The Scientific Temper of Climate Change Coverage in Indian Newspapers

Abstract

Despite the efforts of several science communication organizations, coverage of science and science based issues remains very low in the worldwide media in general and Indian media, in particular. In contrast, the Indian media has seen an escalation of climate change reporting in the last decade. Climate change being an issue with far reaching social and economic implications, coverage of the issue is likely to have policy implications. Media coverage of scientific issues to a large extent informs policy decisions. Thus scientific coverage of an issue like climate change will result in scientific policies. In order to ensure this, the scientific temper of coverage of an issue like climate change needs to be tracked. This study of the scientific temper of climate change coverage in three mainstream English language newspapers published from New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai shows that there has been very little attempt to involve science and scientists in the reportage. Majority of the news reports have used politicians as primary claim makers and have been sourced from the UN or IPCC reports. In comparison the number of reports using scientists as the primary claim makers and sourced from peer-reviewed journals is very low and has remained almost constant over the years.