How PCC complaints on climate and energy are won and lost
How well does press regulation take care of inaccurate coverage of climate science and energy issues in the media? Carbon Brief takes a look at what governs whether complaints are won or lost.
In a ruling published on climate skeptic website Watts up with That, the UK’s Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has found that an article in the Mail on Sunday did not breach its Code of Practice. The article in question – entitled ‘The Great Green Con’ – claimed to reveal “official data that’s making scientists suddenly change their minds about climate doom,” and has attracted considerable criticism from climate scientists.
PCC complaints on scientific matters have a troubled history, and the recent PCC judgement highlights some of the key reasons why.
Winning complaints: clear errors
The PCC is supposed to enforce a voluntary editors code, which requires newspapers to not publish material which is “inaccurate” or “misleading”. In 2011, we complained about a Daily Mail front-page headline claiming ‘green taxes’ currently add £200 to consumer energy bills. It transpired that the headline was based on an erroneous interpretation of an out of date report and the Mail subsequently printed a correction (in fact, the Mail group printed three corrections, as it kept repeating the claim).
But this case was easy to understand – the figure was simple and wrong, and the research the newspaper referred to to justify it didn’t. Not all PCC complaints are so straight forward.
PCC is not an arbiter on the science
In the latest case, the complainant took issue with David Rose’s argument that there has been no statistically significant increase in the world’s average temperature for the last decade or so. He argued Rose didn’t make it clear the trend refers to surface temperatures only – ignoring the warming taking place in the oceans.
The complainant is right that a significant amount of warming goes into the oceans – more than 90 per cent, in fact. Using one part of the climate system, namely surface temperatures, to argue that ” the world isn’t getting warmer” is misleading. But since the article is correct that statistically speaking, surface temperatures for the top ten warmest years on record are indistinguishable from each other, the PCC rules that the Code has not been breached.
The PCC doesn’t see itself as an arbiter of scientific accuracy – or as it puts it in its judgement, which was produced in March:
“…the PCC is not the correct body to test veracity of the scientific data relied upon by the columnist. “
And it doesn’t make judgements on where the balance of evidence lies. The complainant also argued it was misleading for the article to suggest scientists were worried about “global cooling” in the 1970s. He said just seven scientific papers from the era suggested cooling, while six times as many suggested warming.
But the PCC says: “this was plainly a matter of interpretation of scientific papers”. The newspaper is allowed to present its position that scientists were just as worried by global cooling in the 1970s as they are about global warming now – so again, no breach of the Code.
In a comparable case taken out against the Sunday Telegraph in 2009, the PCC ruled that a comment piece headlined “Rise of sea levels ‘greatest lie ever told'” wasn’t a serious breach of the Code because it accurately presented the views of one scientist, Nils-Axel Morner.
Dr Morner’s views are highly controversial, and other experts in the field don’t agree with him. But according to the PCC’s ruling that doesn’t matter – the newspaper doesn’t have an obligation to represent the scientific consensus that sea levels are rising. If it accurately reports scientific views, it’s doing its job.
Successful scientific complaints
But some complainants have won corrections to scientific inaccuracies. In 2010, for example, the Sunday Times printed a lengthy correction to an article claiming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had included a “bogus” and “unsubstantiated” claims about the impact of climate change on the Amazon rainforest.
Forest expert Dr Simon Lewis said that the IPCC’s statement was in fact based on “well-known, mainstream and defensible science” and that the Sunday Times article gave the misleading impression that he supported its critique of the evidence. The complaint succeeded because Dr Lewis was able to show the newspaper had inaccurately represented his views.
More recently – and more pertinently to this week’s ruling – the Mail on Sunday has already printed a correction to the ‘Great Green Con’ article by David Rose, following a complaint from climate scientist Dr James Annan. Annan said that a quote attributed to him by Rose was a ” complete fabrication” and pointed out that Rose had misrepresented his research on the rate of warming in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide.
It’s noticeable that both of these complaints came from the scientists whose work, or comments, had been distorted by the newspaper.
The PCC is generally more likely to accept complaints from individuals directly affected by the story. But it doesn’t seem to be mandatory. Last year a member of the public successfully complained about a Daily Mail article headlined “Is this finally proof we’re NOT causing global warming?”. The article misinterpreted a research paper published in a peer reviewed journal. The PCC accepted the complaint even though the scientist himself didn’t complain.
Will the system change in the future?
It’s clear that PCC doesn’t currently present a strong deterrent to newspapers printing inaccuracies – as our experience when the Daily Mail repeated an error it had already corrected several times shows. The details are described in our submission to the Leveson inquiry into press ethics.
Is there any potential for the political process arising from the Leveson inquiry to strengthen the hand of the PCC – or whatever succeeds it? In its submission, website Full Fact suggests for example a new Code should require “a positive standard” of truth – not merely the negative one of avoiding technical inaccuracies. That could strengthen the hand of complainants, if it happened, although it would tie up journalists in even lengthier responses to PCC complaints.
A new regulatory body may still be established in the Autumn. It’s possible that a stronger Code will be developed. We’ll have to wait and see.