A Comparative Analysis of Climate Change in the Alternative and Mainstream Press of New Zealand and the United States.

The public learns about climate change through the media. While mainstream media have been found to inadequately report on this issue in the United States, little research has examined how alternative media frame climate change and how the mainstream press in other countries are dealing with this important issue. On 22 March, Professor Tim O?Riordan, the British Sustainability Commissioner and advisor to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, gave a public speech arguing that climate change must be framed not as a sacrifice or a penalty but as an opportunity to benefit the future. Shortly after, Dr. Michael Nisbet and Chris Mooney wrote a much discussed article in Science that argued scientists must de-emphasize the facts and focus more on morality if important scientific problems are going to have any hope of abating. If such moralistic frames were to be found in the press, one might expect to see their presence initially in alternative outlets or in the mainstream press of countries that have a more receptive policy toward combating climate change. This research comparatively examines how Scoop, an independent news website based in New Zealand, and The New Zealand Herald, the most popular mainstream newspaper in New Zealand, are framing the issue of climate change in relation to The New York Times and AlterNet, an alternative news website based in the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]