Climate Scientist or Weather Guy?

Station Science?

What News Directors and Meteorologists Think About Climate Change

Friday, Nov. 5

11:30am-12:30pm

Location MGC 203/205

Joe Witte

Center for Climate Change Communication

George Mason University

and meteorologist with TBD.com

In this presentation, Witte reviews research on how local TV news directors and meteorologists serve as "gatekeepers" of climate change information. More people get their news from local TV than any other source, TV news directors make the decisions as to which stories to run, and polling indicates that meteorologists are among the most trusted sources of information about climate change. Yet as the Columbia Journalism Review recently reported in a cover story, whether and how to cover climate change at local TV stations remains a political charged debate within news rooms. Witte presents findings from nationally representative surveys of local meteorologists and news directors, analyzing their perceptions of climate change risks, their news decisions on the issue, and their willingness to engage their communities on the problem.

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Joe Witte, Ph.D. is a researcher at George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication. Witte started with a career as a USGS glaciologist, investigating, with crampons on his feet, the glaciers of Washington State and the sea ice in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. He's now working on an NSF funded project under the direction of Professor Edward Maibach at GMU about enabling local TV weathercasters as climate change communicators/educators. During the nearly 20 years with New York City’s NBC affiliate as chief meteorologist, many of his reports on flights into the eye of hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and climate change also aired on NBC’s Today and Nightly News. Witte is currently seen during evenings on TBD TV.

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The Media & Communication Research Group (MCRG) in the School of Communication is a collaborative network of American University faculty and students studying the influence of media and communication on public life, civil society, and social problems. MCRG also serves as a public forum for discussion and debate and as the host for a speaker and seminar series.