Wall Street Journal Climate Change Coverage Analysis

Introduction

The Center for Science and Technology Policy Research has compiled a chart illustrating the coverage that climate change has received in the media around the world. The chart highlights that, for the most part, climate change coverage increased over the past five years leading up to this study, with a notable spike in late 2009. Coverage of climate change may be tied to specific events, such as natural disasters, or it may simply reflect the issue's contribution to political dialogue. Major international conferences on climate change can also spark an uptick in media coverage. Not only is the amount of coverage subject to consideration when evaluating the media treatment of the subject, but the nature of that coverage is equally important.

Climate change debate is focused around two main loci. The first concerns the facts surrounding climate change — its existence, its impacts, and the degree to which human activity contributes to it. The second is the political element of the discussion: the debates and policy prescriptions regarding the subject. In some coverage — and, unfortunately, in the experience of many of the planet's media consumers — the discussion about the facts and the political ramifications have become mixed together as though they form a singular issue. This is not the case, but this phenomenon may be closely related to the type of media coverage the issue receives.

This study of media coverage concerning climate change focuses on the Wall Street Journal. The Journal is an important subject of study because of two conflicting facts. The first is that the Journal has an excellent reputation and is considered one of the most important and influential newspapers in the United States and the world. This is juxtaposed with the fact that the Journal is owned by News Corporation, and — as with other News Corp publications — it tends to reflect the strongly right-wing viewpoints of its owner, Rupert Murdoch. News Corp media outlets tend toward sensationalism in general and rely less on verified facts for their reporting, yet this lies in direct conflict with the WSJ's esteemed journalistic reputation. The tendency of extreme right-wing voices to conflate climate change facts with climate change politics makes this paper a uniquely revealing media outlet to study with respect to its coverage of this subject.

History of Climate Change Coverage in the WSJ

In the middle part of the last decade, media coverage of climate change began to increase steadily and significantly. By this point, the Journal's editorial page had already staked out the paper's position on the matter. The paper editorialized that "the case for linking fossil fuels to global warming has, if anything, become even more doubtful" — a direct contradiction of the prevailing scientific evidence. The editors made statements that explicitly contradicted the findings of the scientific community at large (RealClimate, 2005). The cherry-picking of data, reliance on disproved theories, and disregard for basic accepted facts all point to a position staked out on ideological grounds rather than factual ones.

The paper's archives show a substantial volume of coverage on the issue from 2008 onwards. Climate change conferences are covered frequently, through both articles and editorials. In terms of policy coverage, the paper is consistently opposed to market-based measures such as the carbon tax or carbon trading. An editorial by Tim Wilson (2008) presents a variety of arguments against measures proposed by international negotiators to address the climate change problem. The author outlines, from a free-market perspective, why the solutions proposed at a particular conference are not workable in the long run. This view is consistent with the WSJ's editorial stance and focuses exclusively on the policy side of the debate.

Coverage intensified in the early days of the Obama administration, particularly with respect to policy. The impetus for this policy-focused coverage was that early 2009 was a critical juncture at which the administration was forming its energy policies, including those pertaining to climate change. The paper adopted a sober tone and utilized rational economic arguments that were not conflated with the underlying facts of climate science. The arguments — including one against cap-and-trade (Strassel, 2009), one in favor of a hard legal carbon cap rather than a cap-and-trade approach (Krupp, 2009), and one advocating technology-based solutions (Sensenbrenner, 2009) — generally align with the economic and free-market principles consistent throughout WSJ editorials. In general, the coverage from this period is substantive and consistent in the economic principles applied to climate change policy. There is little to indicate that undue bias or willful ignorance played any role in the WSJ's climate change coverage during this time.

Conclusion

There have been notable changes over the years in how climate change arguments are framed in the Wall Street Journal. The paper has vacillated between shrill and intellectually weak arguments and a more policy-driven, substantive approach. These shifts reflect the character of the broader public debate. When the oil industry was mounting challenges to climate research in the mid-2000s, the Journal's coverage was focused on skepticism and centered primarily on the science, as climate policy was not a major political battleground under the Bush Administration. With the science long since settled and the Obama Administration poised to form its energy policies in early 2009, the tone became academic and articulate. Strong cases were made against specific policy prescriptions, and there was no conflation of science and politics. Over time, however, this conflation took hold. The WSJ's editorial pages were handed over to climate change skeptics, and the quality of discourse deteriorated. Reasoned argument was replaced by rhetorical noise, and actual expertise in the subject matter was no longer a prerequisite for writing about climate change — or for having one's opinion elevated in print.

The tone shift is not entirely surprising, given the highly politicized character of the WSJ under its current ownership. At its best, the paper upheld its reputation for conservative economic analysis and intelligent discourse. Over time, however, it has mirrored the deterioration of the broader debate. Climate skeptics are nothing new, and their views are no better supported today than they were in early 2009. They have simply been handed a larger platform from which to broadcast their claims, to the detriment of public discourse overall and policy-making in particular.

Works Cited

Jolis, A. (2009). Revenge of the climate laymen. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704335904574496850939846712.html

Krupp, F. (2009). Carbon caps are the best policy. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123785178691219381.html

Lomborg, B. (2009). Ethiopia, malnutrition and climate change. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704431804574537391296901758.html

No author. (2010). Media coverage of climate change. Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from

RealClimate. (2005). The Wall Street Journal vs. the scientific consensus. RealClimate. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/the-wall-street-journal-vs-the-consensus-of-the-scientific-community/

Revkin, A. (2009). Hacked e-mail is new fodder for climate dispute. New York Times. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html

Sensenbrenner, F. (2009). Technology is the answer to climate change. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123871985916184973.html

Strassel, K. (2009). The climate change lobby has regrets. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123630254209847245.html

Strassel, K. (2011). The climate change climate change. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597505076157449.html

Wilson, T. (2008). A bad climate trade-off. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122902969804899351.html