Journalists believed to possibly hedge when considering climate change

It’s not your imagination, newspapers do plenty of hedging when describing the effects of climate change. And according to one new study, these “hedging” words are on the rise — although it’s not entirely clear why.

Experts at the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) looked at climate change stories in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, along with Spanish newspapers El Mundo and El Pais, between 2001 and 2007, and found, especially in the American papers, a marked increase of words like “almost, speculative, could, believe, consider, blurry, possible and projecting.”

“The results showed that in 2001, the U.S. papers used 189 hedging words or expressions per 10,000 words printed while the Spanish papers used 107,” according to the CU-Boulder release. “In 2007, the number of hedging words and expressions used per 10,000 words rose to 267 in the U.S. and to 136 in Spain.”

Because Spain had ratified the Kyoto protocols on greenhouse gas emissions, unlike the U.S., and had already adopted a national climate policy when the survey was conducted, researchers were not surprised that Spanish papers expressed more certainty when writing on global warming. But researchers were surprised that both countries saw an increase in hedging language over the course of the study.

It’s possible, researchers say, that the increase in hedging words has to do with expanded coverage and reporters writing more on the science of climate change, which requires more explanation. But it is also possible the wiggle words are a result of increased politicization of the science and increased polarization in the political debate.

Maybe. Possibly. Or so some believe.