In Whom Do We Trust

Global Warming, or Global Climate Change, has been at the center of a heated debate for years. Yet, when one compares the evidence, he has fistfuls of bitter pills to swallow.

But is it his fault or someone else’s entirely?

In December 2004, the journal Science published an article by Dr. Naomi Oreskes, professor at University of California San Diego. Her survey of 928 abstracts of peer-reviewed scientific articles between 1993 and 2003 found, as she summarized in the Washington Post, that 75 percent “either explicitly or implicitly accepted the consensus view” that “Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason.”

“The remaining 25 percent dealt with other facets of the subject, taking no position on whether current climate change is caused by human activity,” Oreskes added. “None of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.”

In contrast, the study, “Balance as Bias: Global Warming and the US Prestige Press,” by Maxwell Boykoff and Jules Boykoff found between 1988 and 2002 that the “U.S. prestige press”--New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal--structured their “hard news” in the “journalistic norm of balanced reporting.”

“From a total of 3,543 articles, we examined a random sample of 636 articles,” said the Boykoffs.

Out of that, 53 percent displayed equal attention to the human contributions and the natural fluctuations of climate change. However, 35 percent of the articles spoke of human role more so, yet still presented both sides as a debate.

Six percent “emphasized doubts about the claim that human-caused global warming exists,” while the last 6 percent “only included the predominant scientific view that humans are contributing to Earth's temperature increases.”

Putting this specific issue aside: where else in our daily discourse do we encounter only two-sided issues?

The view that for one to be fair one must cover both sides is a simpleton’s falsehood. Life is not black or white, yes or no, good or bad, paper or plastic. It is the greys, the maybes, the okays, the polysynthetic materials.

The average person does not find hisself on the far edges but rather somewhere near the middle. A truly active citizen does not fall along party lines; he thinks for hisself and decides the course of action that will best benefit him and/or his relationships.

Nonetheless, the journalistic process does not seem to address this aspect. It does not filter the evidence as the scientific process does. It, sadly, tries balancing the unbalanced.

Scientists do not debate those without scientific evidence because it portrays a false perception to the layman that the opposing party has a valid argument. For example, a geologist would not enter into a formal debate with someone who believes the earth is fewer than a dozen millennia.

Yet, the journalistic norm will grant those without evidence equal space as those with evidence, and in doing so, misleads the reader by displaying a faux controversy.


This column was rushed and I am still not truly happy with it. It did turn out better than I thought it would about midways through. I like the idea but the way I worded it and the second half is sadly depressing to me. On a different note, I had a professor from here at Marshall University email and expressed his opinions of the same issue. We both agree offering equal space no matter the evidence makes a false appearance of equality.