Climate Reporting: Tips from Our Newsletter

November 18, 2021

 

February 17, 2022

The headline above, from the Washington Post, is much like dozens of other headlines announcing a report on sea level rise that was released February 15, 2022. Many used the phrases “rise one foot” and “by 2050.” I honestly didn’t think much of this headline or the news it carried (beyond, “more bad climate news, got it”) until I read CNN’s different take, below.

What does one foot of sea level rise in 30 years look like, really? How fast is that in comparison to the sea level rise we’ve experienced in recent years? To me, the phrase “will rise rapidly” hints at the answers and paints a much more urgent and accessible picture than “rise one foot.”

Similarly, “in the next 30 years” also felt more specific and real than “by 2050” which sounds impossibly far away, but isn’t. The next 30 years is simply a doubling of my personal lifetime, which hasn’t felt very long at all. That reframe really struck a chord with me. It’s important that journalists keep in mind that a slightly different word choice can make important news that much more relatable or salient to a reader.

 

July 21, 2022

A high-pressure weather system led to massive heat waves across much of the Northern Hemisphere in July, with its effects being keenly felt in the U.S., Europe, and China. It seems like every news outlet has a story with a variation on the CNN headline below. But the people experiencing a heat wave don’t need to be told it’s hot.

What do they need? Most immediately they need information on staying cool and finding local resources and support, like the report below from WHDH in Boston.

Secondly, they need to know whether their locality is prepared for future heat waves (the New York Times headline below says that’s a “no” for London) and, if not, how they can be.

Finally, they also need to know both the cause (humanity-driven climate change) and the impact (death and displacement) of this extreme weather. Reuters tackles the cause in the headline below. A mix of these tactics helps audiences get the full story beyond “it’s hot.”

 

September 1, 2022

Jackson, Mississippi is experiencing a significant climate emergency after flooding of Pearl River exacerbated an already stressed water system. Residents have been under a boil water advisory since July and now many are without water at all. The failing water system is nothing new. As the NPR headline below describes, this most recent crisis is the result of years of neglect.

But that’s not the full story. The neglect of the Jackson water system is a direct result of white flight in earlier decades and disinvestment in infrastructure in Black communities. The Slate headline below tops an interview with environmental and climate justice activist Catherine Coleman Flowers and addresses this head-on. Though the NPR story does mention that a shrinking population and lack of political will led to this crisis, it doesn’t name the elephant in the room.

Looking at other Jackson headlines, I also wanted to point out how slightly different framings can go a long way in humanizing this crisis. The first headline below is from the BBC; it’s not inaccurate and describes two pretty stark consequences for Jackson residents.

But the Buzzfeed headline below goes the extra mile by noting just how many people are impacted. It also translates what the “no water to drink or flush toilets” really means: it’s a matter of survival. This urgency feels appropriate to the crisis.

 

September 8, 2022

The flooding of Pakistan. Record-breaking heat and wildfires in California. A water crisis in Mississippi. Extreme droughts in the southwest U.S., southern China and Iraq. It’s been a scary few weeks for climate crisis news and the headline above from The Guardian makes that all too clear. Then the phrase “another week” adds a droll tone that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in solutions to this most dire threat.

It can be easy to get caught up in the fatalism and depressing nature of climate crisis coverage. But there are still things we can do as a species to mitigate the effects of manmade climate change — and it’s journalists’ responsibility to make that clear to audiences.

The headline below from NPR has the best of both worlds. It doesn’t deny the deluge of difficult news, it embraces it and promises solutions. I love this combination of addressing the psychological effects of this news so that one can help create change, too. It’s a great service for audiences.

 

March 16, 2023

The headline above is from an Associated Press story announcing the Biden administration’s approval of the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. The headline below, also from the Associated Press, is about the same thing.

The big difference between the two is the consequence they attribute to the approval. The first goes with the “ire of environmentalists.” This is certainly true; environmentalists have protested Willow. But framing the fallout of such a project as simply the negative feelings of activists is climate journalism’s version of “bothsidesism.” This allows the headline writer to hint that the move will have an environmental impact while maintaining plausible deniability for the “climate change is liberal fake news” set.

Empirical, replicable science tells us such drilling projects have a negative impact on the environment. We don’t need to, as an industry, pretend that environmentalists’ feelings are somehow subjectively biased beyond these facts. We can instead state plainly that the Willow approval will add to the ways we are harming the climate, like the second headline from the AP does below.

 

June 1, 2023

As part of the negotiations to lift the debt ceiling and avoid economic turmoil, U.S. House Republicans wanted to sweep away legal hurdles for the Mountain Valley Pipeline — and they got their wish. The fossil fuel project had been held up by court challenges due to its plans to cut through the Jefferson National Forest and hundreds of waterways and wetlands, NPR reports. The headlines below, from The Washington Post and The Guardian, refer to this surprise announcement.

Both of these headlines use a common tactic for reporting out the impact of a controversial policy from a “neutral” stance. Instead of simply describing that impact as factual — in this case, the impact is a significant threat to the environment, predicated on a long history of U.S. pipeline accidents that damage people, animals, and land — it is attributed to “critics” or “activists.” This framing turns the negative impact of such a policy into a matter of opinion rather than fact.

The attempt to be “objective” here is misplaced. Policymakers and activists may have different opinions on whether a policy should be made law due to its impact. But where that impact is observable and/or provable, its existence is not up for debate. In other words, it’s not just that “critics say” such a deal would imperil the environment — empirical fact and logic says it would. Whether that should stop such a deal from being made, however, would be a matter of opinion suitable for journalists to present via opposing viewpoints.

A fairer, more accurate headline would treat the risk this new pipeline poses to the environment as self-evident. The headline below from the Hill doesn’t quite get there, but it does at least point out that the deal makes this possible due to its changes to environmental law.

The example below, from Slate, is a bit better. It is a little too clever for my taste, but it does manage to get across the inconsistent message of the deal: the MVP has a greenlight, but last year’s climate and energy bill remains in tact.

 

June 8, 2023

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have a lot to say about headlines today and it all revolves around using headlines to entice instead of to inform.

News media is a business, I know that. Digital outlets rely on pageviews to make the money that supports their journalism. It’s a (debatably) necessary evil. But a particular pet peeve of mine is turning a headline into a question when the answer is known.

Questions-as-headlines when the answer is unknown don’t bother me. That’s a reasonable use of the format, because the writer is telling the reader that the answer is being debated inside the story. It’s like a big “Unknowns Ahead” sign. It’s good wayfinding and it has the side effect of bringing a sense of mystery and thus clicks to the story. Win-win.

When the answer is known, however, using a question in a headline still signals “Unknowns Ahead.” It primes the reader to expect debate where there is none, preparing them to greet the information inside with skepticism. It leaves readers who only see this headline in passing open to misinformation elsewhere, because they will also believe this topic is up for debate. And, most importantly, it keeps people from seeing important information they may need. Here, the question format only benefits the newsroom who published it, because it creates that sense of mystery that will make people click.

I get especially frustrated when I see this technique used during emergencies. I want to scream at news producers: “Your audiences deserve to see life-saving information as soon as possible, including in headlines. Sharing life-saving information is more important than your click-through rate.”

So you can guess how I feel about this headline below from Healthline. Frustratingly enough, Healthline only used this headline for social media and search; the story page itself is topped with the straightforward answer, “Here are the Face Masks That Will Protect You From Wildfire Smoke.” That means the version below was likely chosen for search engine optimization purposes, to prey on people searching for helpful information at a critical time.

On the other hand, I appreciate the examples below for their specificity and directness. The HuffPost headline, in blue, immediately tells us which masks do help. Syracuse.com’s headline is search engine-friendly in that it’s formatted like an inquiry but it also provides the answer.

Now my pet peeve takes a turn from “this is annoying and could be better” to “this is destructive to our shared reality” when the not-unknown answer in question is only considered up for debate because of politically-driven denialism. Take, for example, the headline from USA Today below about climate change.

Informing audiences of the connections between individual climate disasters and the pattern of human-made climate change is mission-critical to saving the planet. In the case of the Canadian wildfires, describing this connection should absolutely be a story. But as this and other similar stories say inside, we do know the answer to, “Are they related?” and it’s “Yes, a thousand times yes.” Journalists need to get to the point without falsely implying that this question is up for debate. ABC News does it right, below, by being declarative about the facts while again using an SEO-friendly “how” format. Win-win.

 

July 13, 2023

In an ideal world, when research about how certain messaging influences audiences is disseminated, communicators like journalists would take this into account. For instance, we know that research has shown reporting that focuses solely on climate impacts without presenting potential solutions or actions increases fear and decreases hope in the audience. We also know news about solutions and action increase news engagement and optimism. These are both needed for communities to take action on our collective problems.

With that said, you might already know why I’m not a huge fan of the headlines below from The Grist and the Washington Post, respectively.

Let’s face it, these are scary headlines. The quote in the Grist’s headline sounds like a line from a disaster movie, and the Post literally uses the word “scaring.”

Don’t get me wrong — the climate crisis is scary and we should be talking about its impacts and how to solve for them. But we also know that headlines like these push people away. The headline below, from CNN, I feel does a better job at using a serious but not scary tone and directly addresses the cause and effect of recent extreme weather.

It’s also critical that we in the news industry make clear to audiences how science predicts these events will continue. The New York Times took that angle this week in the headline below — though its tone is a little condescending and fatalistic. The idea of a “new normal” implies inevitability, despite there being much we can do to mitigate the impact of climate change and natural hazards.

The PBS headline to an Associated Press story, below, gets the same point across without brushing aside the possibility for intervention. This is the straightforward (not flippant or defeated) tone audiences need on this topic.

 

September 14, 2023

As I’ve mentioned in a previous issue, the term “natural disaster” is a misnomer in many ways, one journalists should consider avoiding. The earth presents humans with many “natural” and hazardous weather events. They only become disasters when and where humans are particularly vulnerable to their effects due to a lack of preparedness and/or resources for rescue.

In the case of Libya, years of political conflict made the impact of Storm Daniel significantly worse by keeping the two dams that broke, sweeping thousands into the sea, from being repaired. In the case of Morocco, the New York Times reports that, “Despite the government’s efforts in recent years to impose higher standards to help buildings survive earthquakes…many builders continue to flout regulations to cut costs.” The Moroccan government has also been slow to accept international aid.

There’s nothing “natural” about these outcomes; they’re the result of choices made by individuals in power. In this way, the phrase “natural disaster” is in itself a news frame — it presents the ensuing damage as inherent and unavoidable. But we know this isn’t true, and correcting this frame will become more and more important as we continue to face escalating climate change-related hazards.

For example, the headline above from CNN does a good job of teeing up this story. It tells the reader there’s a long history that left Libya and its residents “unprepared” for this storm.

The headline from the Guardian, below, is a bit clearer though. It references that same “turmoil” as CNN, but adds in the extra context that climate change is also behind the worsening of such disasters.

 

March 21, 2024

Today’s set of headlines is an excellent example of how framing can completely change the meaning of the same set of facts. To set the stage, see this excerpt from a CNN article:

“The Biden administration on Wednesday finalized one of the most significant pieces of its ambitious climate agenda: the strongest new tailpipe rules for passenger cars and trucks that will decisively push the US auto market toward electric vehicles and hybrids.

But in a concession to automakers and labor unions, the rules will be phased in more slowly than originally proposed and will give automakers more choices for how to comply.”

The headline above, from Reuters via Yahoo, focuses on what CNN mentions in the second paragraph above: the new rules are softer than originally proposed. The Reuters headline frames this as an “easing” of the rules even though, really, it’s an easing of proposed rules that weren’t finalized.

It also says the rules will “slow” the U.S.’s transition to electric vehicles. Theoretically, these rules will accelerate that transition in comparison to a U.S. with no such rules in place, but more slowly than if the original proposal was accepted. This is a decidedly negative framing of this news. It focuses on what was lost by softening the final rules instead of what was gained by them going into place at all.

By comparison, the NPR headline above is much more positive. It calls the new rules “strict” and describes it as a “boost for EVs,” choosing to focus on the results of this move instead of comparing them to the potential of the previously proposed rules.

It’s very fair and necessary that reporting highlights how the profit-focused auto industry influenced the EPA in its decision-making on climate protections. I do, however, find the Reuters headline’s language misleading, because it uses words that compare the effects of the new rules with what could have been in a way that isn’t quite accurate.

On another note, I was also happy to see the headline from PBS, below. Unlike the other examples here, it actually connects the dots for audiences between the new rules and climate change. That’s important context!

 

June 20, 2024

The headlines below exemplify “the curse of knowledge,” or, the inability to put oneself in the shoes of someone who knows less than you do about a topic. This is a common cognitive bias, and one that ironically plagues people who share knowledge for a living. Case in point: headlines that forget the most basic information, like “who” and “where!” (Let alone, internationally-read publications writing as if all readers are in the U.S.)

For instance, CNN’s headline below tells us nothing of who will be impacted by this week’s heat wave. Where do they live, I wonder?

NBC News gets a tiny bit more specific below, telling us it will affect 150 million people. But where are those people?

We’re getting warmer (pun intended) with Axios’s choice below. At least it narrows the location down to an entire country. But WHERE in the U.S.?!

Finally! Thank you, Forbes, for finally alerting us about who can expect the heat!