Journalism is Failing Us
At this point I don’t even know if having kids is ethical.
Whilst scrolling through Twitter last week I found this: “The UN just released a 740 page report…which basically states that unless drastic measures are taken to combat climate change, we are looking at mass extinction by 2050.”
Instantly drawn I clicked away to the UN Fifth Assessment Report which confirmed and extended upon my worst fears for our planet and future generations. Eager to understand in non-scientific-speak, I Googled to find that only the SBS and the ABC in Australia had reported on the damning report from the world’s most authoritative voices on climate change. It was here that I realised that journalism is failing us in conveying our future and the serious consequences of climate change. And I’m not alone.
Researchers been criticising the US and Australian media since the year 2000 for under-representing the scientific legitimacy and international security threat that is our changing climate. And now, more than ever do we desperately need climate action now.
As we progress into the 21st Century, climate change has become a defining symbol of our collective relationship with the environment. Many countries, Australia chief among them are gripped by government policy paralysis on constructively resolving the issue.
And good science journalism is a decisive factor for the long-term success of modern society. As the general public, we aren’t informed of climate change directly from scientists or scholarly research, but rather the media. And frankly, our journalists have utterly failed to convey the urgency and magnitude of the research outlining this issue.
There is ample evidence that in the area of climate science, journalism is too often failing to deliver a realistic picture to its audience as to the consequences of climate change and therefore is failing in its role in serving public interest. They’re failing us. In the words of Greta Thunberg, how dare you.
The UN’s report states that realistically by 2050 climate change will result in:
- More than half of the world’s population facing twenty days of lethal heatwaves per year
- Total global crop yields dropping by a fifth, causing global famine
- The Amazon ecosystem collapsing
- The Arctic being ice-free all Summer
- Sea levels catastrophically rising by a further 0.5 metres, displacing more than 1 billion people
- A surge in hurricanes and cyclones
- Rapid spread of lethal disease
- And in their worst hypothesised scenario “the scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to model with a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end.”
Bet you didn’t hear that one in the news. Unless you listen to ‘lefty-outlets’ such as the ABC.
More distressing than these doomsday predications is the complete lack of mainstream media coverage on such critical information regarding Earth’s and humanity’s future. Australian news outlets have devoted more attention to Barnaby Joyce’s infidelity over the past twelve months than the IPCC and UN media releases combined — prioritising marital gossip over our world’s future. When October 2018’s IPCC report was released, 28 of the 50 biggest US newspapers didn’t even bother to tell their readers about it, framing the report as un-newsworthy.
That being said, climate change has been reported on in the mass media since the late 90s but its social legitimacy and urgency has merely been realised nor accurate to say the least. The significant contribution of humans to the issue at hand has been widely accepted within the scientific community since as early as 2004, but is still described as #fakenews by some. For over two decades there has been a tendency of reporters to uncritically accept the scientific evidence that climate change does exist and it does have impending consequences.
World leaders often call climate change the most important challenge of our time. If the role of the press is to hold those leaders to account, you should think then, that the press covers the topic of climate change broadly and thoroughly.
- Ingerid Salvesen
Understandably journalists are to present impartial, objective news content within the realms of their ethical guidelines — aka sharing both sides of a story - but the reality is that climate change does not have two sides to it’s story. It is happening and we are causing it.
There is no better global scientific consensus on any other scientific issue except perhaps Newton’s second law of dynamics
Yet journalists have consistently assigned equal say to a small group of skeptics, shadowing doubt over a legitimate global threat. Impartiality has created a bias against the science and misinformed public opinion. As journalist Ross Gelbspan has observed, the issue of balance is not relevant when the story’s focus is factual, not an opinion.
Journalists have framed climate change as a fun topic to debate, giving our politicians excuses to brush the consequences under the carpet, make ill-advised or non-existential policies to combat our damage, and hide the real threats of a warming climate from their citizens.
In this case, research suggests that the nature of this news coverage or lack thereof is also defined by the characteristics of political and economic personal interests, as climate change’s impending repercussions are by no means just a scientific issue, but a political one too. Today, the public debate is conducted along party lines, with political ideology determining what political actors and figures have to or can say on the issue. Anyone remember the Liberal Party’s treatment of Malcolm Turnbull?
Joining the controversial list of topical issues such as abortion or drug testing at Festivals, the warming conversation has the ability to split party lines, overthrow a Prime Minister (@TurnbullMalcolm) and ultimately shape government policy and priority.
It has also been argued that this portrayal of scientific uncertainty or effects of the Earth’s heating is a carefully plotted manoeuvre by those whose economic interests are at stake — namely big oil corporations and energy providers. There is no doubt that political party funding and therefore policy is influenced by those with financial power. What’s more is that the climate change skeptics are often heavily funded by corporations and private foundations to make a case for policy makers. This is an attempt to cast doubt on the reality of climate change, its causes and future repercussions to further personal short-term economic interest.
Speaking economically, mitigation is the best investment moving forward, as the cost of climate change will be much greater than the costs of mitigation. A May 2015 report published under the Obama Government identified that every decade of delay in making carbon emission cuts raises the cost of stabilising the global temperature by about 40% alone.
In September this year, the NSW Independent Planning Commission rejected the multi-million-dollar Bylong Valley coal mine proposal on the grounds of long-term ecological and lack of sustainable economical impact. The same attitude should prevail for climate change inaction too.
Our options to combat climate change are looking increasingly dire, since our journalists and therefore our global community, have postponed discussing it’s causes and implications for so long. A lack of social awareness and discussion has led us here — must it be this way?
Must our journalists, be complacent to our world’s heating and avoiding the frank conversation? If the Australian media doesn’t break the climate silence and our impending future soon, there will be no story to tell. Humanity has never faced a more wicked problem than the collapse of our natural life support systems. How do we hold those accountable? How do we cover climate change now?
We can do justice to the defining story of our time. To convene and inform, the The Nation and Columbia Journalism Review have launched #CoveringClimateNow. A project aimed at improving the media coverage of the climate crisis and in turn provide the knowledge of how climate change is affecting our world. Everyone has something to lose and the challenge is huge. But change is underway.
We need to make covering climate change a joint industry initiative to bring more and better coverage to the environmental and humanitarian crisis of our time. Already, five Australian outlets, The Conversation, Croakey Health Media, Eureka Street, Science Alert and The Junction have pledged to increasing their efforts in reporting on the climate crisis. But this is only five of the over 500 outlets we have. We need all major and minor outlets accountable and join in the conversation.
This is one story worth sharing. Our media industry and our politicians need to be held accountable and communicate the climate crisis unfolding. Let’s wake the press to the climate story. Let’s wake our politicians. This is a problem bigger than your newsroom. It effects us all. With more than 350 media organisations on their side, there’s now more than 1 billion onboard Covering Climate Now. Those are big numbers. But this is a big problem. And it is just the beginning.
