So here’s the thread I promised about how journos can break their templated ‘he said, she said’ reporting to better reflect reality in the public interest - for issues like climate change and all political reporting. A thread👇🏻
Firstly, there’s a reason journalists report in this way. It’s referred to variously as issue dualism, pluralism, conflict frame (one side said X, the other side responded Y). It’s because they’re taught to write like this in journalism degrees and in newsrooms.
The thinking behind this journalism template is that the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle of two more extreme views or interests and therefore by giving the audience both perspectives, they can make up their own mind as to who they agree with.
The value journalists place in ‘objectivity’ is crucial to their profession because it is meant to be the mark of quality that ensures they’re not selling their audience distorted reality. They try to practice ‘objectivity’ in order to remove ‘bias’ from their news reporting.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. But the journalists I’m talking about here are the ones who mean well, not the hacks who are actually just political players masquerading as journalists. I’m talking about the ones who think they’re practicing objectivity through ‘balance’.
Balance is also highly valued alongside objectivity because it’s meant to remove bias. If people on different sides of an issue are both given a chance to have a say, then journos believe, as already explained, the truth will somehow be magically revealed.
There are actually lots of debates in media research about whether there really is just one truth or if it’s possible there is more than one. I think it depends on the issue and journos need to know the difference between facts and existence of opposing ideological perspectives.
Climate change is a one-sided issue because for as long as it’s been researched, scientists - who are only ones qualified to understand the issue - have said ‘climate change is happening’. First it was 90% of scientists, then 95%, and now I’m sure it’s over 99%. So it’s happening
However, from the very beginning of climate change being a ‘thing’, it has been framed as a political issue, not an environmental one, or indeed a societal problem. That meant the reporting fell into the most commonly used frame for political reporting - the conflict frame.
I was interested to read @BenjaminMillar’s suggestions about ridding newsrooms of political reporters as political journos can’t help themselves but to squeeze all information into the conflict frame. This template often just resembles the ‘game frame’.
The game frame has also been critiqued by @mrseankelly who has experience of what he calls the ‘trivialisation’ of politics by the media which leads politicians to also trivialise politics - this is a problem for democracy.
This idea is also referred to by @jayrosen_nyu as the horse race template and cult of the savvy where journos critique strategy and PR skills, not outcomes. I see this all the time - the analysis is of how ‘messaging plays’ ahead of ‘this policy will impact you in this way’.
Anyway, back to the use of the conflict frame - where ‘balance’ and ‘objectivity’ lead journos to treat one sided issues like climate change as if there are credible views on both sides. This templating allowed journos to claim to be objective by removing any judgment from news.
Journos are taught to remove their own judgement to be objective and avoid bias, but I think they’ve taken the idea of ‘judgement’ too far. What they’ve really done is remove ‘context’. Context, such as which perspective on climate change is credible/factual and which isn’t.
So, what has happened is, climate deniers have worked out they can use journos’ routines of balance and supposed objectivity to put false information on the public record. They can go on TV or be quoted in a newspaper as the ‘other side’ of the climate ‘debate’ unscrutinised.
This issue relates not just to fact checking and to who is chosen as a news source, it relates to the entire template of ‘he said - she said’ journalism. If someone is going to lie on the public record with information that is not credible, they should not be put on public record
This counts for numerous climate change deniers who have no other purpose in a news article other than to muddy the truth. Many of these ‘commentators’ are paid by big business to misrepresent climate change in order to pervert action. This has happened for decades.
It also means if a politician - even the Prime Minister - wants to try to put misinformation on the public record, they are contextualised by journalists in a way that shows their legitimacy will be shot every time they try this on. Let me give you an example.
Josh Frydenberg said at a press conference today that the Liberals’ climate change policies have reduced emissions since 2005. This is demonstrably false. For starters, what climate change policies? So, the headline should be: Frydenberg misrepresents emissions data. Context!
If instead a journo writes ‘Frydenberg said Libs have reduced emissions but Albo said they haven’t’, how is the public meant to know what the truth is? Context is also ‘this commentator from the IPA who says climate change is not real is funded by mining companies’ etc.
Journalism is more than stenography. Yes, it does take research to contextualise source information in a way that is useful for audience, but that’s what journalism is - research. It’s not just writing down quotes and copy-pasting them into a news article.
Just a small comment on when there are in fact two sides. It may take a longer thread at another time to explain this one properly but suffice to say here, some policies such as ‘corporate tax cuts’ do have two legitimate ideological perspectives. This must be acknowledged.
Using👇🏻diagram as an analogy, if one side of the tax cut debate is saying ‘it’s a 9’, it’s not fair to just include the other side saying ‘it’s not a 9’ - that’s not balance. Balance is letting the other side say ‘it’s a 6’ which actually does infact let them say ‘it’s not a 9’. 
What this means in practice is news reports about genuinely two sided issue need to have more than one frame in order to show real balance. They can’t just say ‘tax cut good’ vs ‘tax cut bad’, need to say ‘tax cut good’ versus ‘spending will be cut to x,y,z because of tax cut’.
I hope this thread makes it clear that there are different journalism practices required for one sided versus many sided issues, and in both cases, contextualisation is key. Also, shallow stenography or just critiquing PR strategy misses context of outcomes which public need. End
