Is Sky News being impartial or introducing false balance in this interview? Why not take 10 minutes to watch the interview in full and weigh up what you make of it.

In terms of the interviewees, Zoe Cohen is a prominent climate activist who makes it her business to draw upon understanding of reported science. James Woudhuysen has a physics degree and is a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University.

I’m not quite sure what the original intention of the interview was. If it started out as a narrow ‘can we be sure that the claim that 2023 was the hottest year on record (in the last 125,000 years) is true?’ it reached beyond that.

James Woudhuysen argued that we couldn’t be certain it was true because of differing measurement methods for historic temperatures compared to modern temperatures. He acknowledged man-made climate change. He went on to seemingly argue that global flooding events weren’t just natural disasters but also relate to flood defences and water management.

Zoe Cohen pointed to the body of science from which the exam question arises. She questioned the associations and motivations of the other interviewee and the decision of Sky News to have him on instead of a climate scientist. She drew attention to the bigger picture of the climate emergency (rather than debating the nuance implied by the exam question).

In the United States (until 1987 when it was abolished) the Fairness Doctrine (introduced in 1949) “was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints” (thanks Wikipedia).

Meanwhile False Balance (or ‘bothsideism’) is “a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports. Journalists may present evidence and arguments out of proportion to the actual evidence for each side, or may omit information that would establish one side’s claims as baseless. False balance has been cited as a cause of misinformation.” (thanks again Wikipedia).

So, was this interview an example of impartial journalism or false balance. My own impression (rather than assertion as to whether or not this was actually the case) is that the exam question provided a nice excuse for Sky News to pursue an impartiality path on the exam question which was actually a trojan horse for false balance consideration of the seriousness of climate change.

P.S. Yes – I am happy quoting from Wikipedia. I make small donations to help keep it volunteer driven and non-profit. In a world of media bias and distortion I consider it one of the last strongholds of well-assembled knowledge and insight. It is an encyclopedia, it is written from a neutral point of view, and it provides free content that anyone can use, edit and distribute.

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