tag:www.cjr.org,2011-09-12://4 2012-02-08T18:25:01Z Columbia Journalism Review: Strong Press, Strong Democracy Movable Type Pro 4.34-en tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29787 2012-02-08T17:00:52Z 2012-02-08T18:25:01Z

Politicians, economy more influential than media coverage, study says

Curtis Brainard The media influence public opinion about climate change, but not as much as national politicians and the state of the economy do, according to a new analysis of eight years of polling data. Over time, activists have pointed their fingers in many directions while trying to explain society’s failure to address the threat of climate change. Scientists, policymakers, captains of tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29729 2012-01-27T22:30:34Z 2012-02-02T22:01:52Z

Campaign coverage takes on a green hue

Curtis Brainard In the last week, President Obama has rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, focused his first campaign ad on clean energy, visited the Environmental Protection Agency for the first time, devoted seven minutes to energy in his State of the Union speech, and touted fossil fuels and renewables out west. It was an environmentally charged stretch for a president setting out tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29700 2012-01-24T21:30:27Z 2012-01-24T22:03:05Z

Reporters still fumbling numbers in wake of pipeline’s rejection

Curtis Brainard God help the poor news consumers of America, especially the would-be voters. President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline last week incited a new wave of coverage and speculation about how many jobs the line would create. Unfortunately, many outlets are still citing inflated and unreliable industry figures in the tens to hundreds of thousands while ignoring more tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29678 2012-01-19T19:30:21Z 2012-01-20T18:01:53Z

New federal database could be a boon for reporters … but it needs their input

Curtis Brainard How useful would a database cataloguing the money that doctors receive from medical drug and device makers—for speaking, research, meals, travel, etc.—be to journalists trying to ferret out potential conflicts of interest? Just ask ProPublica, which launched its Dollars for Docs database in October 2010. It was the first, freely available resource of its kind, based on data that a tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.27771 2012-01-13T17:00:28Z 2012-01-13T18:36:00Z

With new section, David Freeman has an opportunity to raise the bar

Curtis Brainard The Huffington Post’s announcement last week that it had launched a new section intended to be a “one-stop shop for the latest scientific news and opinion” incited a flurry of circumspect commentary about whether or not the site was turning over “a new leaf” in science coverage. Over the years, The Huffington Post has drawn widespread criticism for publishing misleading tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.27755 2012-01-11T15:15:37Z 2012-01-11T15:29:09Z

Amid 70th birthday adoration, reporters ignored their role in the physicist’s celebrity

Declan Fahy http://www.cjr.org The extensive coverage of Stephen Hawking’s seventieth birthday on January 8 focused on the physicist’s status as the world’s most famous living scientist. But journalists largely avoided commenting on the major force that created his celebrity: the media themselves. The build-up began in earnest last week when Hawking gave an exclusive interview to New Scientist in which he discussed the tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.27749 2012-01-10T15:00:29Z 2012-01-10T15:08:48Z

A closer look at the quantity of climate coverage in 2011

Curtis Brainard Just how scarce was climate-change coverage in 2011? It’s hard to get a fix on the details, but the broad conclusion that it was even scarcer than in the year before seems to hold up. Last week, I wrote a post about an analysis by The Daily Climate—a website that produces and tracks news about climate change—which found that the tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.27726 2012-01-04T21:45:34Z 2012-01-05T15:08:32Z

Downward spiral in English-language news media continued in 2011

Curtis Brainard Twelve months ago, The Daily Climate, a website that produces and tracks media stories about climate change, declared that 2010 was “the year climate coverage ‘fell off the map.’” The downward spiral continued in 2011, a more recent analysis by the site found. The number of articles, blog posts, editorials, and op-eds “declined roughly 20 percent from 2010's levels and tag:www.cjr.org,2011://4.27711 2011-12-30T11:00:44Z 2011-12-30T06:38:18Z

From extreme weather to the crisis in Japan, Curtis Brainard picks the top CJR stories from the past year

Curtis Brainard The Hottest Thing in Science Blogging: The hot ticket for science bloggers and online writers this year was ScienceOnline, a once-obscure North Carolina conference with only about 300 coveted seats available. It sold out in less than forty-five minutes after a Twitter registration frenzy attracted eager participants whose ardor would have put to shame even diehard football fans looking for tag:www.cjr.org,2011://4.27690 2011-12-21T19:00:14Z 2011-12-26T23:58:19Z

Coverage of permafrost melt creates confusion about level of worry

Curtis Brainard Methane—a potent greenhouse gas that could be released in vast quantities as climate change melts Arctic permafrost—has received quite a bit of media attention in the last month. But the coverage has caused a bit of confusion about where the methane is coming from—land or sea—and which source has scientists most worried. The first round of stories, in early December, tag:www.cjr.org,2011://4.27628 2011-12-16T21:00:53Z 2011-12-20T15:15:35Z

Nature calls on scientists to “fight agenda-driving reporting”

Curtis Brainard The Leveson inquiry into the “culture, practice, and ethics” of the British press resulting from the News International phone-hacking scandal has caught science journalism in its tractor beam. In the course of his opening statement in mid-November, Robert Jay, counsel to the inquiry, mentioned that “members of the scientific community may be providing the Inquiry with evidence along the lines tag:www.cjr.org,2011://4.27605 2011-12-15T20:30:29Z 2011-12-15T21:11:50Z

Voyeuristic sex-addiction cover misses an important debate

Curtis Brainard A “sex addiction epidemic” is unfolding like a plague in the US, according a recent Newsweek cover story—but don’t reach for the chastity belt just yet. The over-stimulated article is weakly reported, superficial, and perpetuates confusion about sexual disorders that researchers in the field have been trying to alleviate. “Sex addiction” has been a popular story since the publication of tag:www.cjr.org,2011://4.27599 2011-12-14T20:47:40Z 2011-12-14T21:22:48Z

News outlets rely on the masses for public health stories

Alysia Santo http://www.cjr.org When we feel ourselves coming down with something, we look it up. If you type the words “I think I’m getting” into Google’s search box, the suggested next-word options are “sick,” “the flu,” and “a cold,” though these recommendations and their order can vary slightly. In 2008, Google put that search data to use with Google Flu Trends, which shows tag:www.cjr.org,2011://4.27596 2011-12-14T19:45:14Z 2011-12-14T19:51:10Z

Why UN climate summits like the one in Durban are challenging, but worth covering

James Fahn http://www.cjr.org DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA—It’s not easy to be a climate reporter. You have to understand the science of climate change, as well as the politics and the economics. You need to cover energy policy, forest issues, agriculture, oceans, and industry. You have to follow both global and local politics. You need to be able to communicate with both scientists and laymen. tag:www.cjr.org,2011://4.27533 2011-12-07T23:00:32Z 2011-12-08T21:13:49Z

Discovery Channel reverses course following wave of criticism, but what will viewers get?

Curtis Brainard Discovery Channel reversed course on Tuesday when it announced that it would air all seven parts of a BBC series about Earth’s polar regions, including a final episode about climate change, which it originally said it would forgo. In mid-November, the BBC drew criticism for giving foreign television networks the option not to buy the final episode, “On Thin Ice,”