By Michael Getler
21 September 2012 It was not the PBS NewsHour’s finest 10 minutes. In my view, and that of hundreds, even thousands of others, the program stumbled badly. On the other hand, it was not the end of the world, so to speak. A segment on climate change last Monday evening produced a storm of protest from critics who felt the program mislead viewers — by a faulty application of journalistic balance — about the very real threat of global warming and man’s contribution to it, as well as a sprinkling of support from those who think that threat is overstated and that balance was just the right touch for the NewsHour. [Above] is a video link to the segment so those that did not see it, or wish to see it again, can form their own opinions. This may be the longest ombudsman column I’ve ever posted because the subject generates about as much thunder and heat as one of those storms many have experienced lately that at least seem to make us think more about climate change. It also is one of those lose-lose subjects for an ombudsman in which whatever one writes is certain not to satisfy a lot of people. The segment — headlined “Climate Change Skeptic No Longer Doubts Human Role in Global Warming” — was conducted by veteran NewsHour Correspondent Spencer Michels. It started out focused on a perfectly relevant news angle. Physicist Richard Muller had long been among those who denied that climate change was happening, but he made big news last month when he broke with his allies and published an op-ed in the New York Times saying not only was he no longer a skeptic but that “I’m now going a step further. Humans are almost entirely the cause.” The segment went on from there, however, in a much more controversial direction, and I will come back to it. But almost from the moment it ended, email began pouring into my mailbox, hundreds of them. A representative sampling is posted below. Some are quite long. At the same time, several analytical and opinion pieces attacking or supporting the segment were posted online — almost certainly driving more email traffic — by liberal and conservative commentators, and man-made climate change supporters and critics here, here, and here. Later in the week, a petition arrived listing 15,000 names associated with “Forecast The Facts,” a group demanding an investigation into “how and why PBS NewsHour promoted falsehoods about climate change and slander against climate scientists.” They focused on the broadcast segment and an accompanying blog post by Michels involving a more extended interview with another guest on the program, Anthony Watts, who the “Facts” group described as a “climate change denier and conspiracy theorist.” I will come back to him as well. We also have responses from Michels and NewsHour Executive Producer Linda Winslow to questions I raised. My Thoughts But first, I want to lay out my views. In the interests of full disclosure, I’m a layman with no particular expertise in science or climate matters. My views and observations are formed mostly from the dreaded mainstream media and my own reading and observations. So I am engaged with the news and issues of our time but pretty much as an average citizen and viewer. I think of myself as open-minded and believe strongly in hearing opposing views. But I do believe in the assessment by the vast majority of climate scientists and U.S. and international scientific organizations that the threat to our planet and future generations from global warming and the human contribution to it is real and needs to be addressed. The NAP’s Thoughts As the National Academies Press, which encompasses reports from the National Academy of Sciences, put it in 2010: “scientific evidence that the Earth is warming is now overwhelming. There is also a multitude of evidence that this warming results primarily from human activities, especially burning fossil fuels and other activities that release heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. Projections of future climate change indicate that Earth will continue to warm … driving a multitude of related and interacting changes in the Earth system, including decreases in the amounts of ice stored in mountain glaciers and polar regions, increases in sea level, changes in ocean chemistry, and changes in the frequency and intensity of heat waves, precipitation events, and droughts. These changes in turn pose significant risks to both human and ecological systems. Although the details of how the future impacts of climate change will unfold are not as well understood as the basic causes and mechanisms of climate change, we can reasonably expect that the consequences of climate change will be more severe if actions are not taken to limit its magnitude and adapt to its impacts.” Back to the NewsHour Segment The reason I wrote, at the top of this column that, although the segment was badly handled, it wasn’t the end of the world, is as follows. Michels, at the start, talked about “the world of climate change, where most scientists and a much smaller group of skeptics remain bitterly divided.” He talked further in the interview about whether politicians “listen to the 97 percent of scientists who say that it is real or they pay attention to the vocal community of skeptics will determine to a large extent what regulations and what laws get passed.” Aside from interviewing Muller in the broadcast, he interviewed William Collins, senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who talked about the rapid changes in global warming and the human-enhancement of that change, and Jon Krosnick of Stanford University who pointed out that “the voices of skeptics on climate change are very loud in this country and particularly effective in Washington at the moment. But they are a very, very small group.” Michels also pointed out, usefully, that “neither presidential candidate is talking about climate change but, in Congress, it’s a different story; 74 percent of Senate Republicans publicly question the science of global warming” and more than half in the House. And physicist Muller got the last word: “We will be experiencing weather that’s warmer than Homo sapiens ever experienced. And I tend to think that’s going to be bad and we should do something about it and we can …” Downside Dominates But the missteps created by the program and committed on the air and online dominate the reasons why this segment is being most widely viewed as falling short of NewsHour standards. I feel that way as well. And the main factor was the choice and appearance of Anthony Watts as someone interviewed on the broadcast, and also interviewed at much greater length by Michels on the NewsHour’s “Rundown” blog. My focus is only on the broadcast, which is what most people wrote and commented about to me. […]

Climate Change Creates a Storm