The study “Dealing with the Quiet Opposition? News Coverage of Climate Skepticism in Two Finnish Newspapers 1990–2021” by Ville Kumpu, an independent researcher, looked at how climate skepticism was covered in two Finnish newspapers, the large and most prestigious daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the also large evening tabloid Ilta-Sanomat.
According to Schäfer and Painter (2021), climate skepticism is a key professional problem for journalists reporting on climate change, as they have to balance between criticism of partisanship if they favor climate change narratives and also because giving a too prominent role for skepticism would be seen as inaccurate, biased, distorted, or irresponsible.
Reporting on climate change remains of crucial importance, as it affects how individuals, organizations, and societies act on the knowledge. Although the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change has strengthened in past decades, the public opinion has not followed suit. One possible reason is the way media has amplified skepticism and presented the issue as one of open debate between “skeptics” and “alarmists”. Indeed, according Brüggemann and Engesser (2017), climate skeptics, through media coverage, may gain legitimacy that translates into political power.
The term climate skepticism in itself covers a large variety of positions on climate change: denying that warming takes place at all, denying the anthropogenic component, denying the harmful effects, or even climate delay – acknowledging the issue but justifying inaction or inadequate efforts. Climate skepticism also includes process skepticism – critiques of the scientific, bureaucratic, and political processes behind mainstream climate science.
Climate skepticism is most prominent in Anglophone countries where it has also been studied the most, and tends to occur more on right-leaning and tabloid newspapers rather than on the left or broadsheets. Climate skepticism as a whole also has a strong online presence on social media and such.
This study looked at how climate skepticism was covered in two biggest Finnish newspapers from 1990 to 2021 – the prestigious Helsinging Sanomat (HS) and the evening tabloid Ilta-Sanomat (IS). In Finland, the public debate on climate change has been said to be characterized by “quiet opposition” (Vesa, Gronow, and Ylä-Anttila 2020). In news, there is a tendency to “domesticate” the stories by including national experts rather than just foreign.
The method was to study all articles that mentioned IPCC – chosen as a focal point for climate issues due to its prominent role in advocating for climate measures and studying climate change. Other search terms were “ilmastopaneeli” (climate panel), or “ilmastonmuutospaneeli” (climate change panel), for a total of 663 news articles, 554 from HS and 109 from IS. Quantitative and qualitative content analysis was then conducted.
A total of 69 articles included climate skepticism, the majority (58) in HS. This included not only arguments for climate skepticism, but also arguments addressing skepticism or non-argumentative descriptions of skepticism. In 28 articles, climate skepticism was the main theme. There was a notable increase in HS during the 2009 and 2010 due to “Climategate”, where emails from prominent climate scientists were hacked and published in order to discredit climate science and climate change.
Only 25 of the articles included sources who were quoted presenting views that questioned anthropogenic climate change, either evidence skepticism or process skepticism. The skeptical content was mostly of foreign origin – only 13 Finnish sources were quoted presenting their skeptical views. In contrast, argument for climate change were mostly domestic – contrasting Finnish climate change advocates with foreign skeptics.
The impact of “Climategate” was profound. The changes caused by it extended to the use of journalistic voice (news narrator) – a core area of professionalism. The news narrator’s voice was used in conveying the interpretations made from the hacked emails. Nevertheless, the role of climate skepticism in the research material remained marginal.
There were two possible conclusions that the author presented from the results. One is that the role of climate skepticism has remained marginal during the time period and the results simply reflected that. The other is that Finnish climate skeptics have strategically avoided mainstream coverage and public use of arguments to question climate science. Organizationally, the results may indicate that Finnish newsrooms are professionally and ideologically attuned to communicating on the issue based on the climate change consensus.
Further studies could look at other media or investigate the discourses of climate delay rather than outright denial-type skepticism in Finland. Thus complementary studies are called for.
The article “Dealing with the Quiet Opposition? News Coverage of Climate Skepticism in Two Finnish Newspapers 1990–2021” by Ville Kumpu is in Journalism Practice. (Free abstract).
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