The Columbia Journalism Review takes to task major news media outlets for underplaying the advantage of electric cars over their gas-powered cousins even in parts of the country heavily reliant upon coal plants.
Reporter Curtis Brainard (2012) notes that “electrics are always better than all-gas vehicles on the climate front, except in the few instances when they’re not any worse. A number of articles, such as one in the Los Angeles Times (Hirsch, 2012) headlined, ‘Electric cars can be no better for global warming, in some cities,’ didn’t make clear that, unless you’re driving one the most efficient compact cars or a hybrid, most of the time, they are in fact better. Worse still was an article from the Detroit Free Press, titled ‘Charging up electric cars could create more emissions than fueling up’” (link no longer available).
The CJR article, “Equivocal Efficiency?” is a good example of why non-journalists can benefit by reading media criticism publications. What is useful about the professional journals – particularly the Columbia Journalism Review — is that they operate from within the mainstream paradigm of journalistic objectivity. That can give you a more realistic sense of the pressures that reporters and editors face.
NOTES:
This article was originally posted on April 28, 2012 in a local political blog called Olympia Views.
RESOURCES
- Brainard, Curtis; 2012. “Equivocal Efficiency? Some articles fail to stress bottom line of electric-vehicles report.” Columbia Journalism Review. Posted April 18; accessed April 28.
- Hirsch, Jerry 2012. “Electric cars can be no better for global warming, in some cities.” Los Angeles Time. Posting April 16; accessed April 28.
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