The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers

Thomas Jefferson

What is the purpose of journalism?

The cynic might answer that it is to sell newspapers, but in their book, The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel offer a better answer. Journalism, they say, “is not defined by technology, nor by journalists or the techniques they employ.” Rather, “the principles and purpose of journalism are defined by something more basic: the function news plays in the lives of people.” The bottom line is that journalism exists to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions. And, as with all aspects of decision-making, the veracity, impartiality and pertinence of the information provided is critical to the quality of the decisions made.

I’m sure that back in 1821, when the current-day Guardian first appeared in the guise of The Manchester Guardian, its founding fathers had such high ideals in mind. The clue is in the name, since ‘Guardian’ suggests a benevolent intent. And nobody could deny it is a newspaper that has established for itself a strong ideological image. Indeed, the term ‘Guardian reader’ has become synonymous with the stereotype of the liberal, left-wing and politically correct middle-class. The Guardian exists to inform opinion, but does so from a very particular ideological standpoint. And there is nothing wrong with that, provided that the imperatives of veracity, impartiality and pertinence are met.

To expand upon this point, it is useful for me to first list the elements of journalism that were identified by Kovach and Rosenstiel:

• Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
• Its first loyalty is to citizens.
• Its essence is a discipline of verification.
• Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
• It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
• It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
• It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
• It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
• Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.
• Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news.

So, on the evidence of the deluge of articles currently appearing in the Guardian on the subject of climate change, and their increasingly dogmatic and hysterical tone, how is the Guardian currently standing up when measured against the essential elements of journalism? To answer that question I would like to concentrate upon three recent articles, since I believe they are representative of current standards.

The people must change

My first example is an article written by Christy Lefteri, published on Mon 14 August 2023 under the title: ‘Even in Greek towns razed by wildfires, people don’t blame the climate crisis. That must change’.

The phrase ‘the climate crisis’, used in preference to ‘climate change’, is in line with the Guardian’s adoption of a new style guide that is purported to be more scientifically accurate. However, ‘crisis’ is not a scientific term. So this is not an obligation to a scientific truth but an obligation to an editorial position. That position is made very clear in the article’s opening statement:

Many see climate breakdown as a problem of the future, but it’s here now. To move forward, we must understand our part in it.

Once again, ‘climate breakdown’ is not a scientific term but one that sets a mood favoured by the editorial board. And as for the ‘here and now’ message, the IPCC has been keen to promote such a perception ever since it outlined its strategy for the ‘social amplification of risk’ in AR5, WG3, Chapter 2. So it appears, on this very important point, that the Guardian, whilst no doubt believing itself ‘loyal to the citizens’, is actually being loyal to the IPCC (where the IPCC’s loyalties lie is quite another question). As for what has happened to the Guardian’s ‘discipline of verification’, that would have to be anyone’s guess. Has anyone at the Guardian even thought to read AR5, WG3, Chapter 2 to see what the IPCC has been up to? Did anyone on the newspaper’s staff remember their obligation to ‘serve as an independent monitor of power’ before so eagerly taking up the IPCC narrative? Big Oil isn’t the only power that needs to be challenged.

However, although the Guardian’s standard editorial position troubles me, there is something peculiar to the Lefteri article that I find unusually distasteful; it’s a chemistry that certainly doesn’t feature in The Elements of Journalism. The article starts:

“During the summer of 2021, I flew to Greece to learn more about the wildfires there. I wanted to hear people’s stories, to understand what it meant to be displaced by environmental disaster…and I was three months pregnant. Feeling Evie growing inside me made me wonder what kind of world she would live in – and made me all the more determined to learn as much as I could about what people had experienced.”

So we are led to believe here that Christy is just acting like a good journalist and a responsible mother should, keen to learn more from the locals and to give them a voice on the world stage. However, reading between the lines, her true mission was to spread the truth as only a middle-class, London-born, Guardian reader and wannabe psychotherapist could possibly understand it. The locals needed to know where their ire should be directed – at the oil companies. Unfortunately, it seemed they were having none of it:

“What surprised me, however, was that any mention of the bigger issue, of the climate crisis and global heating, was shut down immediately and completely. It was made clear to me that this subject was unacceptable. Survivors felt that these issues had nothing to do with what they had suffered, and that the people actually accountable needed to pay.”

So she came back home and wrote an article lambasting those poor, long-suffering survivors for not getting on board with the liberal, left-wing worldview promoted by the Guardian. The title said it all: ‘That must change’. Having one’s opinions informed by direct experience of a catastrophe must change. Seeing wildfires in terms of a complex set of issues involving human acts and omissions that go far beyond the burning of fossil fuel must change. Worrying about a chronic and worsening epidemic of arsonists must change. Complaining about years of neglect regarding forest management must change.

Try as I may, I cannot reconcile such arrogance, ignorance and contempt for local opinion with any obligation to the truth or a loyalty to citizenry. As for veracity, impartiality and pertinence, the article deliberately rejects the veracity and partiality of first-hand accounts and is nothing if not impertinent. The Elements of Journalism calls for independence of thought, but also warns that:

In our independence, however, journalists must avoid straying into arrogance, elitism, isolation or nihilism.

I am sad to say that, when it comes to reporting upon climate change, the Guardian seems to stray into arrogance and elitism on a daily basis.

How facts don’t matter when climate justice is at stake

For my second example, we stay with extreme weather but cross the world to Pakistan to see how the Guardian reported upon the devastation caused by the 2022 flooding. The article I have chosen is actually an opinion piece written on Mon 5 Sep 2022 by a former member of the Senate of Pakistan, Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar. It goes by the title, ‘Rich countries caused Pakistan’s catastrophic flooding. Their response? Inertia and apathy’.

It is not surprising that a Pakistani politician should paint such a black and white picture of climate injustice, and it is equally unsurprising, given its ideological leanings, that the Guardian should allow him to make his case without challenge. However, there comes a point when one would hope that the required elements of journalism would intervene. And that point must surely have arrived when Kohkar was allowed to repeat the easily refutable claim that:

 One-third of Pakistan is now underwater.

The true figure was 9%. Even so, it may seem immaterial for me to draw attention to this gross exaggeration, given that ‘more than 1,700 people perished in the disaster. But these details do drive the narrative, so their accuracy matters. According to Kovach and Rosenstiel:

Even in a world of expanding voices, “getting it right” is the foundation upon which everything else is built – context, interpretation, comment, criticism, analysis and debate.

However, perhaps the more serious misdirection isn’t as a result of what the article says but what it fails to say.

According, to Khokhar:

We’re now living through a crisis that wasn’t of our making.

And to illustrate that point he makes a great deal of the impact that climate change is having on what he refers to as the ‘third pole’, the mountainous region that stretches from Myanmar to Afghanistan. He goes on to explain:

“Little grows at such high altitude. But the third pole functions as a water reserve whose 10 major rivers flow downstream from these mountains and sustain more than 1.5 billion people. When you understand this, you start to see the mountains, valleys, and continuously flowing streams and rivers in a different light.”

Yes, but what he fails to mention is the role played by the forested foothills and how they are vital in moderating any flooding that may occur in the lower plains as a result of the ‘flowing streams and rivers’. It is these forests that act as the watershed and it is these forests that have been subjected to massive deforestation over the last 30 years. This environmental catastrophe occurred under the watchful but impotent gaze of the Pakistani government and it was a highly significant contributor to the devastation caused in 2022. As reported here:

“Deforestation played a tremendous role in aggravating the floods,” said Ghulam Akbar, director of the Pakistan Wetlands Program, an environment protection group funded by the United Nations and other international organizations. “Had there been good forests, as we used to have 25 years back, the impact of flooding would have been much less.”

This is not a detail that Khokhar wishes to draw to anyone’s attention and it isn’t one that the Guardian sees fit to introduce at any point. There seems to be one narrative played out on the world stage of politics, and another that reflects the reality on the ground. Whilst the Guardian seems to have little regard for local opinion when it contradicts its own understanding, other news outlets seem less dismissive:

“Our irrigation departments are not in touch with locals, our environmental protection agencies are not in touch with locals, and the Balochistan disaster management authority is currently the most useless institution in the country. And while climate change is important in water policy and government discourse, I think the federal and provincial governments place a lot of blame on climate change and use it as a scapegoat for their own incompetence.”

To be fit for purpose, a newspaper ‘must serve as an independent monitor of power’. Clearly, this article fails to provide any independent challenge. It allows a politician to press his case for reparation without attempting to test the strength of his argument. The Guardian colludes on this occasion because Khokhar is professing a climate injustice that the Guardian itself believes in. However, in so doing, the Guardian also betrays its obligation to truth and denies a voice to the citizens to which its primary loyalty should lie.

Forums for debate

For my final example I go back further in time to see how the Guardian has reported upon the thorny subject of online climate change ‘misinformation’. Having just demonstrated how the Guardian is no stranger to such artifice, you may find the following somewhat ironic.

The article concerned was written by Oliver Milman on Fri 2 Dec 2022, and is titled, ‘#ClimateScam: denialism claims flooding Twitter have scientists worried’. It leads with the message that:

Many researchers are fleeing the platform, unnerved by the surge in climate misinformation since Musk’s chaotic takeover.

Yes, according to Oliver, scientists are abandoning in droves the platform formerly known as Twitter, due to Elon Musk’s takeover and his insistence that the platform should be dedicated to free speech. Apparently, the subsequent relaxation of moderation has had a profound and disturbing effect:

Scientists and advocates have told the Guardian they have become unnerved by a recent resurgence of debunked climate change denialist talking points and memes on Twitter, with the term #ClimateScam now regularly the first result that appears when “climate” is searched on the site.

To evidence the claim, Oliver calls upon the testimony of that paragon of trustworthiness, Michael Mann:

Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist at University of Pennsylvania, said he has no immediate plans to depart Twitter but he’s noticed that climate disinformation has “become a bit more on the nose, with climate deniers who had been deactivated making a reappearance, and climate denial getting somewhat more traction”

And if that were not enough to settle the issue, Jennie King of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue was summoned to the stand:

King said there was a “renewed energy” coursing through the effort to spread baseless claims about the climate crisis on Twitter, particularly by high-profile accounts that fold the issue into other major clashes, such as over abortion or LGBTQ+ rights.

Claims of a resurgence may be true, but what about the headline regarding #ClimateScam? Remember that scientists were ‘unnerved’ that it was regularly the first result that appears when ‘climate’ is searched for. That surely is the smoking gun that tells you that, on Elon’s watch, climate denial has taken over Twitter. Well, no, not actually. According to Jennie King:

There’s no evidence there are more posts with ‘climate scam’ than ‘climate emergency’ or other terms, or that they are getting more engagement, so it’s a bit perplexing why it’s the top search term, we are scratching our heads at it.

Despite the headline, it turns out that the problem is not one of a new era of dominance caused by Elon letting the hordes of climate deniers back online, it is a problem with the algorithm that promotes search items, and the lack of transparency for that algorithm.

Once again, upon reading the report in full, I come away with a distinct impression that the Guardian had attempted to misdirect me. And this misdirection is important because it speaks to the narrative of a peril within, a peril taking the form of misinformation:

While false claims about the climate crisis have been deployed for decades by the fossil fuel industry and various conservative figures, there is some evidence there has been a rise in polarization over climate on social media over the past two years.

And what might those false claims be?

..claims such as that people favoring climate action are somehow hypocrites or that reducing emissions is pointless or expensive…

There is indeed a debate to be had over such issues. And, as pointed out in The Elements of Journalism, newspapers ‘must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise’. How the Guardian thinks it is providing such a vital service by demonising one side of the debate and portraying it as if it were an infection driving away all the good folk from social media is something I need explaining to me. It could be argued that the posited online resurgence of views, abhorred by Guardian readers, may be because platforms like Twitter succeed in providing the required forum, whereas newspapers such as the Guardian signally fail to do so. In this very important respect, the Guardian is most certainly not fit for purpose.

Trust me, I’m a journalist

Back in 2020, the Guardian was boasting that a survey conducted by Ofcom found it to be ‘the most trusted by its readers among UK newspapers’. Such results are very important because they indicate the extent to which a public is prepared to use a newspaper for its primary purpose – to inform its decision-making. However, trusted is not the same as trustworthy, and in that reality gap can be found the seeds of misfortune. As Kovach and Rosenstiel said, ‘getting it right is the foundation upon which everything else is built’, and far too often the Guardian can be found getting it wrong – often tendentiously so. To add to this, it is often apparent that, as a newspaper, it is too loyal to its ideology, to the detriment of failing to encourage open debate on matters of public interest. Its tone can be shrill and dismissive, to the extent that it exudes arrogance and condescension.

The fact that the Guardian is considered a newspaper of record merely accentuates how important it is that it should adhere to the elements of journalism outlined by Kovach and Rosenstiel. Unless it fulfils its obligation to the truth, treats its loyalty to the citizens above all others, maintains a discipline of verification, serves as an independent monitor of power, and provides a forum for public criticism and compromise, it cannot lay claim to being fit for purpose. When it comes to climate change and a proposed accelerated transition to Net Zero, the public are faced with decisions carrying enormous importance. Perhaps more than at any point in recent history the public needs access to reliable information. The internet won’t always provide that, but that doesn’t mean that the Guardian does.