Reuters’ climate-change coverage ‘fell by nearly 50% with sceptic as editor’

Media Matters for America study follows blog by former agency reporter about appointment of Paul Ingrassia

Reuters’ climate-change coverage fell by nearly 50% after a climate sceptic joined the news agency as a senior editor, a study has found.

The sharp decline in coverage since 2011, recorded by the Media Matters for America advocacy group, reinforces charges from a former staffer that Reuters cut back on climate stories under the influence of Paul Ingrassia, who is now the agency’s managing editor.

Media Matters found a 48% decline in climate-change coverage over a six-month period, after Ingrassia joined the agency in 2011.

The New York Times and other news organisations have cut back on climate coverage, closing down blogs and redeploying correspondents, at times citing financial constraints. However, Bloomberg, Reuters’ main competitor, has deepened its investment in climate change and sustainability coverage. The agency’s founder, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, has been a strong advocate for action on climate change.

Charges of an ideological component to Reuters’ declining coverage – related to Ingrassia’s personal doubts about established climate science – have sharpened concern in media and environmental as well as business circles, because of the agency’s focus on financial news.

“It is just not responsible in our opinion to be cutting back on an issue that is having such a profound impact on every sector of the economy,” said Mindy Lubbers, who heads the Ceres sustainable business network, which represents companies and investors controlling some $11tn in assets. “This is a financial risk that needs to be looked at and addressed.”

The Climate Progress blog has since criticised Reuters for injecting references in stories to fringe groups that reject established climate science, and represent barely 3% of scientists publishing on climate change.

The news agency did not respond specifically to the findings of a deep cut in climate-change coverage. But in an emailed statement, a spokesperson wrote:

“Reuters covers climate change closely both as a scientific and public-safety issue, as well as the impact of climate change on businesses, the economy and the markets. We have a dedicated staff, including a team of specialist reporters at Point Carbon and a columnist, who all generate significant coverage on the topic across our various platforms. We remain committed to providing fair and independent coverage of climate change that complies fully with our Trust Principles.”

The scrutiny of Reuters’ climate-change coverage began earlier this month when David Fogarty, the former Asia Climate Change Correspondent , wrote in a blog post that climate-change coverage had been dramatically cut back after Ingrassia’s hire. Fogarty, a 20-year veteran at Reuters, covered climate change for four and a half years. But early last year it became increasingly difficult to get climate-change stories published. Editors suggested he pursue other stories. Then Fogarty described a conversation with Ingrassia, then deputy editor, at a social event.

“In April last year, Paul Ingrassia [then deputy editor-in-chief] and I met and had a chat at a company function. He told me he was a climate-change sceptic. Not a rabid sceptic, just someone who wanted to see more evidence mankind was changing the global climate.

“Progressively, getting any climate change-themed story published got harder. It was a lottery. Some desk editors happily subbed and pushed the button. Others agonised and asked a million questions. Debate on some story ideas generated endless bureaucracy by editors frightened to take a decision, reflecting a different type of climate within Reuters – the climate of fear.

“By mid-October, I was informed that climate change just wasn’t a big story for the present, but that it would be if there was a significant shift in global policy, such as the US introducing an emissions cap-and-trade system. Very soon after that conversation I was told my climate change role was abolished.”

Fogarty left the agency soon after.

Disclosure: the Guardian is a Reuters client.

Monsanto sued small famers to protect seed patents, report says

Agricultural giant has won more than $23m from its targets, but one case is being heard at Supreme Court this month

The agricultural giant Monsanto has sued hundreds of small farmers in the United States in recent years in attempts to protect its patent rights on genetically engineered seeds that it produces and sells, a new report said on Tuesday.

The study, produced jointly by the Center for Food Safety and the Save Our Seeds campaigning groups, has outlined what it says is a concerted effort by the multinational to dominate the seeds industry in the US and prevent farmers from replanting crops they have produced from Monsanto seeds.

In its report, called Seed Giants vs US Farmers, the CFS said it had tracked numerous law suits that Monsanto had brought against farmers and found some 142 patent infringement suits against 410 farmers and 56 small businesses in more than 27 states. In total the firm has won more than $23m from its targets, the report said.

However, one of those suits, against Indiana soybean farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman, is a potentially landmark patent case that could have wide implications for genetic engineering and who controls patents on living organisms. The CFS and SOS are both supporting Bowman in the case, which will be heard in the Supreme Court later this month.

“Corporations did not create seeds and many are challenging the existing patent system that allows private companies to assert ownership over a resource that is vital to survival and that historically has been in the public domain,” said Debbie Barker, an expert with SOS and one of the report’s co-authors. Another co-author, CFS legal expert George Kimbrell, said victory in the Bowman case could help shift that balance of power back to farmers. “The great weight of history and the law is on the side of Mr Bowman and farmers in general,” he said.

The report also revealed the dominance that large firms and their genetically altered crops have in the US and global market. It found that 53% of the world’s commercial seed market is controlled by just three firms – Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta.

Meanwhile genetically-altered commodity crops – and thus the influence of patent protection – have spread to become overwhelmingly dominant. In the US some 93% of soybeans and 86% of corn crops come from such seeds.

The Bowman case has come about after the 75-year-old farmer bought soybeans from a grain elevator near his farm in Indiana and used them to plant a late-season second crop. He then used some of the resulting seeds to replant such crops in subsequent years. Because he bought them from a third party which put no restrictions on their use, Bowman has argued he is legally able to plant and replant them and that Monsanto’s patent on the seeds’ genes does not apply.

Monsanto, which has won its case against Bowman in lower courts, vociferously disagrees. It argues that it needs its patents in order to protect its business interests and provide a motivation for spending millions of dollars on research and development of hardier, disease-resistant seeds that can boost food yields.

On a website set up to put forward its point of view on the Bowman case, the company argues that if the supreme court rules against it, vast swathes of research and patent-reliant industries will be under threat. Strong patent protection that covers genetic innovations, and is passed on in subsequent generations of crops, is vital to preserving the motivation for developing new agricultural products, the firm insists.

“If Bowman prevails, however, this field of research could be altered severely, as would many others in medicine, biofuels, and environmental science, as easily replicable technologies would no longer enjoy any meaningful protection under the patent laws,” the firm said in a statement.