Shaping the Message, Distorting the Science: Media Strategies to Influence Public Policy

A hearing was held by the House Committee on Science and Technology on March 28 on this topic. Excerpts from the testimony are shown below.

Opening Statement By Chairman Brad Miller

Ronald Reagan said that facts were stubborn things. The topic of today’s hearing is a concerted effort by opponents of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to bully scientific facts into submission. And under intense pressure, the facts about global warming caved in, and proved much more elastic than Ronald Reagan had us believe.

Testimony By Dr. James J. McCarthy

It is now clear that for a number of years, both Bush administration political appointees and a network of organizations funded by the world’s largest private energy company, ExxonMobil, have sought to distort, manipulate and suppress climate science, so as to confuse the American public about the reality and urgency of the global warming problem, and thus forestall a strong policy response.

Testimony By Sheldon Rampton

A converse strategy aims at suppressing independent scientific views, discoveries and evidence that are inconvenient to the industry or its lobbying interests. For example, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently released documents showing "hundreds of instances" where a former and current oil industry lobbyist had edited government reports to downplay the impact of human activities on global warming. The edits were by Philip A. Cooney, the former chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Cooney himself has no scientific credentials. He worked for the American Petroleum Institute prior to being appointed to his position within the Bush administration. He now works for Exxon Mobil.

Testimony By Tarek Maassarani

In February 2006, prompted by the well-publicized concerns of Dr. James Hansen and Rick Piltz, (The Government Accountability Project) GAP initiated an in-depth investigation to determine the extent of political interference with federal climate research and the dissemination of scientific information. The investigation found no incidents of direct interference with climate change research. Instead, unduly restrictive policies and practices were found to occur largely in the communication of “sensitive” scientific information to the media, the public, and Congress. The effect of these restrictive communications policies and practices has been to misrepresent and under-represent the taxpayer-funded scientific knowledge generated by federal climate science agencies and programs. The bottom line is, we need the government to be stimulating, not undermining, an informed public debate on important scientific subjects, including climate change.

Testimony By Jeff Kueter

In today’s highly charged environment of climate change policy, it is claimed that the political interference with climate scientists is unique. It is alleged that federal scientists are not free to speak their minds and are subject to oversight by political appointees. The situation is neither unique nor exclusive to one political party. Our book, Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policy Making, documents numerous past examples of where science and politics intersected with damaging impacts on science and negative public policy outcomes.8 Further, those who believe the current situation is unique should make themselves familiar with the story of Dr. Will Happer. As told by Happer in Politicizing Science and widely reported at the time of its occurrence, in the early months of the Clinton-Gore Administration, Dr. Happer, then head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, questioned the Vice President’s views on climate change and ozone depletion. Despite his scientific credentials, he was summarily dismissed at Gore’s direction.