Facilitative Journalism: YOUR PLANET NEEDS YOU
How Australian journalism could evolve to help us act on climate change
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Brisbane-local Roxane Valier-Brasier, about her podcast Go Simone, which aims to provide a platform for the ‘voices’ of female intellectuals and activists working towards a more sustainable future, by addressing the systemic issues underlying human-accelerated (aka ‘anthropogenic’) climate change. Roxane was very honest about her motivation behind the podcast, calling it her ‘anti-depressant pill’ against her own climate despair which, since becoming a mother, was literally stopping her from sleeping at night.
I can relate. Privileged as I am (white, well-educated, middle class), I had been mostly unaware of the severity of anthropogenic climate change prior to parenthood, but since my conversation with Roxane, and particularly since listening to her podcasts, I have been feeling a real sense of urgency to act — so I’m starting with this article. I find it quite unsettling to think how, even though climate change is so prominently featured in contemporary journalism, so few of us seem to be doing anything to tackle the issue. Parenthood changes things, and so should climate journalism. In Australia however, a journalism that enables action on climate change, seems difficult to come by.
On the one hand, there is a general consensus among independent news journalists and media researchers, that Australia’s mainstream news journalism is ‘failing us’, through its substantial contribution to public scepticism around anthropogenic climate change. On the other hand, Australia’s independent media outlets’ framing of climate change as a ‘crisis’ that our political and economic system is both causing and failing to address, thereby heralding our imminent doom, seems similarly unhelpful in facilitating action.
I don’t think that we need more coverage on climate change; but I think that both commercial ‘mainstream’ journalism, and its independent counterparts are contributing to inaction, because of the poor job they are doing of fulfilling their democratic roles, and the disempowering ways in which they frame and present climate change. Beyond its ‘fourth estate’ or ‘watchdog’ role of “speaking truth to power”, democratic journalism is meant to facilitate participatory citizenship, and to help mobilise people to achieve effective change when needed (and boy, do we need it!).
But how could Australian climate journalism evolve to better enable action on climate change?
A revisit of mainstream journalism’s funding structures would be a good place to start. One of the main issues journalists have been facing for the past couple of decades, is their precarious job environment, or what is best-known as journalism’s ongoing ‘crisis’, due to the decline of legacy news media (newspapers, TV news), attributable to the increasing popularity of digital forms of news dissemination, which have radically changed the ways in which we access, pay for, and engage with news. In combination with a lack of public policy to decentralise media ownership, this has led to a highly concentrated and corporatised media-market. Where the money sustaining journalism is coming from, is particularly problematic in the context of Australian climate journalism. Funded by corporate elites — such as individual billionaire owners (i.e. Rupert Murdoch) and affiliated politicians, powerful corporate sponsors — such as fossil fuel companies (e.g. Gina Reinhart), and advertisers, mainstream journalism is bound to be much less critical of a corporate sector, which it is essentially a member of.
Although independent media outlets such as The Conversation, New Matilda, or Crikey are less well-financed (usually supported by their readership, or through university and research funding) and consequently smaller, with less reach than their commercial counterparts, their financial independence from profit-driven corporates ensures they are better-placed to fulfill their watchdog role, enabling active citizenship by providing the intel required for effective political decision-making.
Secondly, Australian independent journalism would do well to become less dramatic, more pragmatic.
Given independent media’s limited reach, a focus on spectacular, ‘doom-and-gloom’-type messaging seems a logical tactic to gaining attention, especially in an effort to provide a counterbalance to the mainstream media’s climate scepticism which, under the banners of ‘objectivity’ and ‘balance’, results in anthropogenic climate change deniers securing as much column space and air-time as actual climate scientists. This default approach however, is more of an impediment than an impetus to action on climate change, because it contributes to a paralysing ‘hope-gap’, and climate despair.
Similarly disempowering are the many news articles from both mainstream and independent outlets, focussing on the climate debates themselves, or on technological or individual-level solutions, over the collective action that could be taken to counteract larger societal and political issues. More hopeful, solutions-based articles that provide examples of where community-led action has already been successful, such as the recent decision to decline the Rocky Hill coalmine, can highlight the meaningful changes that community mobilisation and collective action can bring about.
Thirdly, Australian climate journalism needs to focus more on giving a voice to those most affected by climate change.
Australian independent journalism is setting a good precedent already, allowing those marginal to the debates on climate change, yet disproportionately affected by its effects, a more prominent voice.
This must particularly include those citizens who have been advocating desperately for urgent systemic and political change to save their futures, but who are lacking the most important democratic tool to effect it — the right to vote. Much of the more mature, voting-age readership of mainstream and independent journalism is well aware of the plight of the next generation, as well as Australian politicians’ patronising and belittling responses. Providing a journalistic platform that takes seriously our young people’s concerns and how they envision systemic change and positive action, could help bridge this generational gap, and facilitate collaborative action.
Here’s the catch though.
Obviously, journalistic reform is not going to solve the issues around inaction on climate change on its own, particularly in light of the precariousness of journalists’ jobs during the profession’s ongoing transition. Although a number of academic sources on this topic stress the responsibility of journalism as a profession, and of individual journalists, to adopt a more empowering, solutions-focussed approach to telling ‘climate stories’, I feel a shared sense of responsibility here — maybe we all should.
If you are reading my article, you are likely one of my university-educated peers, studying a media degree, having spent the last years as public-intellectuals-in-training; honing your critical thinking skills and developing your own ‘voice’ to unpack big ideas in engaging language. Many of us wrote articles maligning the sorry state of political communication in Australia, and how this leads to citizen disengagement, and there are a few on the poor journalistic coverage of climate change too. Well, don’t stop now.
A citizen journalism that ‘feeds on, processes and evaluates the products of first-order, mainstream journalism’ is already a well-established, and valued component of many independent Australian media outlets today. Some commentators even make the transition into professional journalism, and I would argue that we all have the analytical, interpretive and writing skills needed. As public intellectuals, we play an important role in re-engaging citizens and facilitating activism.
I’m not saying you have to start your own podcast, but whatever form your work might take, I urge you to keep using your ‘voice’ in support of action on climate change.
Our planet needs us.
