How To Report Climate Change To A Sceptical Public
Modern media has caused the public to lose confidence in climate change reporting — how can we turn it around?
Agricultural Journalist and broadcaster Anna Jones was unflinching. During our podcast interview, I asked her a question about ‘the meat debate’, vis-à-vis how it is presented to the public. Her response could have knocked me down with a feather. This is what she said:
“The great, great shame about this vital public discussion around meat is that it completely got off on the wrong foot in terms of the public discussion… We were not having a reasoned debate about eating less meat. We were having a binary debate about whether you should go vegan or not. The media, unfortunately, my own profession, has a huge responsibility in doing that. And it has caused way more damage than I think anyone could have guessed or predicted.”
Hearing that, so to speak ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’, startled me. It reminded me of a saying, that you can scarcely hear the great clock of St. Paul’s strike in the middle of the day, for the noise of the city is so loud; but all can hear that bell in the dead of night, when the traffic is hushed.
Alas! Despite mounting evidence that climate change unavoidable, many people in Britain and the world in general are yet to enter the quiet alluded to above. Thanks in large part to journalists and their 24-hour news cycle, which has reportedly dulled our collective ears, even if God Almighty were to speak on the subject of climate change, no one would be able to hear his voice. Modern life is becoming more and more noisy, clamorous, and filled with many strange ideas and too much traffic (both literally and figuratively), completely overwhelming our ability to think straight.
In that context, it’s perhaps no wonder that the general public is sceptical about climate change. They either cannot hear the warnings over the daily din, or if they do, it is simply one of many alarms — we cannot heed them all. In light of public scepticism, it therefore begs the question: How can we better report on climate change?
To properly answer the question, we must first define what we mean by reporting. Reporting as defined by the Oxford Dictionary is “the presenting of and writing about news on television, radio, and in newspapers.” The American Press Institute further defines journalism as “the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. It is also the product of these activities.” The strength of our democracies rely on such analysis and in-depth reporting. Why, then, is journalism not trusted? Why are the general public so doubtful?
The secret to unlocking the puzzle may lie in the fact that journalists have long been seen as gatekeepers. For instance, a journalist is supposed to leave their personal beliefs and opinions outside of the newsroom so that they may report the news to the public impartially. But in recent times, the idea that a journalist acts as a censor has come under intense examination. According to a Business Wire survey, 46% of journalists cite the public’s lack of faith in the news as their biggest challenge in the modern media.
The objective values we expect from our news medium has been significantly undercut. The conclusion implies that there is a lot of space for bias in news reporting, and the rise of the “fake news” narrative takes advantage of this widespread lack of confidence in reporting. This contributes to Americans’ record-high 33% degree of media mistrust in 2020. Unfortunately, there is little chance that this problem will improve any time soon because it has been growing continuously over the past few years.
Mistrust in reporting is also linked to a number of unresolved problems in the news media industry, including the rising pressure on journalists to produce 24/7, on-demand news cycles, the lack of funding and resources for newsrooms, and the spread of false information on social media. As one of the journalists who responded to the above survey put it, “The internet, being the way it is, means people do two-minute research on YouTube and think they know more than an article with tonnes of evidence and credibility.”
Moreover, there is now an increased demand for drama in the news, and an explosion in lobbyists and special-interest groups has expanded the number of actors and the range of conflicts. Thus, the media’s practice of focusing on the manipulators and their machinations rather than substantive issues is perhaps unavoidable because it reflects several aspects of modern ‘culture wars’. Personalities are more compelling than, for example, institutions; facts appear uncertain; attention spans (television and radio sound bites) are brief; and an oversimplification of complexity is now the norm.
The modern media’s focus on appearances rather than dispassionate facts is, therefore, the primary reason the public has lost confidence in our institutions, especially when it comes to climate change. The consequence is incalculable, for as the ordinary public believe that they are being misled, manipulated, and lied to, they grow even more resentful. They simply switch off.
This is consistent with what Nuffield Farming Scholar Anna Jones, my podcast guest, discovered. She elaborated, mentioning her book Divide:
“When we started having the meat conversation in earnest, it was done in such an immature way. It was somewhat of a ‘go vegan or get out’ situation. Small family farms that were trying to sell a lamb box to generate a little extra money for their families were dubbed murderers, and people trying to sell a little milk from the farm gate in their vending machine were labelled rapists. There was a lot of trolling of farmers on social media. Additionally, there was horrendous bullying of family farmers, and they had no prior preparation.”
Anna further posed the following hypothetical:
“How can somebody go up against somebody who makes that argument? … for a family farm who has made their living from doing that, but then being faced with the philosophical argument, the moral argument, on the public stage in front of millions watching you on [TV], up against a very blinkered vegan activist who has a very black and white view of the issue. Who is going to win that argument? These poor farmers had nowhere to go because they were up against a yes-or-no debate, which is very easy for the public to grasp and understand. And [yet] they were trying to communicate something much more complex.”
So, then, how do we rebuild trust (and complexity) in reporting? According to the Ethical Journalism Network, the fundamental principles of journalism include, among other things, “promoting for the public’s benefit high ethical standards in journalism, based on principles of truth and accuracy, independence, fairness and impartiality, humanity, and accountability.” That’s all well and good, but how precisely do they manifest themselves in the real world?
We may have all heard by now how polluted British rivers, lakes, and coastal waters are. Indeed, even as I write, there is alarm and fury in England after it was announced that “a nationwide annual health check of England’s water bodies, which used to take place annually, will now take six years to complete.”
Enter Just Farmers, a UK non-profit organisation set up by Anna Jones to give farmers and growers the confidence to tell their stories. Ms. Sarah James, a free-range egg producer, sheep farmer, and beef farmer from Powys, Mid Wales, says that she was initially “not sure I am right for [the Just Farmers] project; I am not up to date with politics and who is in the government, either in Wales or Westminster, I am passionate about what we are trying to do on our little patch of this earth, and I am truly disappointed that we fail to engage with the public on any level with education and to even spark an interest in what they are eating and where it comes from.” In other words, she did not know how to communicate complexity to ordinary public.
In 2019, Sarah James was accepted onto the Just Farmers media education workshops, which comprise, among other things, “practical interview exercises, story pitching sessions, Q&As with guest journalists, and stepping out of our comfort zone by meeting people who may think differently about food and farming; including training focusing on social media and broadcasting media.” The curriculum gave Sarah the tools she needed, and three years later, in 2022, she conquered her fear of speaking ‘complexity’ in front of the camera. So much so that she even participated in a live panel debate on YouTube for The Wildlife Trusts concerning river pollution from farm runoff in the Wye catchment. The Wildlife Trusts is a movement made up of 46 independent charities with a shared mission to ‘bring wildlife back, to empower people to take meaningful action for nature, and to create an inclusive society where nature matters’. You can see Sarah in action in the YouTube video here.
The world is currently seeing devastating heatwaves with temperatures we have never seen before, proving that there is no magic solution to halting climate change. The problem of climate change is incredibly complicated. The only approach to regain confidence in reporters and reporting, is to go back to the fundamental principles that once made journalism trustworthy, as outlined in the McKillop Library’s tenets of ethical journalism: to Seek Truth and Report It; Be Accountable and Transparent; Minimize Harm; and Act Independently. Within its guidance are the words: “ take special care not to misrepresent or oversimplify”.
Given that we now have a 24-hour news cycle, many journalists will argue that time is precious, and this is true. Again, in the words of the McKillop Library guidance, “Remember that neither speed nor format excuses inaccuracy”. There are times when letting time pass is the wisest course of action. Even though time flies, this does not mean that we must always fly.
This is exactly what Anna has done: after realising the true nature of the issue, she resolved to take action by founding Just Farmers. Just Farmers gives farmers and growers the confidence to tell their stories through free Media Education workshops while helping members of the media find independent farmer case studies to talk to. For a small segment of our community, particularly farmers, this is one modest step; nonetheless, it is a tremendous leap for all of us in demystifying complexity within an important discussion on climate change. I urge you to think about Anna Jones’ example.
