Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

II. Perspectives
he adds, ‘It wasn’t long before the
But,
fuel industry did a good job of
fossil
it into a political issue, a partisan
turning
they could exploit, when they
thing
rolling out all the tools that we
started
understand as an effort to overcome
now
science. And their main target was the
the
The fossil fuel industry succeeded.
media.’
the ensuing years, the industry not only
In
over conservatives on the matter of
won
change, but they also played into
climate
media trope of balance and fairness.
the
What came next was what Penn State
…
climate scientist Michael E. Mann
University
the climate wars, and a principal line of
calls
was to question the work of reporters
attack
portrayed climate change as settled
who
It was the perfect line of attack, because
fact.
played into a core maxim of journalism:
it
be fair and balanced in presenting the
to
of a debate. Yet to do that, reporters
contours
frequently using [fossil-fuel] industry-
were
spokespeople as key sources about
backed
actual science—not about a debate over
the
policy solutions, of which industry
potential
fairly be a part. Yet since policy
should
to climate change could severely
solutions
profits, what better way to push back
choke
McKibben considered accurate
What
of climate change in the late
coverage
covering the science, not
1980s—reporters
politics—was in Gelbspan’s estimation
the
major, structural failure on the part of
a
in the 1990s. It began with who
journalists
assigned to cover the subject. ‘It was
was
science writers that were covering this
only
and they were not the types to follow
stuff
money,’ Gelbspan says. Climate change
the
in those years were taking a page
doubters
the fight against the regulation of
from
products, urging newspapers and
tobacco
and television networks to provide
radio
in their reporting of the science.
“balance”
was among the first to understand
Gelbspan
mettle were easily fooled or simply
lesser
caught up in the quotidian pressures
too
meeting deadlines. In this way, the
of
community successfully drove a
denialist
Merchants of Doubt, historians Erik
In
Conway and Naomi Oreskes trace
M.
history of industry-funded and
this
driven deception from
ideologically
acid rain, the ozone hole, and
tobacco,
to contemporary fights about
through
change. ‘Tobacco was the first
climate
systematic denialist campaign,’
big,
Oreskes. ‘The obvious lesson for
says
is to know that this exists, that
journalists
depends on appealing to journalistic
it
of balance and objectivity.’ But, she
virtues
In 2009 came a fact that would be oftrepeated—that
…
97 percent of scientists
expertise on climate and atmosphere
with
in a link between human-
believed
greenhouse gases and global
generated
That’s a level of consensus
warming.
slightly below that of the existence
only
gravity and equivalent to scientific
of
this level of confidence, says Oreskes,
Given
goal of journalists should have been
the
rather than balance. Journalists,
accuracy
other words, wouldn’t have provided
in
to a debate on gravity, giving equal
‘balance’
to someone asserting that it doesn’t
time
why would they for climate change?
exist;
for the two or three percent of so-called
As
Oreskes says journalists should
skeptics,
evaluating the motives for their dissent,
be
given the history of industry- and
especially
tank-led disinformation campaigns.
think
the factors that produce it,
Whatever
balance remains. USA Today, for
false
as a matter of policy requires
example,
an editorial on a ‘controversial’ topic
that
paired with an editorial arguing in
be
(Eshelman 2014)
opposition.”
2
wedge between scientists and reporters.
adds, ‘It leads journalists into a swamp.’
evidence linking tobacco use and cancer.
than to question the underlying science?
the folly of their claims. But journalists of
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