveal similar selectivity bias and ideological reinforcement. Although similar data is yet available for Expelled, according to news reports, Premise Media’s own exit survey data from theaters in six states showed that 80% of the film’s viewers during opening weekend considered themselves “born again” Christians.

Yet Expelled’s influence stretches well beyond the theater and any ideologically reinforcing impacts on viewers. As I review in a recent report to the Ford Foundation, these indirect influences can be tracked across several different dimensions with the most important impacts relating to the news and policy agenda.

For example, although many mainstream film critics have savaged the documentary, Stein’s arguments have received either uncritical or positive coverage in reviews at Christian or conservative Web sites, in appearances on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, and by way of strong endorsements on conservative talk radio and cable news programs such as Rush Limbaugh, Headline News’ Glenn Beck, and Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes.

Since the 2005 Dover court decision, intelligent design had been off the national news radar, yet Expelled helped restart the media conversation, at least temporarily. Perhaps most importantly, by way of columns, op-eds, uncritical features, and letters to the editor at local newspapers across the country, the film offered both an opening and a new “authoritative” reference point for ID proponents to once again misleadingly argue that there are holes in evolutionary theory and censorship in schools.

Perhaps most troubling have been the advanced screenings for policymakers, interest groups, and other influentials. Expelled’s producers have previewed the film for both the Missouri and the Florida state legislatures, connecting the film’s message to a proposed “Academic Freedom Act” in each state that would encourage teachers to discuss the alleged flaws in evolutionary science. As Stein strategically framed the matter at the screening in Florida: “This bill is not about teaching intelligent design. It’s about free speech."

With each of these dozens of screenings there has likely been a strong intensification of commitment and emotion among the conservative activist base in attendance along with advocacy training, the raising of money, and the distribution of other resources such as DVDs and literature. In particular, Expelled provides these activists with an increased repertoire of arguments, talking points, and examples to use with neighbors and friends.

There is even the possibility that the screenings helped anti-evolution groups link up with new conservative coalition partners not previously involved on the issue. For example, Stein has shown Expelled at several meetings and venues here in Washington, DC, including a special screening for Congressional staffers.

When the film moves to DVD distribution, expect more of these types of Expelled screenings, house parties, and church gatherings across the country, all aimed at mobilizing a political movement in favor of anti-evolution bills. As Reason magazine’s Ronald Bailey reports, at a April 15 press conference at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Expelled’s financial backer Walt Ruloff said that as many as 26 states had been targeted this year with so-called “freedom bills.” As of May 2008, bills introduced in Florida, Alabama, and Missouri have been voted down while similar bills are still up for full legislative vote in South Carolina and Louisiana.

Over the next few years, Expelled’s enduring impact will be to serve as a vehicle for recruiting and mobilizing anti-evolution activists at the state and local level across the country. The targeted audience will include school board members, church leaders, legislators, journalists, and other opinion-leaders. Shown in its entirety or perhaps more effectively repackaged in 10 to 15 minute outtakes, these screenings will combine emotionally powerful metaphors with the commentary of various outspoken atheists to manipulate for viewers the important differences between science, religion, and atheism.

Yet as I review in this column, conventional wisdom runs up against the reality of public opinion. Despite Gore's breakthrough success with Inconvenient Truth, American opinion today is little different from when the film premiered in May 2006. Gore has done a very good job of intensifying the beliefs of audiences who were already concerned about climate change, but a deep perceptual divide between partisans remains. As editor Donald Kennedy wrote at Science, this continued climate gridlock rates as the “science breakdown” of the year.

Still, the past twelve months were not without several overlooked developments that present both opportunities and challenges. They include the emergence of a new paradigm in climate change communications; the rise of an “invisible middle” of climate perspectives; and a powerful new public health definition of the problem. In this column, I highlight these developments with many links to additional information at my blog Framing Science and other sources.

Not a Major Issue for the News Media or the Public

In terms of media attention at the trend-setting newspapers, climate change reached a historic annual high, but still rested relatively modestly on the overall news agenda. In fact, according to data tracked by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, climate change failed to crack the top twenty most covered news stories of the year. Even during its peak weeks of attention—in and around the release of the IPCC reports and the Nobel Prize announcement—the issue remained eclipsed by the juggernaut narratives of Iraq, the economy, the presidential horse race, and several celebrity scandals.

Relative to public opinion, in a recent study, I find that the public still remains uncertain about whether the majority of scientists agree that human activities are contributing to climate change. Depending on how the question is asked, belief that scientists have reached a consensus view ranges from only a third of Americans to more than 60 percent. This variability reveals a “soft” public judgment that continues to be susceptible to the misleading counter-claims of many political conservatives.

Views on expert agreement are not the only areas where public opinion remains tentative. When asked in comparison to other issues, global warming scores consistently as a low political priority. And in open ended questions asking Americans to name the most important problem facing the nation, global warming registers routinely at less than 1% of responses.

Partisan views on the objective reality of global warming also vary widely, forming what I dub a “Two Americas” of climate change perceptions. The divide starts at the top. In a National Journal survey

The public breaks down along similar party lines. Gallup finds that between 2006 and 2007, worry about global warming grew to a record high of 85% among Democrats, while the percentage of worried Republicans remained unchanged at 46%. When you factor in education, an even deeper chasm is revealed. According to a Pew survey, only 23% of college educated Republicans said that global warming was due to human activity compared to 75% of their Democratic counterparts.

What explains the striking partisan differences across education levels? College education correlates strongly with news attention, while partisanship leads to selective acceptance of like-minded arguments and opinions. In a fragmented media system, college-educated Republicans are heavier consumers of conservative outlets such as Fox News, messengers who are likely to continually reinforce skeptical views about global warming. The same world-view confirming tendency is true for college-educated Democrats who pay close attention to mainstream news outlets while relying on the messages and opinions of party leaders such as former Vice President Al Gore.

Many science advocates are hopeful that the presidential election might elevate media and public attention to climate change, even pushing for a presidential science debate. While such hopes and efforts are admirable, both scenarios are unlikely. Moreover, an actual debate would only send the strongest signals to date that complex solutions to the problem can be conveniently understood by relying almost exclusively on the cognitive short cut of partisanship.

The news media’s overwhelming reliance on horse race coverage will also work to keep climate change off the election agenda. Given the media’s almost single-minded fascination with strategy and conflict, it’s not surprising that a League of Conservation Voters analysis of the Sunday morning news programs found that among the 2,275 questions posed to presidential candidates in 2007, the phrases “climate change” or “global warming” were used just three times.

Finally, for candidates and media organizations there is little to be gained from elevating climate change as an electoral issue. The audience demand simply is not there. Not only does the issue fail to poll as either a relative political priority or most important problem, according to one survey, only 16% of Americans say when prompted that climate change is “very important” to their presidential vote.

These combined trends and factors suggest what my colleague Chris Mooney and I have often discussed, when it comes to the timeline for major political attention and action, the best bet is to look to 2009.

Why Public Opinion and News Coverage Matters

Some experts continue to doubt whether effective public communication really matters to policy. For example, consider the perspective of Roger Pielke, a professor at the University of Colorado and creator of Prometheus, a leading science policy web site. Earlier this year, after I noted at my blog the connection between public opinion and the policy agenda, Pielke replied in the comment section with the following provocative view:

The real lesson to take from this is that the public has always valued the economy, crime, education, and the war higher than global warming. And they likely always will. Do you really think than people in places that have, say, signed on to and are meeting their Kyoto commitments, rank climate higher than economy, crime, war, etc.? Here in the UK the answer is “No"! How do you explain that action in the US requires that climate be a top public priority, but action in the UK does not? The challenge is not to agitate people about global warming such that they view it as a crisis, but instead to design policies that are compatible with public values. Trying to take a century-scale issue and turn it into the most important issue in everyone's eyes is asking too much, and a recipe for asking science to do more that it is capable of…You see the challenge of climate change as a communication problem. I don't. I see it as a challenge of designing policies to go with the grain of people's values, rather than against that grain.

While I often agree with Pielke’s insights, in this case I think he is too quick to discount the important connection between public opinion and climate action. The research in political science on the linkages between public sentiment and policy is mixed. Some scholars argue that it has a powerful influence; others conclude that the influence of public opinion is really only as a constraint on policy; while others see it as having little or no influence. My answer is that it depends. Recent history identifies two examples on how this relationship works.

Take for example the communication battle in the mid-1990s over social welfare reform, an issue that I recently authored a report on. Welfare reform is in part analogous to climate change since it was a problem that was viewed as requiring dramatic changes and that also fits easily into the mental box of ideology. In this debate, with different goals and motivations in mind, both conservatives and centrist Democrats realized that in order to systematically change welfare policy, and to fend of their entrenched opponents, they needed to invest heavily in a public communication campaign to build support and intensify opinions.

The resulting message campaign successfully redefined welfare for the public as a social crisis. In 1992, only 7% of the public named welfare as the most important problem facing the country, but by 1996, this number had crested to 27%. In fact, by 1996, given magnified media attention and selective interpretations that played on public values and racial attitudes, more than 60% of Americans supported handing responsibility for welfare over to the states, and a similar number supported capping welfare benefits at five years. In August 1996, following successful Congressional passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, more than 80% of the public said that they supported Clinton signing the bill into law.

While the merits of welfare reform are debatable, the important lesson is that through a public communication campaign, political leaders created the conditions and the impetus for major policy change. Without such strong public support and opinion intensity, policy action would have likely continued to be incremental.

A more recent policy debate that was driven in part by public opinion was immigration reform. In this case, leaders in Congress and the President had reached a consensus on a path forward and polls showed a favorable public. Yet soft majority support in the polls could not trump the strong opinion intensity of minority opposition, especially when it was mobilized by conservative media outlets and leaders. For fence sitters in Congress, —via phone calls, emails, and letters—the voice of the public that was loudest was by far that of opponents to immigration reform.

The unfortunate reality is that climate change requires even more systematic policy action than either welfare or immigration. Yet while the aggregate polls show that Americans are concerned about the topic, as I reviewed in the previous section, the public still lacks opinion intensity on the issue and still ranks it as a low political priority.

In regards to Pielke’s reference to the United Kingdom: In that country there are different political conditions, and therefore a different role for public opinion. The political parties in the UK have never been deeply divided over the reality of global warming and its' importance. In the absence of elite-level partisan rancor, policy makers can work together to prioritize and pass policy measures without the impetus of public opinion. Indeed, this is typically what happens on a routine basis in the US on specific issues like plant biotechnology or nanotechnology, where there is strong bi-partisan support at the elite level yet a majority of Americans remain unaware of the issue.

Finally, as I have written in various recent articles, I strongly agree with Pielke that the goal should not be to “agitate people about global warming such that they view it as a crisis, but instead to design policies that are compatible with public values.” Pielke’s assertion, however, is missing one important clause: the need to effectively communicate how these policies connect to public values. In fact, in most cases, the public is not able to discern whether or not policies fit with their values until they are first communicated as such by experts, policymakers and the media.

New Developments to Watch

Although 2007 failed to be the much hoped for tipping point in climate change perceptions, the year did feature several promising developments that might eventually help catalyze a sense of public urgency.

Taking a scientific approach to communication. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this past year marked a paradigm shift in how climate change advocates view communication strategy. The old school of thought defined the goals of an effective communication campaign as bringing the public up to speed on the facts of climate science. Once the public understood the science, it was assumed that citizens would view the reality and urgency of climate change as the majority of scientists do.

Yet dozens of studies show that public communication campaigns face many barriers in actually educating the public, with the great majority of citizens lacking either the motivation or the ability to learn from the quality nuggets of information scattered across our fragmented media system. It’s also not clear which dimensions of knowledge about climate change would serve as the catalysts for support for meaningful policy action. Moreover, as the differences in views between college-educated Republicans and Democrats suggest, knowledge is often filtered through the prism of partisanship and ideology. As a recent UK government report on climate change communication emphasizes: “Providing information is not wrong; relying on information alone to change attitudes is wrong.”

Replacing the traditional view of science communication is the alternative emphasis on the negotiation of meaning between experts, journalists, stakeholders, and diverse publics. As part of this new paradigm, advocates are starting to recognize that messages must be tailored to fit the social identity, values, emotions, and frames of reference held by a particular audience.

My own work has played a modest role in this paradigm shift as recent articles and dozens of talks across the country have helped popularize for scientists a relevant literature on framing and media influence. These articles identify a generalizable set of interpretative meanings that appear over and over again across science policy debates and suggest how framing research might be turned into a powerful public engagement tool. The new paradigm is gaining even more traction via the research of fellow scholars such as Ed Maibach, Jon Krosnick, and Anthony Leiserowitz. These social scientists are drawing on perspectives from health communication, psychology, and social marketing to propose important new innovations in climate change communication. In short, 2007 witnessed the emergence of a growing network of researchers who are working with scientists, policymakers, and advocates to adopt a more scientific approach to public engagement.

A focus on the middle way. This past year also marked the rise to prominence of what New York Times journalist Andrew Revkin calls the “invisible middle” in expert perspectives. As Revkin describes, these scientists , policy specialists, and advocates agree on the urgent societal challenge of climate change “but say the appropriate response is more akin to buying fire insurance and installing sprinklers and new wiring in an old, irreplaceable house (the home planet) than to fighting a fire already raging.”

Policy experts such as Roger Pielke have long argued for this middle-way frame on climate change, while lamenting its absence from public discourse. Yet as Pielke and colleagues write in a recent commentary at Nature, thanks in large part to the focus of the IPCC reports, this past year marked a lifting of the two decade taboo on serious discussion of adaptation strategy.

A complementary middle way perspective is promoted by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger who once-again stirred debate among fellow environmentalists with a book advocating a shift away from what they call the “pollution paradigm.” As they write at the New Republic, only by refocusing messages and building diverse coalitions in support of innovative energy technology and sustainable economic prosperity can meaningful action on climate change be achieved:

Environmentalists can rail against consumption and counsel sacrifice all they want, but neither poor countries like China nor rich countries like the United States are going to dramatically reduce their emissions if doing so slows economic growth…for that to happen, we'll need a new paradigm centered on technological innovation and economic opportunity, not on nature preservation and ecological limits.

Another middle way perspective is offered by scientist and atheist EO Wilson. In his book The Creation, by framing environmental stewardship as not only a scientific matter, but also one of personal and moral duty, Wilson has engaged an Evangelical audience that might not otherwise pay attention to popular science books, or for that matter, appeals on climate change. Wilson passionately argues that if atheists and religious folk “sat down and talked about our deepest beliefs together, we'd come up with more agreements. Agreements on more things than disagreements. And then isn't it the American way? We could say, 'Let's put that aside for awhile and work together when we really have something we need to work together on.' “

Shifting his focus to the partisan divide, Wilson employs a similar strategy by penning the forward to a new book by former Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich. In A Contract with the Earth, Gingrich and his co-author Terry L. Maple argue that environmental stewardship is “a mainstream value that transcends partisan politics,” a perspective that cuts against the views of many of Gingrich’s conservative colleagues.

In an end of the year review, Revkin of the New York Times notes the important influence of these new middle-way perspectives:

Instead of bashing old foes, the authors, all influential voices in the climate debate with roots on the left or the right, tend to chide their own political brethren and urge a move to the pragmatic center on climate and energy. All have received mixed reviews and generated heated Internet debate — perhaps because they do not bolster any one agenda in a world where energy and environmental policies are still forged mainly in the same way Doctor Dolittle’s two-headed pushmi-pullyu walked. (It didn’t move much.)

The emergence of the “public health” frame. In October of last year, Centers for Disease Control director Julie Gerberding was close to setting in motion a major new train of thought. Gerberding, a physician and infectious disease expert, was scheduled to testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the public health implications of climate change. Yet what was set up to be a news story about the implications of climate change for problems such as childhood asthma, allergies, infectious diseases, or food borne illness, turned very quickly into an all too familiar political narrative.

In the days before her testimony, the Associated Press reported that White House officials eliminated several successive pages of Gerberding's testimony, including statements that “the public health effects of climate change remain largely unaddressed,” and that the “CDC considers climate change a serious public concern.” Public health advocates, environmentalists, and many scientists were outraged by this latest episode in Bush administration “muzzling,” but for the wider public the event went by unnoticed, ignored as just the latest partisan skirmish on climate change.

Despite the missed opportunity with Gerberding’s testimony, the public health frame remains a powerful new innovation in climate change communication. Not only does a focus on linkages to already salient health problems such as asthma or allergies activate concern among new audiences, a public health frame also potentially puts climate change higher on various institutional agendas, including many policy contexts where the issue previously had not been given serious consideration. Other than the CDC, examples include the National Institutes of Health, the Surgeon General, new committees in Congress, and/or state health agencies. Finally, from a social movement perspective, reframing climate change around public health is likely to bring new organizations and interest groups to the table. These groups might include medical associations and patient advocacy groups.

Outlook

There is much to celebrate in Al Gore’s stunning film achievement and his tireless and innovative work at elevating the profile of climate change. Yet the Goracle is not superman. He remains handcuffed by his own political profile. Because of the many strong pre-existing opinions about him, roughly half the public will always discount his message. As Flock of Dodos filmmaker Randy Olson wrote in a comment at my blog:

There is an audience out there that is receptive to his voice, and they have been reached. At this point it's no longer about the substance of what is being said but about the style through which it is communicated. If he's really intent on changing society, he needs to realize this and begin quietly finding ways of supporting other, different voices who share the same substance of his message, but can deliver it with a different style that will reach the more stubborn demographics. It will be interesting to see if he does this, or if we just continue to hear more and louder versions of Al's voice…

Unfortunately, while 2007 did not prove to be the much hoped for tipping point in public opinion, a number of less visible developments hold promise. For scientists and climate change advocates, checking false assumptions at the door while forging alliances with former opponents will be necessary to build political will around meaningful policy action.

Released in early February, the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents history’s most definitive statement of scientific consensus on the issue, yet despite the best efforts of scientists and advocates to magnify wider attention to the moment; the release still only scored a modest hit on both the media and public agendas. The inability of the IPCC report to break through to the public about the urgency of climate change is just more evidence that relying on traditional science communication strategies has increasingly limited returns.

Instead, other public engagement methods are sorely needed. Among options, in this column I suggest reaching the wider public not directly via news coverage, but rather indirectly by way of a “two-step flow of popularization.” This strategy, employed widely in marketing and political campaigns, involves recruiting “opinion-leading” citizens to participate in nationally coordinated efforts. These local community members would serve as information brokers, passing on messages about climate change that speak personally and directly to their peers, co-workers, and friends.

Innovative communication efforts are now more important than ever. The new Democratic majority in Congress has finally put climate change back on the legislative agenda, yet despite great optimism, it might not be until 2009 when any major policy action is adopted. For one, there remains the lingering distraction of Iraq, and the very real possibility that President Bush might veto any “cap and trade” bill that makes it to his desk. On top of all that, the close industry ties of key House Democrats, in combination with personality conflicts among several Senators might serve to significantly stall or derail any legislation. In overcoming these potential roadblocks, public opinion is likely to be the final catalyst for policy action.

Why the IPCC Report Failed as a Communication Moment

From the outset, generating major public attention to the IPCC report’s February 2 release stood as an almost impossible task. First, it was a technical backgrounder, a massive synthesis of the state of climate science. As exciting as that might sound to the small number of Americans who closely track the issue, it’s a major snoozer for the rest of the public. For journalists, not only is an authoritative distillation of past research a tough story to make exciting, but the main themes of the draft report had been predicted for a few months, eliminating any real surprises.

Though this latest IPCC report was expected to include the “strongest” language to date emphasizing the urgency of climate change, the take away conclusions that appeared in the lead paragraphs of the stories filed from Paris fell well short of major headline material. The IPCC, wrote journalists, was “90% certain that human emissions of greenhouse gases rather than natural variations are warming the planet’s surface” and that the evidence was “unequivocal.”

Moreover, the Friday scheduling of the report’s release couldn’t have been worse. The end of the week is when you strategically choose to release embarrassing news, not a major scientific report. Whether it relates to political scandal or to poor corporate earnings, any release on a Friday has a high probability of getting buried in the weekend news cycle, with the media agenda moving on to other issues by Monday.

This is exactly what happened with the IPCC report. In an analysis released by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, for the week leading up to the February 2 release, coverage of climate change only accounted for roughly 5% of the total news hole across media outlets, dwarfed by the roughly 40% of news attention captured by the combined issues of Iraq, Iran, and the 2008 Presidential horserace. Yet, in the week following the Friday release of the IPCC report, the issue quickly dropped from among the top stories, as tracked by Pew. Climate change coverage was replaced in headlines by news of the death of Anna Nicole Smith and the murder plot involving an astronaut.

In a separate analysis that matched the media trend indicators to national survey data, Pew found that not surprisingly, in the days after the IPCC’s Friday release, few if any Americans reported that global warming was the issue they were following most closely. Instead, the public remained galvanized by the war in Iraq, while others, especially women ages 18 to 29, were distracted by the media frenzy over Anna Nicole Smith.

The week earlier, in the days building up to the IPCC announcement, things were not much better. Given the modest news attention and the many competing events, Pew audience data indicates that just 11% of American adults reported paying heaviest attention to global warming, compared to the 39% following most closely the events in Iraq.

Preference Gaps and Ideological Gaps that Screen Off the Public

Despite the growth in education levels over the past three decades, when it comes to media consumption, strong “preference gaps” divide the American public, insulating even many college-educated citizens from public affairs coverage. It’s a problem of too many choices. Without a strong interest in public affairs, it’s very easy for individuals to “opt out” of any public affairs information whatsoever, paying close attention instead to celebrity news and other diversionary media.

As a result, in a fragmented media environment marked by a wide diversity of alternatives, traditional science communication efforts are likely to reach only a relatively small audience of science enthusiasts. Audience fragmentation presents a major communication challenge for scientists and their institutions, since even the most heavily publicized scientific releases are likely to go unnoticed by the vast majority of the public.

Yet the challenge grows deeper. Not only is the public divided by their content preferences, but on climate change, deep ideological rifts continue to demobilize major segments of the population. According to Gallup polls, Democrats are significantly more worried about global warming than their Republican counterparts, and more accepting of the scientific consensus. One recent Pew survey, for example, found that only 23% of college-educated Republicans think global warming is happening due to human activity, compared to 75% of college-educated Democrats.

When it comes to a politically controversial topic like climate change, partisan identification leads to selective acceptance of like-minded arguments and opinions. In a fragmented media system, Republicans have opted out of news venues such as the New York Times and CNN where they are likely to find a careful and nuanced treatment of the subject, and have become heavier consumers of media outlets like Fox News, talk radio, and conservative Web sites, forums where extreme ideological views cut against scientific consensus.

As a leading example, see this clip from Fox & Friends featuring former Senate Environment chair James Inhofe. The “Big Oil” Senator from Oklahoma is not alone among his Congressional GOP colleagues in adopting a continued stance of skepticism. In a recent survey by the National Journal, only 13% of Republican Congressional members polled said that they believed that human activities were contributing to climate change, compared to 98% of their Democratic colleagues. With their party leaders and favorite media outlets continuing to deliver a message of skepticism on climate change, it’s little wonder that a sizable proportion of Americans remain doubtful about the causes and urgency of global warming.

Getting Beyond the Media Noise and Partisan Messages

Disengagement is not just a Republican malaise. Among Democrats and Independents, even though they answer in polls that they are generally concerned about climate change, they still rank it very low as a priority when rated against other political issues.

Activating the wider public means more than just “getting the facts out there.” As I have emphasized in recent presentations and at my blog, part of the communication problem can be solved by figuring out ways to frame the old issue of climate change in new ways, making the complex topic personally meaningfully to segments of the public who are currently tuning out the issue. Another solution involves harnessing the power of celebrity culture and entertainment media to direct wider public attention to the issue.

Yet the media isn’t the only way to reach the public. Since the 1940s, communication researchers have recognized the importance of “opinion-leaders” in shaping public preferences, informing fellow citizens, and catalyzing behavior. Tracing the diffusion of news and advertising messages within local communities, these researchers identified a select number of individuals across social groups as key information brokers. From movies to presidential politics, a small group of citizens paid close attention to news and advertising on a specific topic, discussed the issue with a diversity of others, and appeared to be more persuasive in convincing individuals to adopt an opinion or course of action.

This early work introduced the phrase “the two step-flow of information” to conceptualize the effects of campaign and media messages as passed on to the inattentive public by way of a relatively small handful of citizens. Opinion-leading individuals did not necessarily hold formal positions of power or prestige in communities, but rather via conversation and strength of personality, they served as the connective communication tissue that alerted their peers to what mattered among political events and market innovations.

Over the past decade, the media system has changed dramatically, yet the major revolutions in information technology have made opinion-leaders even more central to the influence of communication campaigns. Not only are audiences increasingly fragmented and hard to reach, surveys show that the public is increasingly distrustful of both news and advertising as sources of information, preferring instead recommendations from friends, family, co-workers, and peers. Up against these trends, the business community appears to have rediscovered the concept of opinion-leadership, as popular magazine articles and best-selling books such as The Influentials, The Tipping Point, The Anatomy of Buzz, and Applebee’s America describe how to take advantage of “opinion-leaders,” “mavens,” “connectors,” and “buzz marketing.”

Consider how the Bush campaign incorporated opinion-leaders into its successful 2004 re-election bid. According to former Bush advisor Matthew Dowd, a co-author of Applebee’s America, strategists sent an email questionnaire to their national list of seven million volunteers, asking four specific questions about how willing volunteers were to write letters to the editor, talk to others about politics, forward emails, or attend public meetings. Based on answers to these questions, the Bush team segmented out two million “navigators” or opinion-leaders.

Contacted on a weekly basis by email and phone, these two million navigators were asked to talk up the campaign to friends, write letters to the editor, call in to local radio programs, or attend public meetings staying on message at all times with nationally coordinated talking points. For the Bush campaign, these supporters became grassroots information brokers, passing on interpersonally to fellow citizens the themes featured in political ads, news coverage, and in presidential stump speeches.

The Bush team is not unique in using opinion-leaders, as they have been a major vehicle for a wide range of communication initiatives, ranging from Victoria Secret marketing campaigns to mega-church recruitment. In surveys, opinion-leaders can be identified using short batteries of questions tapping either indicators of personality strength, or alternatively, civic-minded behavior such as local volunteering or political participation. In some campaigns, opinion-leaders have been identified observationally, with recruiters heading into communities and spotting individuals who appear to be charismatic and social connectors. Each of these methods is designed to identify individuals adept at persuasively passing on messages and cues to family, friends, and co-workers.

Recruited by national science organizations and applied to the communication of climate change, these opinion leaders might be local organizational members, science teachers, science enthusiasts, science and medicine related professionals, or citizens who are active and attentive to science issues generally. What matters is that they cut across social groups in a community.

When “surges” in communication and public attention are needed —such as surrounding the release of a future section of the IPCC report or a major study by the National Academies of Science— opinion leaders can be activated with talking points to share in conversations with friends and co-workers, in emails, in blog posts, or letters to the editor. These “scientific citizens” would not formally speak on behalf of or represent the scientific organization, but instead their effectiveness would stem from their ability as co-workers and friends to communicate climate change in a way that makes it personally and politically relevant.

Journalists assigned to cover the April 25, 2006, debate over hurricanes and global warming in Monterey, California, may have been justifiably confused. The panel - part of the American Meteorological Society’s twenty-seventh meeting on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology - pitted two distinguished scientists convinced that global climate change has already intensified the average hurricane against two other distinguished scientists who question the reliability of the data used to draw this conclusion. Chris Landsea of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a skeptic of any strong link between hurricane strength and climate change, memorably captured the state of scientific uncertainty when he said, “Everyone involved in this panel discussion is searching for the truth, and I want to compliment everyone for doing that.” He continued: “I get along personally with everyone involved and I want to continue that - even if they're wrong.”

The debate over whether and to what extent global warming may be influencing the behavior of the world’s hurricanes is scientifically complex, rife with data issues, and superimposed atop a disciplinary rift between climate scientists and hurricane forecasters as well as a politically charged debate over what, if anything, needs to be done about it. Whatever relationship is ultimately found to exist between hurricanes and climate change, it will inevitably be complex and statistical. Global warming (defined as an average increase in global temperatures) can never be determined to “cause” a specific storm. However, global warming may affect a great many environmental factors that could, in turn, strengthen hurricanes on average and increase their destructive potential.

First, there’s evidence that global warming will make (or has already made) storms stronger for thermodynamic reasons. Furthermore, if global warming increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere then hurricanes - which cause heavy precipitation and sometimes massive flooding - may produce more rain; similarly, if global warming causes a significant rise in sea level, destructive hurricanes may penetrate further inland. Based on what we already know about global warming, such changes are considered likely in the coming decades, yet the importance of other factors remains much more obscure. Consider the effect of an El Nino year, characterized by strong warming in the tropical Pacific ocean off the coast of South America: It tends to suppress hurricanes in the North Atlantic but increase them in the Eastern Pacific. So how will global warming alter the frequency and strength of what scientists refer to as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO? At this point the question isn’t settled, although scientists suspect that there will probably be an effect.

Scientific Uncertainty and the Tyranny of the News Peg

What does it all add up to? A true headache even for the most seasoned science reporter. “Journalism isn’t used to these kinds of problems,” remarks Andrew Revkin of the New York Times, who has covered the hurricane-global warming debate. He continues: “The great strength of the global warming argument lies in the balance of the evidence. The closer you bore into specific impacts like hurricanes, however, the more equivocal the science gets.” In the face of such complexity, it may seem tempting to pronounce that an utter mismatch exists in this case between the culture of journalism and the culture of science - that, in other words, meaningful reporting on the hurricane-global warming controversy is doomed from the start. In fact, that would be going too far.

Our examination of hurricane-global warming coverage across the national trend-setting newspapers and major regional papers found several noteworthy articles accurately detailing the complexity of the science. At the same time, however, we found some reporters—sometimes in the context of the same stellar writing—building their stories around emotional conflict between scientists, a tendency that drives the researchers themselves to become quite angry at the media.

In truth, however, scientists’ complaints about journalists stirring up or even exacerbating personal controversies capture only one problem with media coverage of the hurricane-global warming link. A more overarching issue is this: Although journalists have framed the story from three main angles—an emphasis on breaking scientific news (defined by the release of a study at Science or Nature), an emphasis on conflict between scientists (by playing up personal tensions at conferences), and an emphasis on government accountability (the control of media statements made by agency scientists)—in each case they have been far too trapped by what Revkin has called the “tyranny of the news peg.”

Motivated by a need to appear objective and cautious, journalists have tried to tie their coverage too closely to breaking events or controversy, a pattern that can be very ill suited to a complex scientific topic like the hurricane-global warming issue. Unfortunately, such coverage sacrifices key elements that readers need most, especially as the 2006 hurricane season enters its peak months of August and September: Sustained attention, a strong emphasis on scientific context, and then—even in the face of inevitable and undeniable scientific uncertainty—an integrated discussion of policy options.

A Connection to Global Warming?

Hurricanes have struck North America and the Caribbean from time immemorial; in 1502, during his fourth voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus dodged a hurricane in the Caribbean Sea. The contemporary focusing event for hurricanes in the U.S. came in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew hammered the Bahamas, Florida, and Louisiana, causing an estimated 26.5 billion dollars in damage. Andrew represented something of an anomaly for its era, however; scientists now believe that a “new normal” for hurricane activity in the North Atlantic began in 1995.

Since then, news organizations have turned hurricane season into an annual ritual, with correspondents descending on the Gulf Coast region every August and September. The stakes were raised dramatically in the year 2004, when an unprecedented four storms—Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne—flattened Florida, costing tens of billion of dollars in insured and uninsured damage. After 2004, few expected that the 2005 North Atlantic season could actually be worse, but of course, it was. A record 28 storms occurred last year, among them monsters like Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, which had the lowest central pressure of any known hurricane in the North Atlantic, a key measure of storm intensity.

Dramatically active North Atlantic hurricane seasons like 2004 and 2005 inevitably trigger speculation about a possible role for global warming—and even before the aforementioned 2005 studies addressed the topic, the theoretical reasons for suspecting an influence were clear. Although many factors affect hurricane strength and the regions in which they occur, scientists have understood since at least the 1950s that hurricanes are fundamentally driven by warm ocean water - that they are, as MIT hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel has put it, “heat engines.”

A hurricane’s inflowing winds draw heat energy from the ocean through the process of evaporation, which locks so-called “latent heat” into molecules of water vapor. At the storm’s eye wall, the moist, warm and spiraling air rises in thick cumulonimbus clouds, fueling a dramatic pressure drop that pulls winds inward still faster along the sea surface. Meanwhile, higher in the atmosphere, the latent heat is released as “sensible heat,” warming the rising air and raising it still higher. In an intensifying hurricane whose central pressure is dropping, stronger inflowing winds trigger still more evaporation, leading to still more rising air, more latent heat release, and so on.

Given these fairly basic processes, many scientists consider it little more than common sense that if you increase the temperature of the ocean (as global warming has not only been predicted but demonstrated to do) then all else being equal, you will also increase the potential intensity that the average hurricane can achieve. (Whether you would increase the total number of storms is a different and more knotty question, and one that scientists have made less progress on.) And in fact, theoretical and computer modeling studies had long suggested that hurricanes would strengthen as global temperatures rose, and that their levels of precipitation would increase.

But the stakes increased considerably in 2005, with the publication of two prominent scientific papers - by MIT’s Kerry Emanuel in Nature and by Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology and his colleagues in Science - suggesting that this problem wasn’t merely one to be considered with an eye to the future; instead, it had already happened. The two studies triggered strong critical responses from many skeptical scientists, including Chris Landsea and others from the hurricane forecasting community, many of whom questioned the reliability of the historical data that Emanuel and Webster used in order to identify trends.

Framing Responsibility for Hurricane Katrina

Into this miasma wandered journalists, who had far more than complicated technical issues to grapple with. Within days of Katrina’s landfall, a framing contest began to spin the still uncertain science in politically advantageous ways. The Emanuel study came out three weeks before Katrina made landfall; the Webster study eight days before Rita hit. On the one hand, a who’s who of Democratic leaders including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Jimmy Carter cited the recent scientific findings to warn that global warming had contributed to the hurricane problem, and to push for action on greenhouse gas emissions.

Variations on this message appeared in two September columns by Nicholas Kristof and two editorials at The New York Times, but also in work by columnists at the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. Skeptics responded by disputing the scientific evidence and insisting that no serious cuts in emissions were required. “There is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, rather incautiously, in early September. Others suggested the real focus should be on adapting coastal areas to the likelihood of future disasters. Later would come reports of personal fights between scientists, and allegations of suppression of dissent at government agencies.

Amidst the political rhetoric and opinion-page debate, many of the science reporters we spoke with for this article believed that in the weeks after Katrina their job was to cover the nature of the science, rather than the dramatic framing of policy implications. “It’s all kind of predictable,” said Mike Toner of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “You know which side someone is on, so the only new element in all of this is data, is scientific research.” Andrew Revkin of The New York Times also expressed skepticism about how advocates had been using the hurricane-climate issue: “Environmentalists and some scientists are trying to now frame hurricanes as the key thing. Back in the 1990s it was the burning Amazon, then it was the melting Arctic, and now it’s the stronger hurricane story.”

Most of the coverage by science writers clustered around the September 16 release of the Webster study in Science, though some reports about the Emanuel study in Nature appeared pre-Katrina. The format for spot news was familiar: Describe the main findings of the study as the lead and middle portion of the article; and then connect the work to any previously published findings. In many cases, articles ended with dissenting comments from scientists, but in shorter articles no counter arguments were included. At least partly addressing this weakness, science writers also wrote technical backgrounders, most of which appeared in the second half of September and early October. In these articles, they tried to draw readers away from the immediacy of the events, and to interpret the debate over the emerging science.

Contextualizing Uncertainty

Science writers, however, faced two major challenges. First, they had to counter the widespread (and incorrect) belief that global warming could be said to directly “cause” a single event like Katrina. In a September 24 backgrounder for The New York Times, Andrew Revkin went with this effective description: “The murkiness arises because the relationship between long-term warming of the climate and seas is only perceptible in statistical studies of dozens of storms, not in the origin or fate of any particular storm.”

Unfortunately, in several articles, reporters appeared to actually confuse the issue of how to understand global trends in hurricane intensity with the question of what might have specifically caused individual hurricanes. For example, in an October 22 article for the Boston Globe, Beth Daley opened by describing the Nature and Science studies, but then transitioned into discussing the conditions in the Caribbean that might have contributed to Katrina’s and Rita’s destructive power. At no point in the article, however, did Daley draw a bright line for readers between long term trends in hurricane intensity and the causes of any specific hurricane or its behavior. Later, in Time magazine’s much noted April cover story on global warming, reporter Jeffrey Kluger fell into the same trap, implying a causal relationship between global warming and Tropical Cyclone Larry, a powerful storm that had just struck Australia.

The second challenge involved relaying the disagreement between scientists in a way that improved on the standard “he said, she said” formula. Context is needed when applying this routine; without a careful dose of details, readers will be left with a cloud of unspecified doubt, as sometimes happened in post-Katrina coverage. (In this case, the most extreme examples took the form of reports filed by the major news networks, where the accent on visuals and drama, and the brevity of the reports, made addressing complexity almost impossible.)

On the other hand, one journalist who successfully went beyond the basic “he said, she said” formula was Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post. In covering the Science study, Eilperin searched around for a researcher who appeared to be going through a process of conversion based on the new findings. She turned to Florida International University scientist Hugh Willoughby, who described it as difficult to find any holes in the new study. “Frequently scientific discoveries force people to reassess how they view something,” said Eilperin of her method. “The fact that some of the former skeptics are willing to go on record and say that they might be changing their minds provides readers with a better context for what is going on.”

In September and October, other news beats also picked up on the global warming and hurricane angle. At the Washington Post, for example, stories ran in the local sections about community meetings focused on the potential threat to the Chesapeake Bay area. Across several papers, foreign correspondents covered statements from European officials about the need for immediate U.S. action on global warming, and business writers reported on calls from the insurance industry for a rethinking of coastal development as well as for limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Veteran science writer Cornelia Dean focused in three articles for The New York Times on coastal development. One of these reports mentioned the connection between global warming and rising ocean levels and another made a brief mention of the suggested link to hurricanes, but neither topic comprised a central focus.

But by November 2005, as no new studies emerged from the major journals and the political clamor subsided, science reporters and their colleagues at other news beats found themselves without a convenient news peg. (It wouldn’t be until early 2006 that journalists would turn to conferences or agency allegations as additional coverage opportunities.) As a consequence, with the exception of a handful of articles, the hurricane-climate issue disappeared from the pages of the agenda-setting newspapers, despite its potential significance.

Between August 30 and the end of October 2005, 19 news stories and opinion articles on the topic ran at The New York Times and Washington Post. Yet between November 2005 and August of this year, only 25 total articles have followed, and 6 of these included only incidental mentions based on reviews of TV programs, documentaries, or books. In comparison, during the same period, hundreds of articles have focused on the political dimensions of Katrina related to race, poverty, recovery efforts, and government competence.

Forward Looking Policy Coverage?

After the destruction of New Orleans by a hurricane and the publication of two major studies suggesting that human activities might have made the average hurricane more intense, news organizations needed to integrate the scientific debate with a serious discussion of the possible policy options, even in the face of ongoing scientific uncertainty. Hurricanes could not necessarily be entirely dismissed as random acts of God, or “whims of nature,” as President Bush described them in his address to the nation from New Orleans. Instead, serious scientific evidence, however contested, suggested that the destructive impacts of hurricanes might have a human component, and that that human component would increase over time.

So the obvious question to ask should have been: Is cutting down on greenhouse gases a good way of addressing potentially growing hurricane risks? Or, given that a dramatic concentration of human greenhouse gas emissions are already in the atmosphere, committing us to a significant degree of warming already, do we have no choice but to simply adapt to hurricane risks through measures such as stronger levee and seawall construction, better evacuation routes and building codes, restoration of natural barriers, or perhaps restricting insurance for some coastal areas? These themes were scattered across the bulk of articles filed at the different news beats, but because they remained disconnected and fragmented, readers had little hope of connecting the dots and understanding the relevance of the information. Fragmentation also likely dampened a sense of urgency about the problem.

Perhaps not surprisingly given the limitations in news coverage, the only place where all of these separate factors came together was on opinion pages. For example, Nicholas Kristof, in his two September 2005 columns at The New York Times, and Ronald Brownstein in a column the same month at the Los Angeles Times, both cited the Nature and Science studies to warn that even in the face of scientific uncertainty, policy discussions needed to take place. “It’s nuts to ignore a threat just because its hard to measure,” wrote Kristof in a September 23 column. “We spend about $500 billion a year on a military budget, yet we don’t want to spend peanuts to protect against climate change, which is a greater potential threat than any foreign military power.”

In his column, Brownstein opened by providing background on the scientific debate, but then transitioned into a policy discussion, asserting: “Indeed, the implications are alarming enough that Washington should begin considering them before all the evidence is in.” On coastal development, he quoted MIT’s Emanuel as follows: “Everyone in my field feels strongly that this is the most important question, almost independent of whether there is global warming.” Brownstein then closed by placing the debate on greenhouse gas emissions in the context of the 2005 federal energy bill, from which mandatory industry emissions cuts and improved fuel standards for cars were ultimately dropped.

By e-mail, we asked Kristof about the possibility for more “precautionary” journalism when it came to covering emerging science with large potential implications for society. “There’s a risk that writing about risks in the future will end up being sensationalist or exaggerated,” he wrote from South Africa, where he was on assignment. “But . . . frankly the public is better served by information about future risks that they can do something about than about those that have already played out.”

If columnists could put these angles together last fall, why couldn’t science writers? In combination with tight deadlines and space, science writers’ need to appear objective and cautious in news reporting led to the heavy reliance on the release of a new study to justify filing a story. The perceived scientific uncertainty concerning the relationship between hurricanes and global warming also made science writers cautious about how to judge the newsworthiness of the issue. “The science is not absolutely settled on this question, and that’s what keeps this from being a bigger story,” said Eilperin of the Washington Post. She continued: “There should be a concern that if you get too far out ahead of the science, if you hype up the story and the science, then you misled readers.” But shouldn’t it be possible for journalists to fully describe scientific uncertainty and yet also introduce readers to the kinds of policy considerations that emerge if one takes a precautionary orientation towards the latest research?

Conflicts and Conferences as Front Page News

With objectivity and caution the guiding norms, in early 2006 some science writers turned to coverage of scientific conferences as their next news peg. In these contexts, outside of the normal vetting process and controlled discourse of the scientific journal article, uncertainty as well as personal conflicts can mushroom. “It’s entirely normal that the first time a scientist presents his results is at a conference like this,” said Kerry Emanuel when asked about the matter in Monterey. “You can’t demand published results [at a conference], nor can you tell journalists they can’t come to a conference.”

Valerie Bauerlein’s front page February 2 Wall Street Journal article represents both the perceived good and bad of this type of coverage. Reporting on the American Meteorological Association meetings in Atlanta, Bauerlein’s article opens with a heavy accent on interpersonal conflict between scientists, a tone amplified by the Page One headline: “Cold Front: Hurricane Debate Shatters Civility of Weather Science.” At the conference, wrote Bauerlein, the reasons for the deadly 2005 hurricane season “were almost too hot to handle.” She then turned to criticisms of the Webster study in Science, quoting longtime Colorado State University hurricane specialist William Gray as saying that “Judith Curry [one of Webster’s co-authors] just doesn't know what she’s talking about,” and then quoting Curry with the reaction that Gray suffered from “brain fossilization.”

The use of scientific conferences and meetings as news pegs also appeared at the Houston Chronicle, the Tampa Tribune, the Denver Post, and several smaller papers, but none of these articles came even close to offering the same kind of opening fireworks. More than any other article, it seems clear that Bauerlein’s piece is the one that scientists have in mind when they condemn the media for overemphasizing personal battles rather than seriously covering the science. Hurricane specialist Chris Landsea of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says his main reaction to the Wall Street Journal piece was “sadness.” He continues: “It’s unfortunate that the debate can kind of devolve into that kind of name calling.”

Despite the dramatic headline and opening paragraphs, as a backgrounder, the 2059 word article by Bauerlein went on to provide some of the best insight into the technical dispute. Yet, the Wall Street Journal's decision to highlight personal conflict in the opening and headline to Bauerlein’s article helped to feed a culture of distrust between scientists and journalists. (We contacted Bauerlein to talk to her about the story, but as per Wall Street Journal policy, were referred to her editor for comments.)

Holding Government Agencies Accountable

In addition to personal conflict, journalists found another hook for the hurricane-global warming story, once again tying their coverage to controversy, although this time of an institutional rather than interpersonal nature. They began to cover charges that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had taken a stance of unjustifiable denial of any hurricane-global warming link, and perhaps even had suppressed scientists within the agency who dissented from this perspective. The “government accountability” angle certainly merited coverage, but once again, it created a formula in which journalists could not pay adequate attention to policy options.

The origins of how government accountability became newsworthy traces back to official agency reaction immediately following Katrina. In Senate testimony on September 20, National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield stated that the current period of intense Atlantic hurricane activity was “not enhanced substantially” by global warming. Then, as the 2005 hurricane season drew to a close, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (of which the hurricane center is part) held a press conference where an agency scientist told reporters that warmer ocean temperatures could be attributed solely to natural climate fluctuations and were “not related to greenhouse warming.” In a press release and in the official agency magazine, NOAA went even further, asserting that the views expressed were a matter of consensus at the agency. In fact, however, no such consensus existed.

Still, the simmering controversy at NOAA did not appear in news coverage until after parallel revelations at the National Aeronautics and Space Agency emerged in early 2006. As first reported by Andrew Revkin in a January 29 article that ran as the lead story in the Sunday edition of The New York Times, NASA’s James Hansen claimed that public affairs officials at the agency had tried to block his ability to make public statements about the urgency of addressing climate change. The prominence of the Times article generated a flurry of follow-up reports at other major media outlets, while setting in motion a series of events that continued to give the story legs.

According to Revkin, when he broke the NASA story, he knew of similar allegations at NOAA, but he could not get a scientist at the agency to go on record—a scenario that he believes quickly changed. “I think after the NASA episode, it emboldened people to go public,” said Revkin. “The Hansen piece uncorked a bottle. It clearly made it easier for a lot of scientists to talk more freely.”

Hansen continued to stir the pot in statements made at a conference in New York, where he claimed he knew NOAA scientists who were afraid to speak out about efforts at information control—comments reported by Juliet Eilperin in a February 11 Washington Post article. With pressure building on NOAA, the stage was set for a February 16 article at The Wall Street Journal by Antonio Regalado and Jim Carlton. The clincher was a Web posting by NOAA administrators in which the agency backed away from the previous year’s statements about the existence a consensus view on hurricanes and global warming. An email followed the same day from the chief administrator to NOAA scientists encouraging them to “speak freely and openly.” Regalado and Carlton included in their story the first on-the-record allegations from NOAA scientists regarding agency efforts to control their statements to the media.

On April 6, Eilperin offered new reporting at the Post, with comments from additional NOAA-affiliated scientists alleging that since 2004 they had been required to clear all press requests with administration officials. In these articles, what had started as a controversy over the emerging science of hurricanes had morphed into a political story about whistle blowers, with an emphasis on the accountability and transparency of government agencies. The accountably frame brings to light important information while allowing journalists to ply their investigative instincts. Nevertheless, reports on the NOAA allegations once again remained disconnected from the context of the science or any discussion of the policy options, only perpetuating a fragmented narrative about the link between hurricanes and global warming and what to do about it.

Science, Policy, and Objectivity

The absence of an ideal narrative on hurricanes and global warming emerges from a complexity of reasons. With tight deadlines and many competing issues surrounding not only Katrina, but global warming generally, there never appeared to be enough time or space to move beyond the tyranny of the news peg. Moreover, the need for science writers to appear cautious and objective also limited the types of assertions they could make, which in turn hindered their ability to shift towards a discussion of policy options. Whereas columnists like Nicholas Kristof and Ronald Brownstein had license to write in the face of scientific uncertainty about the bigger picture, science writers needed credentialed experts to go on record emphasizing the need for a policy focus. For whatever reason, even though out-of-office political leaders like Al Gore and spokespeople for major environmental groups kept pushing this theme, they never gained standing as sources in news coverage. Science writers made oblique references to these political claims, but generally used them to set up their “just the scientific facts” backgrounders.

In the future, however, this just isn’t going to be good enough. Over the next decade or more, explaining the possible strategies for coping with intense hurricanes even in the face of uncertainty about the ways and extent to which hurricanes might be changing will pose a major challenge for news organizations. Reporters must strive to show the public not only the science in all of its complexity, but also to open a window on why addressing the problem matters and the choices the nation faces over how to do that. This will require balancing the desire to appear objective against the need for precautionary and forward-looking coverage - coverage that helps set the agenda for how we think about the possible effects of global warming. It will also require getting beyond the tyranny of relying on major new studies, personality conflicts, or overt political conflict as the primary means of defining what counts as newsworthy.

And just in time: Outside of the media spotlight, a vigorous discussion has already begun between scientists and policy analysts about the extent to which the emerging science on hurricanes and global warming does or does not justify an attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions or adopt other precautionary policy measures. On the one hand, University of Colorado political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. and his colleagues argue that by far the most important factors influencing our susceptibility to hurricanes are “growing population and wealth in exposed coastal locations.” When viewed in comparison with the urgent need to address this societally-induced vulnerability, they maintain that the question of whether or not hurricanes might themselves be growing stronger is quickly overshadowed in significance. On the other hand, in an article in the May issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, a group of leading climate scientists and hurricane experts claim that the balance of the evidence already suggests a human impact on hurricanes, and urge a more precautionary approach to policy.

Both sides of this debate worry about the vulnerability of coastal areas, but then the question becomes, Will they become even more vulnerable due to global warming, and if so, what should we do about it? These issues, while of massive importance, are routinely ignored by policymakers; for example, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin has stated that “Katrina is the standard” when it comes to rebuilding the city’s levees, even though the more extreme global warming scenarios suggest that this could be woefully inadequate in the long term.

Responsibility for effectively covering these emerging policy questions should not rest solely with journalists. For example, Pielke suggests that improving coverage will require a rethinking of the role of scientists as communicators. “Scientists need to say why research about this is of public interest,” argues Pielke. “If the scientists being interviewed, and the journalists don’t include the policy context, it’s a little bit of a Rorschach test for the public, and it gets mapped on to the underlying ideological debate.” He points to a recent report by the British Royal Society that recommends that science journals, when releasing an important new study, also simultaneously publish a separate, peer-reviewed article that outlines the policy relevance of the work. When covering the release of future scientific studies, if journalists could simultaneously turn to authoritative, peer-reviewed assertions about what might be done in the policy realm, it might make it easier for them to move beyond a “just the science” approach.

Indeed, in late July a group of ten climate scientists and hurricane experts including Kerry Emanuel, Chris Landsea, Max Mayfield, Judith Curry, and Peter Webster issued a joint statement calling attention to the immediate policy implications of the hurricane problem. The group observed that although they currently disagree over whether hurricanes have measurably intensified due to global warming, that ongoing scientific debate should not distract from addressing the immediate problem of population growth and development in coastal regions. “We are optimistic that continued research will eventually resolve much of the current controversy over the effect of climate change on hurricanes. But the more urgent problem of our lemming-like march to the sea requires immediate and sustained attention,” wrote the group. “We call upon leaders of government and industry to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of building practices, and insurance, land use, and disaster relief policies that currently serve to promote an ever-increasing vulnerability to hurricanes.” The statement was covered by Andrew Revkin on July 25 as part of his paper’s weekly Science Times section, but to date, it has yet to be picked up by other major media outlets.

In sum, science writers continue to worry about how the issue of hurricanes and global warming is being used politically, and many also assert that caution demands the publication of more research before they can move ahead on the story. These are all legitimate concerns, and the pressure exerted by both editors and media watchdogs to not “take sides” is real. Yet given their specialization and experience, science writers are perhaps uniquely qualified to shield themselves from allegations of bias, and to interpret the policy implications of the subjects they're covering for readers. As long as they ground their stories in thorough, fair-minded reporting and do not stray into unsupported speculation or unnecessary argumentation, these journalists could provide a true public service. Such changes in how journalists and scientists negotiate what counts as news could mean that, when the next big storm hits, we have a chance to bring the policy questions into sharper focus. Otherwise, the public will be left with an all-too-familiar repeating narrative of conflict and doubt.

Few Americans associate nuclear energy with slogans like “Atoms for peace” or “electricity too cheap to meter.” Yet before the 1970s, nuclear energy production was framed almost exclusively in these terms, with the technology defined as leading to social progress, economic development, and a better way of life. When President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 delivered his “atoms for peace” speech before the United Nations, demand for electricity in the U.S. was doubling each decade, while Europe faced severe energy shortages. The construction of nuclear power plants at home was expected to give the U.S. an important economic advantage, and the promotion of civilian nuclear technology abroad was considered a key diplomatic tool in winning allies against the Soviet Union.

The oil crisis of the early 1970s added a third positive interpretation to the technology, as the development of nuclear power was repackaged as a path to energy independence. Frames changed, however, in the mid-1970s as Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates re-interpreted nuclear energy in terms of public accountability, arguing that the industry had become a powerful special interest. Environmentalists also began to emphasize alternative paths to energy independence, with a focus on energy conservation, and solar, hydro, and wind generation. Other groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists emphasized that nuclear energy production was simply not cost-effective. Atomic energy also became wrapped up in the “nuclear freeze” movement, as the Jimmy Carter administration limited the export of civilian technology abroad, and as protestors swarmed nuclear power plants at home. (For overviews, see Gamson and Modigliani, 1989; Weart, 1988.)

The tipping point for the image of nuclear energy was the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. As Gamson and Modigliani note, several weeks before the TMI incident, the popular China Syndrome movie was released. With its focus on industry secrecy and incompetence, the film emphasized an interpretation of public accountability. More importantly, with the film’s reactor meltdown climax, the movie amplified a new frame focusing on the potential runaway nature of the technology. In this interpretation, nuclear power was portrayed as a Frankenstein’s monster beyond the ability of citizens to control.

When news reports of TMI galvanized national attention, the prevailing frames of public accountability and runaway technology became the major modes of interpretation. (Consider this Time magazine cover featuring an ominous picture of the reactor with the headline “Nuclear Nightmare.”) The accident helped set in motion a dominant media narrative that went on to spotlight additional examples of construction flaws, incompetence, faulty management, and potential risks at nuclear power plants across the country. Since 1979, no new nuclear power plants have been built in the U.S, though more than 100 power plants remain in operation.

The public accountability and runaway technology frames were only strengthened in 1986 with the Chernoybl disaster. The accident generated worldwide attention, and although U.S. journalists avoided excessive amounts of fear-inducing imagery, few media reports adequately contextualized the focusing event by providing details on the comparative safety record of the American nuclear energy industry (Friedman, Gorney, and Egolf, 1992.)

New Debate, Same Frames

In 2001, against the backdrop of rising energy costs, the newly elected Bush administration launched a communication campaign to promote nuclear energy as a path to energy independence. The terrorist attacks of September 11 dampened the viability of this frame package, as subsequent media reports focused on nuclear power plants as potential terrorist targets. But since 2004, as energy prices have climbed and as the dependence on overseas oil has been defined as a major national security issue, a renewed emphasis on the energy independence interpretation has surfaced.

The effort has been complemented by an attempt to sell nuclear energy as a technofix to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Former New Jersey GOP Governor and EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman along with Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore are pushing this theme in a national media campaign. Their tagline is that nuclear energy is “cleaner, cheaper, and safe.” According to their argument, if Americans are going to satisfy their energy demands while achieving the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the country needs to re-invest in nuclear energy.

In a May 24 speech at the Limerick Generating Station in Pennsylvania, President Bush employed these two frames in promoting his nuclear energy proposal. First, rather confusingly he argued: “People in our country are rightly concerned about greenhouse gases and the environment, and I can understand why—I am, too. As a matter of fact, I try to tell people, let’s quit the debate about whether greenhouse gases are caused by mankind or by natural causes; let’s just focus on technologies that deal with the issue. Nuclear power will help us deal with the issue of greenhouse gases.”

Then Bush moved to pushing nuclear energy as a step towards energy independence, increased national security, and enhanced economic development. “For the sake of economic security and national security, the United States of America must aggressively move forward with the construction of nuclear power plants. Other nations are. Interestingly enough, France has built 58 plants since the 1970s, and now gets 78 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.... China has nine nuclear plants in operation and they got—plan to build 40 more over the next two decades. They understand that in order to be an aggressive nation, an economic nation that is flourishing so that people can benefit, they better do something about their sources of electricity. They see it. India—I just came from India—they’re going to build some nuclear power plants.”

The frames used to argue against nuclear energy also remain familiar, paralleling the interpretations first introduced in the mid-1970s. Groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists push a public accountability interpretation, demanding that nuclear plants be tightly regulated. “We continue to find and expose safety problems at individual plants, in industry standards, and in the failure of regulators to take effective action,” reports UCS on their Web page. Other groups like Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace emphasize in their opposition not only the potential runaway dangers, but also the absence of cost-effectiveness. They advocate instead soft-path alternatives like increased energy efficiency and the development of solar, wind, and hydro energy production. They use the tagline that nuclear power is “not safe, not cost effective, and not needed.”

Where Does the Public Stand?

As is common in policy debates, advocates on both sides claim that the public backs their preferred policy options. Take for example Christine Todd Whitman and Patrick Moore. In a May Boston Globe op-ed, they write: “A recent nationwide poll by Bisconti Research found that 86 percent of Americans see nuclear energy as an important part of meeting future electricity needs and 77 percent agree that utilities should prepare now to build new nuclear plants in the next decade.” But is this an accurate characterization of public opinion?

The Bisconti polling was commissioned by the Nuclear Energy Institute, a pro-industry think tank. As a general rule, polls commissioned by advocacy groups often paint things in rosier terms than polls conducted by news organizations or independent outfits like Gallup or the Pew Center for the People and the Press. The polling on nuclear energy is no exception. The problem, however, is that the NEI surveys are by far the best historical record of public sentiment, with items asked consistently every year since the early 1980s. Other surveys have been administered only intermittently.

Figure 1. NEI: Percentage of Public Favoring Nuclear Energy

Note: The Nuclear Energy Institute asked respondents: “Overall, do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose the use of nuclear energy as one of the ways to provide electricity in the United States?” Survey results based on nationally representative samples of U.S. adults. (Data not available for 1997.)

Figure 1 plots the results of one of the standard items asked nearly every year by NEI since the early 1980s. Notice the variations in public support over time, particularly the drop in support after Chernobyl in 1986. The dip again in 1995 and 1996 is not as easily explained, though it could be attributable to negative news attention brought about by the ten year anniversary of Chernobyl. The trend in rising public support appears to recover in 1998, peaks in 2001 during that year’s energy debate, declines in 2002 and 2003 with the threat of terrorist attacks on power plants, and then climbs to historic highs in 2004-2006. Today, according to the NEI polls, roughly 70% of the public say that they favor the use of nuclear energy as one of the ways to provide electricity in the U.S.

Figure 2. Percentage of Public Favoring Nuclear Energy

Note: Gallup asked respondents: “Overall, do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose the use of nuclear energy as one of the ways to provide electricity for the US (United States)?” ABC News asked respondents: “In general, would you favor or oppose building more nuclear power plants at this time?” CBS News asked respondents: “Would you approve or disapprove of building more nuclear power plants to generate electricity?” Survey results based on nationally representative samples of U.S. adults.

It is not surprising that independent polling, conducted intermittently across years, reflects lower levels of public support than the NEI surveys. For example, using almost identical question wording, Gallup finds that in 2006, only a little more than a majority of American adults favor nuclear energy. However, similar to the NEI results, the Gallup trends do reflect an aggregate increase in public support over 2001 levels. Yet, when asked in 2005 by ABC News using different question wording, only a little more than 30% of the public say they favor “building more nuclear power plants at this time.” For the ABC News polls, there is also a decline in support between 2001 and 2005.

Figure 3. Percentage Favoring Local Construction

Note: NEI asked respondents: “If a new power plant were needed to supply electricity would it be acceptable to you or not acceptable to you to add a new reactor at the site of the nearest nuclear power plant that already is operating?” Gallup asked respondents: “Overall, would you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose the construction of a nuclear energy plant in your area as one of the ways to provide electricity for the US (United States)?” No data available for 2003. Gallup data not available for 2002 and 2004.

Context, however, also matters. For example, the public may favor investment in nuclear energy generally, but when asked about the possibility of a nuclear power plant in their area, the “Not in My Backyard” syndrome may apply. In this case, NEI and Gallup have asked about the issue somewhat differently. NEI has been more technical in their word choice, asking about the construction of a new nuclear power plant in an area where a nuclear plant already exists. The question wording implies a more remote location for the respondent. In these NEI polls, support has increased since 2001, rising to roughly 70% in 2006.

Gallup polls find a similar increase in support across years, but when asked specifically about the possibility of “future construction of a nuclear energy plant in your area,” the percentage of the public favoring construction is only slightly more than 40% in 2006.

Figure 4. Nuclear Energy Compared to Other Environmental Proposals

Note: Gallup asked respondents: “Next I am going to read some specific environmental proposals. For each one, please say whether you generally favor or oppose it. How about... opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for oil exploration?... expanding the use of nuclear energy?...setting higher auto emissions standards for automobiles?... more strongly enforcing federal environmental regulations?... spending more government money on developing solar and wind power?...setting higher emissions and pollution standards for business and industry?” Solar and wind not asked in 2003.

Context also matters when thinking about how the need for nuclear energy is defined. When asked by Gallup in survey questions about nuclear energy as an “environmental proposal,” the public offers far stronger support for other policy measures than for nuclear energy, though support for the nuclear alternative has indeed increased since 2001. In the poll results displayed in Figure 4, nuclear energy scores only just above drilling in Alaska’s Artic National Refuge in terms of favorability, and does not have nearly as much support as curbing auto emissions, enforcing environmental laws, investing in solar or wind power, or cutting industry emissions.

Figure 5. Nuclear Energy Compared to Other Energy Proposals

Note: Pew asked respondents: “As I read some possible government policies to address America’s energy supply, tell me whether you would favor or oppose each. Would you favor or oppose the government...promoting the increased use of nuclear power?... spending more on subway, rail and bus systems?... giving tax cuts to energy companies to develop wind, solar and hydrogen technology?... requiring better fuel efficiency for cars, trucks and SUVs?

However, even when framed directly as a possible solution to the national energy problem, investment in nuclear power is still not a preferred option in comparison to other policy proposals. When Pew asked in 2005 and 2006 about nuclear energy as a specific way to address the country’s energy supply, it ranked well behind other policy options, including expanding forms of public transportation, incentives for developing renewable energy sources, and requiring better automobile fuel efficiency.

Outlook

Nuclear energy is likely to remain a “third rail” of environmental politics, with many environmental groups willing to devote heavy resources to opposing any new plant construction. Nuclear energy is also likely to remain an ambivalent issue for the generation of Americans who lived through Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, with the images and frames of a runaway technology easily evoked by carefully designed message strategies. However, the more time passes with no new focusing events related to the dangers of nuclear energy, and as the perceived urgency of energy independence and global warming increases, public support in the aggregate is also likely to increase, as recent poll trends suggest. Framing will be the central device by which both advocates and opponents of nuclear energy manage public opinion at the national level. However, if and when the decision is made to build a new nuclear power plant in a specific area, mobilized minorities of local citizens will prove decisive. Who shows up to protest, vote, or speak out at the local level will have a stronger impact on the future of nuclear energy in the U.S. than the current struggle to shape national opinion.

References

• Friedman, S.M., Gorney, C.M., and Egolf, B.P. (1992). Chernobyl coverage: How the U.S. media treated the nuclear industry. Public Understanding of Science, 1, 305-323.
• Gamson, WA. and Modigliani, A. (1989). Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach. American Journal of Sociology, 95, 1-37.
• Weart, S. R. (1988). Nuclear Fear: A History of Images. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

As scientists work to gain a better understanding of the threat, and U.S. health officials prepare for a possible domestic outbreak, public concern and perceptions will be shaped chiefly by news coverage. Yet how much coverage of Avian flu has there been in the media, especially in comparison to the SARS outbreak of 2002 and 2003, or in relation to other contemporary issues competing for the public’s focus? Just how engaged and concerned is the public about Avian flu? And how is the public likely to make up its mind about the severity of the problem? Answers to these questions are important, since most health officials would prefer that the public be informed and concerned about the issue, but not alarmed.

How Much News Coverage of Avian Flu?

News attention has been, and is likely to remain, fragmented and event-driven, peaking in relation to newly reported human infections or in reaction to the spread of infected birds, and then quickly disappearing into periods of non-attention. This “up and down” pattern of media attention will also depend heavily on the number of other competing issues that might be defined as the “news” of the moment. Figure 1 plots the pattern of news attention to Avian flu across recent months at The New York Times and at the ABC and NBC evening newscasts. The Times, more than any other news organization, sets the agenda of issues for other media outlets, and the network newscasts remain the primary source of news for most Americans.

Figure 1. Media Attention to Avian (Bird) Flu

Note: Trends reflect the number of combined news reports appearing monthly on ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News, and the monthly number of articles appearing at The New York Times, containing in the headline or lead paragraph “avian flu” or “bird flu.”

Since January 2003, The Times has run 267 stories, though more than half of these articles occur across just a few months, with 63 articles running in October and November 2005, and 81 articles appearing in January, February, and March 2006. The two network newscasts have run a combined 100 reports (61 at NBC and 39 at ABC), with roughly 60% of these reports appearing in either October/November 2005 (43) or between January and March 2006 (16).

News about Avian flu has competed with many other issues for the media’s attention. Though across January, February, and March 2006, 81 articles appeared about Avian flu at The Times, during this same period more than 1,000 articles ran about Iraq, and 220 articles about Hurricane Katrina. This, of course, is without accounting for the steady diet of crime, celebrity, and soft news topics featured across outlets such as Fox News, local television, and various magazines.

Moreover, despite warnings about a potential global pandemic, Avian flu has yet to earn the type of media celebrity status that SARS achieved in 2003. By July of that year, according to the World Health Organization, SARS had infected 8098 individuals across 26 countries including Canada, resulting in 774 deaths. The scope of the SARS outbreak triggered attention across American newsbeats, generating coverage from health, political, science, and business correspondents, as well as columnists and pundits. Between April 1 and July 1, 2003, The Times devoted 550 articles to the topic, making SARS one of the top news stories of the year. With similar intensity, the two TV news broadcasts made SARS a regular feature of weekly news, with a combined 149 reports across the three months.

How Closely Has the Public Been Following Avian Flu?

In light of the relatively modest levels of media attention to Avian flu, and considering the many competing events in the news, it is not surprising that relatively few Americans report following the issue very closely, and that public concern remains relatively low. Figure 2 plots the percentage of the public, who when asked, answer that they have been following the topic of Avian flu “very closely.”

Figure 2. Percentage Following Avian Flue “Very Closely?”

Note: With slight variations in question wording across polls, respondents were asked: Now I will read a list of some stories covered by news organizations this past month. As I read each item, tell me if you happened to follow this news story very closely, fairly closely, not too closely, or not at all closely. The outbreak of bird flu in Asia and Europe? *Indicates sample based on registered voters rather than all national adults.

Notice in the graph that public attention tracks closely with the amount of media coverage the issue may be receiving in any given month. The peak measure of attention, 32%, occurs in early December 2005, following the two months of heaviest news coverage to date. Public focus, however, has yet to reach the level for SARS, with 39% of adults in an April 2003 Pew poll and 42% in a June 2003 Kaiser survey indicating that they were paying very close attention to the SARS outbreak. The higher levels of public attention to SARS are not surprising, given the heavy media coverage to the topic during that period. Public attention to news about avian flu also falls short of the recorded high for West Nile Virus (43% following the issue very closely; Kaiser Poll, Oct. 2002).

In comparison to major political issues, according to the Pew News Interest Index, in October 2005, 69% of respondents said they were following news about the impact of Katrina very closely, and 67% said they were following high gas prices very closely. Indeed, the public’s heavy focus on these competing topics probably displaced what would have otherwise been closer attention to the threat of Avian flu.

With relatively low levels of public attention, only a quarter of Americans across polls indicate that they are “worried” that they or someone in their family might contract Avian flu, and only a quarter of Americans say that they are “very concerned” about the issue. Despite speculation that a panicked public might start hoarding Tamiflu to use in the event of a bird flu outbreak, a recent Harvard School of Public Health survey finds that only 2% of Americans have talked to their doctor about the matter. Other than a function of media coverage, low levels of public concern are also probably a product of human nature, with Americans discounting an uncertain future risk, regardless of its potential impact. Americans are also probably desensitized to the Avian flu threat based on past warnings related to Mad Cow Disease, West Nile Virus, and more recently, SARS.

Where Do Americans Get Their News and Who Do They Trust?

On the important matter of information sources and trust, in the recent Harvard survey, when asked where they had gotten information about Avian flu, 80% of respondents said television, 50% said newspapers, 34% said radio, 4% said their doctor, 5% said a government Web site, and 11% indicated a non-government Web site. When asked hypothetically about an outbreak of Avian flu in the U.S., 73% of the public said they would trust the CDC as a source of information either a great deal or good amount, followed by the Secretary of Human and Health Services at 55%, the Food and Drug Administration at 53%, the Secretary of the Agriculture at 43%, and the Secretary of Homeland Security at 32%.

Outlook

Though experts are often quick to criticize the media, so far, there is little evidence that news coverage of Avian flu has promoted undue alarm among the American public. Public attention to the topic remains relatively low, while few Americans express worry that they or their family might contract the virus. Yet, looking ahead, public concern is likely to track closely with levels of media coverage, and in relation to the nature of competing events or issues. Similar to West Nile Virus, if infected birds are found in North America, or the first human cases occur, media attention and public concern are likely to sharply increase.

In this sense, the news media serve an important surveillance function. The great majority of the public will continue to pay limited attention to either the details or the nature of the issue until a major spike in news stories alerts them to an imminent and urgent problem. At that time, it is likely that a small segment of the public will turn to the Internet and to newspaper coverage for more detailed information, while the rest of the public will rely heavily on the directions and reassurances of government agencies and public figures that they trust, messages that will be encountered by way of television news.

The bad news is that public belief in other forms of paranormal phenomena shows little or no significant change. Specifically, there remains relatively strong belief in psychic/spiritual healing (55% say they believe, 17% say they are unsure, and only 26% say they don’t believe), in devil possession (42%, 13%, and 44% across response categories), and in haunted houses (37%, 16%, and 46% respectively).

Tracking paranormal beliefs remains an uncertain business. Unlike major political issues, polling organizations rarely measure paranormal beliefs using exact question wording across years. The Gallup data remain the only consistently administered items that allow for historical analysis. Therefore, absent other poll items, it’s not possible to say with confidence whether the 2005 results are a blip or part of a real trend.

With this in mind, let’s assume for the moment that the observed changes relative to ESP, telepathy, spirit mediumship, and extra-terrestrials are indeed real. What could account for the small decline in these beliefs, but not in other beliefs such as devil possession, spiritual healing, or ghosts? These latter claims are strongly anchored in traditional Christian teachings, sustained by social structures that reinforce belief over time. In contrast, aliens, psychics, and spirit mediums are not as closely connected to the traditional religions. Instead, they are the paranormal topics that became media sensations in the late 1990s, only to decline in media prominence since 2001.

Take a look at figure 1. The graph plots the number of New York Times and Washington Post articles that contain in their headline or lead paragraph various key words specific to either UFOs or psychics/spirit mediums. The archives of these two papers provide a crude but easily accessible cultural barometer. By searching news items, features, and reviews, the two papers provide a rough guide to the relative prominence of these paranormal topics in popular culture.

Figure 1. Media Indicators Specific to Psychics and Aliens

Note: Trends reflect the number of combined articles appearing annually in the New York Times and the Washington Post containing in the headline or lead paragraph the key words for psychic: “psychic” or “psychic medium” or “spirit medium” or “extrasensory perception,” or “ESP,” or the keywords for UFOs: “UFO” or “alien abduction” or “extraterrestrial.”

According to the data, cultural fascination with UFOs reached a historic peak in 1996, and remained at an all-time high in 1997. The trend was boosted by the fiftieth anniversary of the alleged UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, and the popularity of entertainment products such as Independence Day and The X-Files. However, attention to aliens plummeted in 1999, and has yet to recover significantly. (For more background, see this 2002 column I wrote for American Prospect online).

Media fascination with psychics follows a similar trend. This topic peaked in popular culture at a historic high in 1999 and 2000, and then sharply declined in 2001. As I have described in previous columns (here and here), the terrorist attacks that year had a sobering effect on the American media. The events temporarily shifted journalists away from soft news topics like psychics and back to hard news topics like foreign affairs.

Whether it was psychic mediums like John Edward (remember him?), or UFO conspiracy theories like Roswell, the topics popular culture once thought were important suddenly seemed altogether trivial. There remain many TV series, films, books, and news stories that deal with psychics, mediums, or aliens, and if this last television season is any indication, more are on their way. Yet according to the data, over the past few years, these themes haven’t been nearly as central to the American zeitgeist as they once were.

Why does the media environment matter when thinking about the origins of public belief? The answer turns on a theory of media effects called priming. According to this research (see references), individual opinion is heavily dependent on the types of considerations and examples about a topic that are available in short term memory. Which depictions of reality are more accessible in a person’s mind than others is a function of the nature of media content and the media consumption habits of the individual. The persuasion influence of the media is enhanced in this case because few individuals, when watching TV or a movie, think systematically about the reality of the portrayals that are featured.

Absent a motivation to actively evaluate the depictions of the paranormal that might be featured on TV, when asked in a telephone survey to reach a judgment about the reality of UFOs or psychics, for most heavy media consumers, depictions alleging the reality of these claims remain more readily accessible than counter-examples. The result is that as the frequency and availability of media depictions about UFOs or aliens increases, such as was the case in the late 1990s, there is likely to be a rise at the aggregate level in belief in these paranormal claims. As the prominence and availability of these examples decreases, as was the case after 2001, there is likely to be a decline at the aggregate level in belief. Over time, up and down media cycles in attention to these claims are likely to closely correlate with marginal shifts in belief.

At the individual-level, the media mechanism contributing to paranormal belief can be tested in two ways. First, if surveys were to ask about levels of attention to specific types of programs that feature paranormal claims, heavier consumers of these programs should be more likely to believe in these media promoted paranormal claims than their lighter viewing counterparts, after controlling statistically for demographics and other possible confounds. Collecting and analyzing panel survey data over time would be the best way to identify whether consumers of these TV products are just believers seeking televised outlets for their fantasies, or whether regular consumption of certain program genres actually enhances belief. Second, if the availability in short term memory of examples about a topic contributes to belief, then when asked in a survey about a paranormal claim, response times to the question should be faster for heavier media consumers than for their lighter viewing counterparts.

The media’s influence, however, should not be thought of only in terms of direct persuasion. There are a number of complex indirect effects that are likely to promote belief in the paranormal. For example, media exposure to a paranormal claim is likely to motivate some media consumers to seek out more information about the topic. Unfortunately, the most readily accessible books and Web sites are only likely to reinforce the apparent veracity of these claims. Notice for example the range of results for a Google search on “UFO crash Roswell, New Mexico,” or “spirit mediums.”

Finally, media depictions are only part of the puzzle. Media portrayals appear to only move public opinion about these claims in relatively limited ways. In addition, media influence is likely to vary across or be contingent upon a number of other variables such as education, age, ethnicity, and conversation partners. Careful research in this area is merited before firm conclusions can be reached.

References

• Shrum, L. J., (2002). Media Consumption and Perceptions of Social Reality: Effects and Underlying Processes, in Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, eds. Jennings Bryant & Dolf Zillmann, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 69-95.
• Sparks, G.G. and Miller, W. (2001). Investigating the relationship between exposure to television programs that depict paranormal phenomena and beliefs in the paranormal. Communication Monographs, 1, 98-113.
• Sparks, G.G. and Pellechia, M. (1997). The effect of news stories about UFOs on readers’ UFO beliefs: The role of confirming or disconfirming testimony from a scientist. Communication Reports, 10, 165-172.
• Sparks, G.G., Pellechia, M., and Irvine, C. (1998). Does television news about UFOs affect viewers’ UFO beliefs? An experimental investigation. Communication Quarterly, 46, 284-293.

Figure 2. Belief in ESP or Extrasensory Perception

Note: Gallup asked respondents: For each of the following items I am going to read you, please tell me whether it is something you believe in, something you’re not sure about, or something you don’t believe in. How about ESP or extrasensory perception? For 1990, N=1,226, margin of error +/-3% at 95% confidence level; 1996, N=1,000, +/-3%; 2001, N=1,012, +/-3%; 2005, N=1,002, +/-3%. Not displayed “No opinion.”

Figure 3. Belief in Telepathy or Communication Between Minds

Note: Gallup asked respondents: For each of the following items I am going to read you, please tell me whether it is something you believe in, something you’re not sure about, or something you don’t believe in. Telepathy, or communication between minds without using the traditional five senses? For 1990, N=1,226, margin of error +/-3% at 95% confidence level; For 1996, N=1,000, +/-3%; For 2001, N=1,012, +/-3%; For 2005, N=1,002, +/-3%. Not displayed “No opinion.”

Figure 4. Belief in Communication With the Dead

Note: Gallup asked respondents: For each of the following items I am going to read you, please tell me whether it is something you believe in, something you’re not sure about, or something you don’t believe in. That people can hear from or communicate mentally with someone who has died? For 1990, N=1,226, margin of error +/-3% at 95% confidence level; For 1996, N=1,000, +/-3%; For 2001, N=1,012, +/-3%; For 2005, N=1,002, +/-3%. Not displayed “No opinion.”

Figure 5. Belief that Extra-Terrestrials Have Visited Earth

Note: Gallup asked respondents: For each of the following items I am going to read you, please tell me whether it is something you believe in, something you’re not sure about, or something you don’t believe in. That extra-terrestrial beings have visited earth at some time in the past? For 1990, N=1,226, margin of error +/-3% at 95% confidence level; For 2001, N=1,012, +/-3%; For 2005, N=1,002, +/-3%. Not displayed “No opinion.”

The press left unchallenged the industry and U.S. government view that the health and environmental risks of GM agriculture are minimal. For example, the Washington Post characterized European public opposition as really a matter of social perceptions: “An overwhelming body of scientific opinion — including regulators at the European Food Safety Authority and scientific institutes in most European countries — holds that the crops are safe to eat and pose only minor environmental risks. But European consumers were burned by food-safety scandals in the 1990s involving dioxin-laced chickens, beef capable of causing a fatal brain disease, and other disasters in which they were initially assured that the foods were safe. Their trust in the opinion of European, much less American, scientists on such matters is low.”

Alternative and more dramatic interpretations, however, were available. London’s Daily Mail tabloid trumpeted headlines full of moral outrage: “America’s GM food blitz on Ireland: Floodgates opened to Frankenstein Food.” In another article appearing at the tabloid, a Friends of the Earth UK spokesperson was able to dramatically frame the decision in terms of public accountability, with the following prominent quote: “This ruling is a direct attack on democracy. Last year, European countries voted to uphold national bans on GM products. This dispute is a desperate attempt by the U.S. and biotech industry to force GM foods onto an unwilling European market. But consumers will not be bullied into eating GM foods.” A similar framing was emphasized in coverage at The Guardian by a second spokesperson for FoE UK: “It’s a desperate attempt to force these products on an unwilling market. This will lead to even greater opposition to GM crops. Protecting wildlife, farmers and consumers is far more important than free trade rules.”

Press materials issued by U.S.-based advocacy groups, including Friends of the Earth USA, Consumers Union, and the Center for Food Safety, offered similar dramatic interpretations. For example, in the media release from FoE USA, identical themes of public accountability were echoed: “The WTO is unfit to decide what we eat or what farmers grow. It is an undemocratic and secretive institution that has no particular competence in environmental or health and safety matters.” A spokesperson from the group was quoted at the end of the NY Times article, but her public accountability framing was muted by the dominant international trade lead to the story. In follow-up coverage appearing this week on the front page of the Times’ business section, potentially negative evaluations were narrowly focused. Instead of describing the values-based arguments favored by Europeans, the article detailed research and market failures in producing the much hyped nutritional and human health benefits of the technology.

The American press reaction to the WTO decision is consistent with the history of coverage of the plant biotechnology debate in the U.S. Indeed, the framing of the issue almost exclusively around economic and research angles has helped limit political controversy over plant biotechnology in North America. I base this conclusion on the findings of a soon-to-be-published study analyzing twenty-five years of coverage of the issue at the Washington Post and the New York Times (Nisbet and Huge, forthcoming.)

The two national news organizations, as the key outlets setting the tone for the rest of the U.S. media, have consistently covered plant biotechnology as an “industry” or “regulatory” story, with coverage delegated to business and science reporters, and little or no attention from the political pages. Absent drama, moral urgency, and political conflict in reporting, plant biotechnology, even in its peak years of attention (2000-01), has rested only very modestly on the overall news agenda, receiving less total coverage than other competing science and technology issues such as the Human Genome Project or even the now dormant debate over nuclear energy.

These media trends have helped create very fertile political ground for the plant biotechnology industry in the U.S. Although I commend American journalists for avoiding the type of sensationalist hyperbole featured at the British tabloids, the U.S. press has largely ignored a range of legitimate concerns about the impact of GM crops. Since the early 1980s, several environmental and consumer groups have been calling attention to perceived systemic-level problems in the monitoring and successful segregation of plant biotechnology products, but despite extensive efforts, these groups have had little success in changing policy. A series of key federal regulatory decisions in the late 1980s and early 1990s successfully limited official debate about the technology to a narrow range of short-term health and environmental factors. Out-of-bounds for serious consideration in regulation were uncertainties about long term environmental or health risks, or calculations of social, ethical, or economic impacts. Moreover, the biotech industry has been ultra-successful at limiting the types of groups who are allowed input at regulatory agencies such as the FDA, the EPA, the USDA, and various scientific advisory boards, while the industry has enjoyed almost uniform bi-partisan support from Congress and the White House.

Science writers and business reporters have downplayed differences in opinion across academic disciplines about the impacts and risks of plant biotechnology. In her analysis of biotech coverage, Priest (2001) observes that science writers often rely heavily on the voices of university-based plant biotechnologists who define risk narrowly in terms of short term threats to human health or the environment, while leaving out views from other disciplines, such as ecologists who might perceive risk in terms of the impacts on the wider ecosystem, or social scientists who might discuss social, economic, and ethical risks. Indeed, surveys of university scientists and social scientists reflect the diversity in opinion about biotechnology that occurs outside the discipline of plant genetics, including contrarian views that are likely to go unreported if science writers focus narrowly on plant scientists as their only academic sources (See Lyson 2000; Priest and Gillespie 2000).

Though increased media attention to plant biotechnology and to more dramatic definitions of the issue have surfaced in recent years, challenging the status quo in regulation, the ability of the biotech industry in early policy decisions to define the debate around short term environmental and health risks has led to lasting and powerful feedback effects (Sheingate, forthcoming). The early success was in part attributable to minimal media coverage, which made the late 1980s policy decisions along with precedent-setting early 1990s market approvals essentially “non-decisions” for the wider public. This is in contrast to the U.K and Europe, where from the beginning, there has been much wider social input. The early inclusion of environmental, consumer, and labor groups, and the comparatively stronger emphasis on transparency and public accountability, led to a very different European regulatory regime that took into account social and economic factors as well as the possibility of unknown future technical risks (For a comparative history, see Jasanoff, 2005).

Despite attempts to shift debate towards more dramatic frames by various opposition groups, media discourse in the U.S. around plant biotechnology has remained predominantly technical. Because the issue has remained debated almost exclusively within regulatory agencies, and because the issue has remained defined in technical and scientific terms, it is likely that journalists have been unable to place plant biotechnology into a larger narrative structure, giving greater meaning to passing events, thereby facilitating an increase in coverage of the issue. Only in letters-to-the-editor and opinion editorials have the social and ethical dimensions of plant biotechnology been emphasized.

Cycles of attention to plant biotechnology have appeared, but they remain small scale perturbations rather than escalating into the large scale news dramas that have surrounded media celebrity issues like stem cell research, intelligent design, or even the Human Genome Project. In fact, given the limited carrying capacity of the news media, competition with celebrity issues such as Presidential elections, and after 2001, terrorism and war, may have all significantly constrained attention to plant biotech, just when events (notably the StarLink corn affair in 2000), might have otherwise propelled the issue into the wider media spotlight.

There are two emerging trends, however, that might eventually weaken the ability of biotech proponents to control policymaking, and the nature of news coverage. First, critics have added narrative fidelity to their framing efforts by connecting GM crops to other contemporary issues. For example, in her recent book, scientist and ecologist Jane Goodall (2005) links plant biotech to parallel controversies confronting the American food system including childhood obesity, the survival of traditional farmers, organics, and animal welfare. If and when plant biotechnology becomes a topic of widespread attention and concern in the U.S., it will likely be because it resonates and is framed in combination with these other food system issues.

Second, despite the recent WTO ruling, evolving trends in international trade increasingly leave the U.S. as an outlier in its regulation and definition of the risks associated with plant biotechnology. And while biotech opponents have not had much success at changing the U.S. policy regime, they have had success in shaping the actions and fortunes of industry members. It may be that if significant change happens relative to U.S. regulation of plant biotechnology, it comes about not through the domestic internal pressures channeled and amplified through dramatic and widespread news coverage, but rather through the external pressures of international trade.

Further Reading

• Brossard, Dominque and Nisbet, Matthew C. (in press). Deference to scientific authority among a low information public: Understanding American views about agricultural biotechnology. International Journal of Public Opinion Research (Contact me for a copy at nisbetmc@gmail.com.).
• Jasanoff, Sheila (2005). Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Logan, Robert (2001). News’ Compartmentalization: Implications for Food Biotechnology Coverage. AgBioForum, 4, 3&4, Article 7.
• Lyson, Thomas A. (2001). How do Agricultural Scientists View Advanced Biotechnologies? Chemical Innovation, 31: 50-53.
• Nisbet, Matthew C. and Huge, Michael (in press). Attention cycles and frames in the plant biotechnology debate: Managing power and participation through the press/policy connection. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. (Contact me for a copy at nisbetmc@gmail.com.)
• Priest, Susanna H. (2001). A Grain of Truth: The Media, the Public, and Biotechnology. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
• Priest, Susanna H. and Allen W. Gillespie (2000). Seeds of Discontent: Expert Opinion, Mass Media Messages, and the Public Image of Agricultural Biotechnology. Science and Engineering Ethics, 6 (4): 529-539.
• Rodemeyer, Michael and Alex S. Jones (2002). When Media, Science, and Public Policy Collide: The Case of Food and Biotechnology. Proceedings from a workshop sponsored by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
• Sheingate, Adam (in press). “Promotion Versus Precaution: The Evolution of Biotechnology Policy in the United States.” British Journal of Political Science 35.

Before last month, it was easy to dismiss these critics, with their claims argued almost exclusively at conservative outlets like the Weekly Standard, National Review, and Fox News. However, the Korean scandal provides for the first time real-life fodder for the grist mill of stem cell opponents. No matter how isolated and unrepresentative, the events lend momentum to a re-framing of stem cell research into a debate about scientific fraud and untrustworthy scientists.

One of the key variables to watch in understanding the public impact of the Korean stem cell scandal will be the amount of media attention the controversy generates beyond just the elite news organizations. According to Lexis-Nexis archives, in the month of December, the Korean scandal was featured in 15 articles (3 on the front page) at the New York Times, and 6 articles (3 on the front page) at the Washington Post. At National Public Radio, 7 stories appeared on either Morning Edition or All Things Considered, and the scandal was a topic of discussion on three consecutive weeks of NPR’s Science Friday.

Despite this attention at the elite national outlets, in my search of Lexis-Nexis and various Web sites I find that smaller regional and local papers devoted only an average of 3-5 stories to the topic. At the TV news networks, the scandal was barely mentioned. At CBS, there was one story on the Early Show, but no coverage on CBS Evening News. At ABC, there was one story carried by Good Morning America, but no reporting on the topic on World News Tonight. At NBC, there was one report at the Today Show and one report on NBC Nightly News.

Though it may be too early to measure the impact of the Korean events, accumulated poll data from 2005 reveals a new troubling dimension to public opinion. Last year, in the weeks following the Presidential election, I detailed an apparent paradox: In a campaign that was allegedly defined by voter preference for “moral values,” aggregate public opinion had shifted to slight majority support for embryonic stem cell research.

But in 2005, polls show that the gains in public support for embryonic stem cell research have occurred almost exclusively among Democrats and religious moderates, while Republicans, white evangelical Protestants, and church-going Catholics remain anchored in their opposition. In fact, it is likely that the 2004 Kerry campaign catalyzed a divide between Democrats and Republicans on the issue, as public opinion about embryonic stem cell research now appears for the first time to split relatively cleanly along traditional party lines.

According to data from the Pew Center for the People and the Press, in December 2004, 56% of surveyed respondents said it was more important to conduct embryonic stem cell research than to protect embryos, an increase over 43% in 2002. Yet among Evangelical Protestants, only 33% said it was more important to conduct research, compared to 69% of non-Evangelical Protestants. More revealing, however, are the changes over time within these groups. According to the Pew data, since 2002, there has been a +18% change among non-Evangelical Protestants, but only a +7% change among Evangelicals.

In other representations of public opinion, Gallup polling (Newport, 2005) indicates that estimates of the moral acceptability of research among Catholics varies significantly by level of commitment, with only 37% of weekly church-going Catholics answering that research was morally acceptable compared to 58% of Catholics who attend church nearly every week or monthly, and 68% of Catholics who seldom or never attend church.

The Pew survey taken in December 2004 also shows a major gulf between Republicans and Democrats in their evaluations of stem cell research. Among Democrats, 68% answered it was more important to conduct stem cell research that might result in medical cures than to not destroy human embryos. In comparison, only 45% of Republicans and 58% of Independents said it was more important to conduct stem cell research. There are also important differences in how opinion shifted since 2002 across these groups. The percentage shift among Democrats was +23% compared to only a +7% change among Republicans and a +9% change among Independents.

The Pew findings do get somewhat more encouraging when examining moderate/liberal Republicans. In the December survey, within this group, 55% said it was more important to conduct research, compared to 40% of their conservative Republican counterparts, a difference in public opinion that reflects the conflict in Congress between many conservative and moderate GOP members.

Confirming these trends, Gallup polling over the last year also indicates a sharp partisan divergence in views about the moral acceptability of research (Carroll, 2005). In May 2002, 54% of Democrats and 52% of Republicans indicated that using stem cells obtained from human embryos was morally acceptable. In May 2003 and May 2004 the gap widened slightly, but in both years the difference remained within the margin of error for the sub-samples. Yet after the 2004 Presidential campaign, in May 2005, the partisan gap had widened to 23 points, with 72% of Democrats now indicating that stem cell research was morally acceptable while the opinion of Republicans remained relatively unchanged at 49%.

Other recent survey findings reveal that therapeutic cloning still lacks majority public support. In the September 2005 VCU Life Sciences survey, only 43% of Americans answered that they favor “using cloning technology to help medical research develop new treatments for disease,” a level equivalent to the 45% support in 2002. When asked more specifically about “using human cloning technology if it is used to create human embryos that will provide stem cells for human therapeutic purposes,” only 34% were in favor.

In conclusion, these results show that communication campaigns have moved many Democrats, non-church-goers, and moderates beyond a “yuck factor” reaction to stem cell research using spare embryos, and this shift accounts for the slight majority support in polls at the national level. Absent long term generational change in the religious and ideological views of Americans, at the Federal level, scientific institutions may be forced to re-evaluate just how well their goals ultimately match the values and policy preferences of a sizable proportion of the public. Others have argued that if and when stem cell therapies are available to the general public, support will quickly follow. In the meantime, however, perhaps the focus on funding stem cell research in science-friendly states remains a best strategy for stem cell proponents.

Have the efforts of the intelligent design movement been thwarted by a secular and liberal news media? Across coverage of politics, many conservative leaders believe that the overwhelming majority of reporters, editors, and media producers favor a liberal point of view. In terms of evidence, however, conservatives rarely cite verifiable data indicating systematic patterns of liberal bias in coverage of public affairs. Instead, conservatives rely on selective anecdotes and examples as support for their claims. Still, over the past twenty years, the consistent drum beat from conservatives about the dangers of an allegedly liberal press, in combination with the news media’s own tendency to critically reflect on such a possibility, have contributed to a growing belief among the general public that the news media is indeed biased.

Social scientists, however, have had difficulty in reaching a consensus about the ideological nature of political coverage. One group of scholars infer liberal media bias from surveys that indicate journalists favor the left in their political preferences, and are more likely than the public to vote Democratic in elections. Yet, as others point out, surveys of reporters’ political preferences do no offer direct evidence of bias in coverage. In fact, it is more likely that professional norms that dictate balance and impartiality, combined with the need to maintain credibility with audiences, override the personal political preferences of journalists. Some scholars point to various methodological problems in reliably assessing ideological bias specific to social issues like abortion where it is difficult to define a clear objective standard by which to evaluate coverage.

Relative to election campaigns, though there are problems in accounting for incumbent and front runner status, it is methodologically easier to evaluate coverage by a standard where candidates should receive roughly equal time and fairness. Several large scale studies have found coverage relative to Democratic and Republican candidates to be neutral or balanced, but other studies have found instances where coverage favors Democrats and other cases where coverage favors Republicans. Hoping to resolve these apparent inconsistencies, in a published meta-analysis, one team of researchers compared statistically fifty-nine previous studies of Presidential election coverage, concluding that the accumulated evidence did not point to ideological bias in newspaper coverage, showed only a slight liberal bias in TV coverage, and actually indicated a slight conservative bias at the major news magazines.

Sources of Bias in Coverage of ID

For most issues, a dogmatic belief in a liberal press misses the mark. In many cases, there are biases in news coverage, but they have little to do with political ideology. Instead, skewed coverage is more likely to derive from the professional norms of journalists, and the market priorities of news organizations. In the cover article for the September/October issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, co-author Chris Mooney and I evaluate news coverage of intelligent design, and detail a leading example where the professional and organizational biases of a supposedly liberal and secular media actually favor directly the goals of religious conservatives.

In the article, we note that, for example, unlike the debate over abortion, there is a clear objective standard set by scientific consensus statements, the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and past court decisions that journalists can use in evaluating the scientific legitimacy of the ID movement. Yet, the news media often simply balances the claims of ID proponents against those of scientists, with little interpretation or context for the reader.

In the article, we note that as school boards, state legislatures, and the courts pay increasing attention to the claims of the ID movement, journalists rely heavily on the agenda of these political venues to guide coverage decisions. As a consequence, there is a rise in media attention to ID, but perhaps more importantly, as science is debated within these policy arenas, there is a transfer across news beats, with coverage no longer dominated by context-oriented science writers, and instead the subject of stories contributed by political reporters, opinion writers, and TV journalists. We reached this conclusion after systematically reading through seventeen months of recent news coverage at national and local newspapers, conducting an analysis of opinion page content at the papers, and reviewing relevant TV news transcripts.

As this shift in news beats takes place, coverage de-emphasizes the type of technical backgrounder favored by science writers. These context-oriented articles typically highlight accurately the overwhelming scientific consensus in support of evolution. In contrast, political reporters and television news correspondents are more likely to cover the issue through the lens of political strategy and gamesmanship. Though these types of stories provide important details about the tactics, fundraising, and communication strategies of the ID movement, they often also ignore scientific background, and instead carefully balance arguments from both sides, thereby lending credibility to the claim by ID proponents that there is a growing “controversy” over evolutionary theory.

Paralleling the rise in attention from political reporters is the increased discussion of ID in editorials, op-eds, and letters-to-the-editor. In the editorial section of newspapers, the content often reflects editors’ wishes to publish a plurality of views, and is therefore readily accessible to the carefully packaged PR tactics of the ID movement. (If these trends in coverage of the ID controversy sound familiar, it’s because they are roughly generalizable across several types of issues, as I have previously written about in reference to the stem cell and climate change debates.)

The New York Times Series

In late August, as we were finalizing author proofs of our CJR article, the New York Times ran the first of a three day front page series on intelligent design. The series was notable because it marked a climax in rising attention to ID across the summer, and served as a leading example of how different reporters are likely to define the debate in different ways. It also highlighted the important, but not always predictable influence the Times can have on other media including blogs and cable news.

The Sunday, August 22 article by national desk reporter Jodi Wilogren chronicled the political maneuvering of the Discovery Institute, the personalities and back story behind its founding, and the key donors financing the organization. If evaluated as stand alone coverage, though Sunday’s article provided valuable details about the politics behind the debate, it suffered from a lack of scientific context, and would have been typical of the type of coverage by political reporters that we heavily criticize.

Yet it was clear from science writers Kenneth Chang’s follow up article on Monday, and Cornelia Dean’s article on Tuesday that the Times conceived of the series as marshaling the specialized expertise of its staff, covering the issue in a way that few other news organizations can match. In Monday’s article, while opening with a detailed outline of the three-pronged ID argument against evolution, Chang also carefully noted that ID does not offer a rival theory but merely argues in the negative. Though he stopped short of outright dismissing intelligent design, (the Times saved this for an Editorial Observer column that ran the next day), Chang devoted considerable space to the details of evolutionary theory, contextualizing and countering the arguments of ID proponents. Dean’s Tuesday reporting potentially broke new ground by spotlighting the views of prominent Christian scientists such as Francis Collins and Kenneth Miller, who although they both strongly reject ID, also feel it is important to speak out about their faith, even when faced with a dominant culture of agnosticism among their colleagues. As a denouement to the series, Dean’s article seemed to convey an important moral lesson for the reader, a compromise interpretation that science and religion are not incompatible. (For an alternative take on the series, go here.)

Reaction from Scientists at Blogs

Despite the comprehensive nature of the Times series, misplaced journalistic balance is often in the eye of the beholder, and in response to the series, several blogs maintained by university scientists lit up with criticism, especially of Kenneth Chang’s coverage. Responding to remarks that his reporting gave undue credibility to ID, in a post on PZ Meyer’s Pharyngula blog, Chang shed light on the Times thinking in putting together the series: “As for why the Times is writing about intelligent design...it’s because the I.D. people have convinced a handful of states to include aspects of it in their curriculum standards. That makes it newsworthy, regardless of the science. For those of you who are well versed in this debate and know everything that I didn’t put in, here is a point I want to make: this article was not for you....Rather, the intended audience is the many, many people who...don’t know what I.D. is or even care much about science in general. The idea was to provide these readers with an introduction to the subject at a level that they could comfortably follow from beginning to end. For these people, I don’t think the impression that they come away with is that I.D. and evolution are on even footing.”

At the blog Cosmic Variance, Chang again defended his work, noting that his article featured roughly 1400 words contrasting ID claims with deep background on evolutionary theory. In a follow-up post, Sean Carroll, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Chicago, and one of the five university scientists who maintain Cosmic Variance, responded to Chang by taking him to task for the lede paragraph of the article. Carroll argued that few readers were likely to read the entire Times article, and therefore, the following opening lines were especially misleading: “At the heart of the debate over intelligent design is this question: Can a scientific explanation of the history of life include the actions of an unseen higher being?” Instead, argued Carroll, the Times should have framed the opening of the news article around the angle of epistemological authority, emphasizing that the debate really turned on the following question: “Should the content of high-school science courses be decided by scientists, or by religiously-motivated public-relations campaigns?”

Chang’s subsequent reply to Carroll provides even more insight into the types of space, time, and editorial influences that often color how science is portrayed in the news: “O.K., I finally see what the hang-up over the beginning of the story is. In an early draft, the rhetorical question was quickly followed by Doug Erwin’s quote, to make it clear that the standard scientific view is No, of course not. In the course of editing, other material was inserted between the question and the quote, and so that intended connection was lost. Perhaps I should have tried to insert as the second sentence something like, ‘For most scientists, the answer is an obvious no, and that is the end of the debate.’”

The Secondary Impacts of the New York Times Series

Few news organizations can equal the New York Times coverage for quality and depth, and considering the agenda-setting influence of the paper, it is likely that an unintended consequence of the series was to simply boost overall media attention to the topic, furthering the attempts of ID proponents to achieve the illusion of scientific controversy. Moreover, in piggybacking on the Times coverage, it is not clear that accuracy was the first priority for many news organizations, especially for the cable news networks where entertainment, drama, and conflict are often prized.

As Mooney and I write in CJR, cable news is intrinsically adversarial; truth is reached only through argumentation. In fact, the format of cable news inherently favors ID’s attacks on evolution by making journalistic “balance” inescapable. Much like a presidential debate, the arguments offered on these shows are usually not scored on substance but on performance and style. Moreover, the cable news talk show format assumes that an issue can be decided within a few minutes, and implies an image of two coequal, warring camps. For example at CNN, on the same Monday the Times series ran, Lou Dobbs featured a debate between opposing members of the Kansas school board. On Tuesday, Larry King Live, a program infamous for providing an uncritical forum for a host of fringe claims ranging from psychics to UFOs, featured what King called a “three-on-three” panel of guests to debate ID that included Deepak Chopra, U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, megachurch pastor John MacArthur, Discovery Institute spokesperson Jay Richards, U.S. Congressman Christopher Shays, and philosopher Barbara Forrest. The Discovery Institute’s Richards used the recent media attention to his rhetorical advantage, communicating a certain self satisfaction: “We think teachers should be free to talk about this [ID], and frankly, I don’t think that it can be suppressed. It’s now very much a public discussion, evidenced by the fact that you’re talking about it on your show tonight.”

Outlook for Trends in ID Coverage

So what is the outlook for news coverage of intelligent design over the next few months? Generalizing about trends in media coverage is often difficult since coverage of any one issue depends also on many other competing issues and events. Absent the ability to forecast all of the possible major events that were in store for September, we predicted in our CJR article that the month would bring even more of the same type of troubling “he said, she said” strategy coverage from political reporters. Our prediction was based on the ID-related political events on the horizon, including a pending Federal court case and local school district referendum in Pennsylvania, and political trouble brewing across other states.

Yet, the media tsunami of Hurricane Katrina has washed most other political issues including ID off the media agenda. Similar to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina has made many of the issues that we considered important yesterday, seem comparatively trivial today. I suspect that heavy attention to ID during August was in part a product of the media attempting to fill the major news hole left by a vacationing President and Congress. By constructing ID into the latest social wedge issue, news organizations, especially cable news, sought to hold the attention of Americans during an otherwise slow news month. In any case, if the cycle of attention to ID has shifted into a downward phase, then science advocates are better off. In the meantime, there needs to be further reflection on the role of the news media in fanning the flames of this debate, and there needs to be more attention to how journalists can overcome professional and organizational bias to more accurately cover a political conflict like ID where there is a clear objective standard by which to evaluate many claims.