Assistant professor asks, ‘Who speaks for the climate?’

Boykoff

Maxwell Boykoff, an assistant professor at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and in the environmental studies program at the University of Colorado Boulder, recently published “Who Speaks for the Climate?: Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change," a book that investigates how the media covers the science of climate change.

Boykoff found that many journalists’ attempts to be objective and balanced actually had the opposite effect on their reporting. He said allowing climate change skeptics an equal say in stories gives weight to their ideas, even though the consensus among scientists is that climate change is real and humans are a contributing factor.