Controversy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Controversy - Essay Example The increased attention on global warming seen in 2007 is attributed to several events including the release of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Reports and the fluctuating oil prices and of Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ which gave the news â€Å"hooks into climate change-related stories† (Boycoff, 2010). The amount of news coverage on global warming towards the end of the decade registered an increase to approximately five times the amount of attention given to the issues at the turn of the millennium (Boycoff, 2010). However, in contrast, the amount of coverage on the environment remained at 1.5% at the end of the decade and these figures were even lower in the radio and on network TV. This news coverage saw a decrease for the years 2007 to 2009 when the global economic crisis took centre-stage in the news (Boycoff, 2010). The fact that no large-scale disasters like that of the Katrina hurricane disaster also stalled the coverage of climate change. Boycoff (2010) describes how his assessment of articles on climate change published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal indicate a widespread disagreement with the fact that humans play a huge role in climate change. This mismatch in information is mostly attributed to the wrong applicatio n of so-called ‘balanced reporting’ (Boycoff, 2010). And this mismatch in data has contributed to the confusion on the issue of climate change. However, this bias which was detected in the coverage was later diminished and was no longer pervasive because the media or news coverage became outdated. A new representation was actually considered, especially as George W. Bush, in the 2005 G8 Summit recognized the fact that the Earth has become considerably warmer and man’s contribution through toxic emissions is a reason for the warming global temperatures (Boycoff, 2010). Other