Analysis: Is the New “False Balance” Coverage of the Economic Impacts of Climate Change?

There’s a must read Shorenstein Center white paper out by Time magazine contributor Eric Pooley, who spent Fall 2008 at Harvard researching how the news media covered the run up to the vote on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (paper, press release, Slate commentary).

Note Pooley’s conclusion about the new false balance in news coverage of climate change:

Pooley concluded that the press misrepresented the economic debate over carbon cap and trade, failed to perform the basic service of making climate policy and its economic impact understandable to the reader, and allowed opponents of climate action to set the terms of the cost debate. He also concluded that editors had failed to devote sufficient resources to the climate story, shoving it into the “environment” pigeonhole.