Influential group says climate reporters have ‘moral obligation’ to be biased, outlines new project

In a recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), Kyle Pope, co-founder of the Covering Climate Now (CCN), asked for input on a project produced through an association of the CJR, Covering Climate Now, Solutions Journalism Network, as well as politically left-wing outlets The Guardian and The Nation.

The project is called the “Climate Blueprint for Media Transformation,” which encourages reporters to insert climate change into every story and to view fossil fuel industry voices as inherently dishonest. CCN also openly promotes the idea that journalists should not be objective when reporting on climate and energy.

Validation

In a chapter on the “Blueprint” called “The Movement is the Story,” Jennifer Oldham, a Denver-based journalist, encourages reporters to “connect with social change leaders” and to provide them with “validation” as a means to help them advance their cause.

“This doesn’t mean agreeing with activists’ views, but instead, repeating back their concerns and goals to ensure you’re understanding them correctly. When you accurately describe a movement’s vision for change from the inside, it can build solidarity with media consumers and inspire them to action,” Oldham writes.

When it comes to other perspectives on these issues, the tone is entirely different. In a chapter on “Myths and Disinformation,” environmental journalist Amy Westervelt rehashes the “Exxon Knew” narrative, claiming that Exxon researchers were aware of climate change decades ago and worked to hide this information from the public.

“Accountability journalism is often criticized as being more focused on problems than solutions, but we’ve seen the fossil fuel industry use PR throughout its history to avoid regulation and push society toward technologies intended only to extend oil and gas drilling,” Westervelt writes.

The renewable industry also has lobbyists, who seek to avoid regulation and push society toward their technologies, which Westervelt doesn’t mention.

As physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explains in a post on X, the “Exxon Knew” campaign is based on a myth that oil companies had some special, absolute knowledge about the impacts of carbon dioxide emissions on the climate. In fact, they had no more certainty than anyone else, Hossenfelder wrote — noting she’s no fan of the fossil fuel industry — and debates were not meant to deceive. They were part of a broader debate among researchers looking at the issue.

“I repeat: THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE. NO ONE HAD ANY EVIDENCE. Neither the scientists in academia nor those in the fossil fuel industry. No one could have known in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s that the models were correct,” Hossenfelder wrote.

Ron Bradley, founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research, has a multi-part series that goes into extensive rebuttals of the “Exxon Knew” claims. There’s no mention anywhere in Werstervelt’s article that anyone disputes the claims.

"Solutions journalism"

In a chapter called “Beyond Fossil Fuels,” Puerto Rico-based journalist Omaya Sosa Pascual writes “Climate catastrophe may start with fossil fuels, but it usually arrives in our communities in the form of sickness, extreme poverty, trauma, hunger, economic recession, displacement, migration and death.”

This statement has no factual basis. There is no such thing as a "low-energy wealthy nation." Across the globe, fossil fuel consumption strongly correlates with higher standards of living, and higher standards of living strongly correlate with better health outcomes, increased longevity, and lower rates of malnutrition.

Heartland Institute energy research fellow Linnea Lueken told Just the News that the way the blueprint talks about “climate justice” and fossil fuels as inherently destructive ignores that energy is vital to protecting people from natural disasters. Nations with higher rates of fossil fuel use also have better infrastructure, and so they have much more resilience to the natural disasters, regardless of whether global warming is contributing to them or not. 

“When extreme weather does hit, and it will always hit, they’re not going to be able to withstand the impact as well as a first-world nation will be able to,” Lueken said.

Despite the overt anti-fossil fuel messaging in the “Blueprint,” Ambika Samarthya-Howard, chief innovation officer for the Solutions Journalism Network, told Just the News that the organization doesn’t promote any particular response to the problem.

“Solutions journalism, as we teach it, does not advocate for any particular solutions to a problem — in this case, climate change,” Ambika Samarthya-Howard, chief innovation officer told Just the News. 

Both-sidesing

Solutions has a broad range of issues it’s involved in, including democracy and health, and it has an ethics statement on its website asserting its independence from its funders. CCN is focused entirely on climate and energy reporting and has no ethics statements.

Lueken has a series of videos on the Heartland Institute YouTube channel disputing various claims made by climate alarmists about trends in extreme weather, demonstrating many media narratives about the end of snow, temperature-related deaths, droughts, sea-level rise, and hurricanes are full of exaggerations and misinformation. 

While there are legitimate sources who would dispute Lueken’s arguments, CCN explicitly discourages presenting perspectives that would agree with her. According to CCN, journalists have a “moral obligation” to advocate for the climate agenda.

Covering Climate Now has a large influence over journalists covering these issues. It’s funded by the anti-fossil fuel organizations, including Actions@EBMF and the Park Foundation, and boasts of being partnered with over 500 media organizations that reach 2 billion people worldwide.

In August, the organization attacked The Washington Post's editorial board for arguing that addressing climate change might not depend solely on the outcome of this year’s presidential election.

The editorial criticizes some of the approaches of the Biden-Harris administration to support green energy, while praising overall the administration for its efforts. It points out that environmental activists have been major opponents to transmission lines and geothermal projects, while also blocking permitting reform that would allow the projects to be expedited.

“But if the United States is to decarbonize, Ms. Harris would have to double down on the IRA’s [Inflation Reduction Act] potential — even if it means upsetting many environmentalists,” the editorial concludes.

This relatively mild examination of the political complications of the energy transition was too much for CCN. In an article titled “Both-sides-ing Climate Politics,” CCN argues that objective journalism is a serious problem because there are only one set of facts to consider.

“Although adopted in the name of balance, both-sides-ism ended up misleading the public by prioritizing the appearance of impartiality over the accurate presentation of facts,” the CCN team argues.

The article also chastises the Post editorial board for citing a Breakthrough Institute study, because the organization isn’t hostile to fossil fuels. The article then goes on to tell the thousands of journalists who cover energy and climate at CCN’s partner outlets that, in so many words, supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy is what journalists should do.

“But the planet is on fire. One candidate wants to add fuel to the flames. The other wants to douse those flames. Making that distinction clear is neither partisan nor advocacy. It is journalism,” CCN writes. 

"Shameless propagandizing"

Just the News reached out to the CCN and the CJR, with questions about the ethics of telling journalists to abandon all notions of objectivity in covering climate and energy, including stories on politics and elections. Neither organization replied.

Lueken said that presenting perspectives that challenge those that CCN promotes — and which much of the media parrot — is difficult. Besides the ruthlessness of their tactics, she said, they’re pervasive.

“It's just shameless propagandizing. They're not even pretending like they're not actively propagandists and pushing narratives, which is simultaneously refreshing, because it’s honest, but also a little bit worrying,” Lueken said. 

She said the fact they’re so brazen suggests that they’ve gotten very confident that there will be no consequences, financial or otherwise, for telling journalists to fanatically spread an anti-fossil fuel message. “They’re kind of drunk on power,” she said. 

Samarthya-Howard with Solutions said that their approach, which doesn’t promote one solution over another, entails reporting on how an approach works, evidence it’s having an impact or not, lessons learned, and limitations and caveats to the approach. She said it produces more effective journalism.

“In fact, there is research showing that people across the political spectrum are hungry for news that doesn’t just cover problems but potential ways to address the problem as well. You can see this from More In Common, Smith Geiger, and a survey in Philadelphia that found conservative residents were most likely to want this sort of news,” Samarthya-Howard said.

She said that the organization’s funders — which include anti-fossil fuel groups like the Rockefeller Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — have a “complete prohibition from editorial input, oversight or control over the work happening, something we make explicitly clear.” 

“And it does a disservice to audiences, large swaths of which are craving news that doesn’t traffic in fear and outrage, but instead deeply informs them about what’s happening on the ground to solve shared problems, all while maintaining a critical eye,” Samarthya-Howard said.