How Fox News Got Climategate Wrong

When reporting on climate change, journalists should be wary of the swarm of axe-grinding interest groups trying to coax them into buying their spin.

In journalism, context is everything. That goes for quotes and for facts, especially on an issue with facts as layered with complexity and nuance as climate change.

Fox News’ Washington managing editor Bill Sammon should have known that when, at the height of the 2009 “Climategate” e-mail fracas, he dashed off an ill-considered memo ordering his reporters to “refrain from reporting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY (caps in original) pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”

Not good enough. Journalists should not be stenographers, content to report he-said, she-said statements and call it a day. It’s a journalist’s job to dig out the story behind the story – to question motives, double-check assertions, compare them to the record, and to put facts and debates about those facts into the proper context for readers and viewers.

In his memo, Sammon failed to instruct his reporters to give viewers the full picture – yes, the e-mails had been hacked, yes, critics said the e-mails raised questions about climate data, but at the time, many scientists said the e-mails, when carefully parsed, did not call into question the weight or quality of the evidence for a human imprint on the global climate system. A few enterprising journalists went to the trouble of analyzing the e-mails themselves, and found the critics' accusations wanting.

No one knows who swiped the e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, but it should have been obvious to any skeptical editor that whoever did it was likely pushing an agenda that deserved close scrutiny from journalists.

Climate change, as an issue, is global in scope and has sweeping ramifications for society. Consequently, the issue has attracted a swarm of axe-grinding interest groups trying to coax reporters into making their spin the dominant narrative.

Sammon should have reminded his reporters to be good journalists and to be on guard – not to allow the network to be a public relations company for political agendas, as too often happens with both Fox News and MSNBC.