journalist Field Guide

The 'journalist Field Guide: Navigating Climate Misinformation' offers a framework for media professionals to handle deceptive climate content. It defines climate misinformation as content that undermines the IPCC scientific consensus, misrepresents data, or falsely promotes climate-supportive efforts. The guide advocates for the 'truth sandwich' debunking method, the use of archive links instead of direct links to avoid monetizing disinformers, and 'strategic silence' to avoid artificially amplifying fringe theories. It also reviews academic literature on revenue incentives for clickbait, the psychological drivers of misinformation, and the risks of 'false balance' in reporting. Finally, it summarizes various case studies demonstrating how social media algorithms and vested interests, particularly in the fossil fuel sector, spread climate denial.

• Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) defines climate misinformation as deceptive content that undermines the IPCC scientific consensus and the Paris Climate Agreement, misrepresents scientific data through cherry-picking or omission, or falsely claims efforts support climate goals when they actually contribute to warming.
• To effectively debunk myths without reinforcing them, the guide recommends the 'truth sandwich' technique: leading with a clear fact, warning that a myth is coming (mentioning it only once), explaining the fallacy, and concluding by reinforcing the fact multiple times.
• Journalists are advised to avoid directly linking to monetized YouTube videos or using direct hyperlinks to misinformation, as this provides financial incentives to disinformers and increases the content's search engine weight. Instead, they should use screenshots, transcripts, or archive services like the Wayback Machine, Perma.cc, GhostArchive, or Archive.Today, and employ 'rel=“nofollow”' HTML code.
• The guide warns against 'false balance' or 'false equivalency,' where reporters feel pressured to present two equal sides of a story even when the credibility of the opposing viewpoints is not comparable, a dynamic frequently used to create doubt about climate science.
• Research indicates that revenue models based on clicks, shares, and page views create a 'race to the bottom' that incentivizes sensationalism and clickbait, which is further complicated by bad-faith publishers financed by vested interests.
• Case studies highlight the role of social media platforms and financiers in spreading climate denial. For example, a report on the 'Toxic Ten' found that ten websites accounted for 69% of climate disinformation posts on Facebook, with many tied to billionaire financiers like Robert Mercer and the Wilks brothers, earning over $1.7 million for Google in six months.

APA

Gibson, C. (2022). journalist Field Guide. Climate Action Against Disinformation. https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CAAD-Journalist-Field-Guide.pdf

Chicago

Gibson, Connor. journalist Field Guide. Climate Action Against Disinformation, 2022. https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CAAD-Journalist-Field-Guide.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Gibson |first1=Connor |title=journalist Field Guide |publisher=Climate Action Against Disinformation |date=October 2022 |url=https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CAAD-Journalist-Field-Guide.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{gibson2022journalist, author = {Gibson, Connor}, title = {{journalist Field Guide}}, institution = {Climate Action Against Disinformation}, year = {2022}, month = oct, url = {https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CAAD-Journalist-Field-Guide.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }