An introduction to eco-journalism
Eco-journalism, or journalism about the environment and climate change, intersects the fields of politics, business, science, nature and culture; it also deals with how environmental change affects individuals and the population of the planet at local, regional and global levels¹.
“News media is one of the main platforms that spread views and inform political and societal positions on matters as grave as climate breakdown,” according to Leonie Joubert. News organisations and journalists are looking closer to home for stories on climate change and coverage is becoming increasingly local. This is because, as researchers, Bødker & Neverla, put it, “While the environment largely appears as local and tangible, the related issues of climate change are global and intangible.” Meaning that in some parts of the planet the risks and effects of climate change are more apparent and immediate, while in other parts the risks are a far-off notion that can only be understood by representations².
One of the most important functions of an eco-journalist is translating the scientific knowledge on climate change that is the basis of policy decisions, making it more accessible for their readers because ‘undistilled’ science would be very difficult for the lay public to understand³. In a 2015 interview with the Poynter Institute, Chris Mooney, an environmental journalist at the Washington Post, says he makes climate change more accessible for his readers through vivid writing and using concrete imagery that most people can relate to. Climate change is a polarising issue for many Americans and many people are convinced that the climate is not changing; Mooney says this requires standing by the facts and defending the science of climate change. According to Simon, “In the United States, climate change deniers, funded by industry groups, converted what should have been a dispassionate debate over science into a political tug of war — insisting, even though the facts were arrayed against them, that the media had an obligation to give equal weight to both sides. The strategy succeeded in sowing confusion and indifference among a portion of the public.”⁴
President Donald Trump who has made several statements that deny climate change by ignoring, questioning or distorting scientific evidence — and he has recently adopted the same tactics in his dealings with the coronavirus pandemic — exacerbates this polarisation.
Many journalists have noted that the coronavirus pandemic has been enlightening as it has shown that governments and politicians worldwide are capable of taking urgent action to respond to a crisis — which scientists at the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have made clear is necessary if dire impacts on people and the planet are to be avoided. The IPCC is also aware of how their reports and findings are reproduced in journalism with vested interests when removed from their original context and how politicised misinterpretation of their work can outweigh expertise that is firmly based on science⁵.
According to Bødker and Neverla: “While there is a broad scientific consensus on the anthropogenic contributions to global warming, scientific knowledge on the regional impacts of global warming is still somewhat uncertain,” they further this by adding that the global differences between countries and individuals, alike, hinder the mitigation of climate change because of political, economical, scientific, developmental, geographical, social and cultural disagreements⁶.
While uncertainty is an important driving force in scientific discovery and progress, as science is always subject to change, the stress on what is not known in climate change journalism, in popular science publications especially, generates doubt, diversion and complacency⁷. In light of this, the Poynter Institute advises journalists to avoid coverage that questions whether or not ‘global warming’ is real because the idea that humans are responsible for causing climate change is not scientifically controversial, instead journalists should focus on policy — the things we should do to mitigate climate change — and they argue that environmental policy can proceed even though scientific uncertainties remain⁸. Bødker & Neverla say, “Studies of attention cycles have also shown that (international or domestic) political differences are somehow needed in order to attract journalistic and thus public attention… Since climate change is often remote in time it somehow needs other concrete events — like extreme weather or summits — to be the object of journalism.”⁹
This sentiment is echoed by Stacy Feldman, the executive editor of InsideClimate News (ICN), who feels that this is an opportune time for climate coverage because it is a central issue in politics and ‘at the same time, the science underpinning the call for climate change solutions is more clear than ever before’.
Mooney feels that environmental coverage is missing reporting that puts climate change into perspective for individuals — coverage that makes readers more empathetic by showing them how ‘global and intangible’ issues, as Bødker and Neverla, say, affect their daily lives. The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2020 for a series of data-driven articles that, according to Martin Baron, the executive editor of the Washington Post, “paid attention to the science, but also built on it with more granular analysis… and put a human face to the numbers, showing the severe impact that extreme warming is already having on communities around the world.”
Environmental issues cut across established editorial boundaries such as politics, business, technology, nature, culture and consumer issues¹⁰. Therefore, it has been suggested that news organisations create teams made up of reporters who specialise in each of these fields, for example, an environmental science reporter, a business reporter and a political reporter, unfortunately, not many organisations can afford this¹¹.
Environmental controversies often centre on the infringement of indigenous rights, therefore reporters often feel compelled to take sides — as is the case in South America, where the lines between indigenous journalists and ‘ethno-communicators’, who both play crucial roles in revealing widespread exploitation of natural resources, forests and land, are blurring. “Environmental or social justice reporters often have a higher-than-average sense of mission and purpose and a higher level of skill [beyond some of their peers on other beats],” according to Bruce Shapiro, the executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University.
Eco-journalists are among the most at-risk journalists working today. Reporters have faced harassments, lawsuits, violent attacks and according to one estimate, 40 reporters were killed between 2005 and September 2016 because of their environmental reporting¹². The danger of the beat stems from the fact that environmental controversies often involve influential and powerful figures in business, economic, political, government and criminal spheres, therefore calls have been made for environmental journalists to undergo ‘the type of safety training that many war and foreign correspondents now receive’ because it is lamentable that the journalists who report on the issues that affect the poorest and most vulnerable members of society are vulnerable themselves, while their abusers often operate unchecked.
According to Kalof, “While it is uncertain whether the mass media promote environmental apathy or action, it is clear that the media play an important role in the social construction of environmental concern.”¹³ Development journalism, of which environmental journalism forms part, is a purveyor and catalyst for positive change¹⁴. This aligns with the definition of a ‘participant’ journalist that says the journalist should play an active role in interpreting and constructing the social reality for readers. As opposed to a ‘neutral’ journalist who is committed to a ‘whole truth’ approach that it is overtly committed to objectivity and giving a voice to all relevant opinions (even climate change deniers) from which readers must draw their conclusions¹⁵. Even the ubiquity of the label ‘climate change’ was born from the editorial need to avoid bias, which is why the term ‘global warming’ is unlikely to appear in reportage, even if it is more likely to evoke a stronger response from the public and enable mobilisation¹⁶. Translating the science is all good and well but does environmental journalism mobilise its audience by forcing them to confront the issue and realise that their day-to-day lives have a detrimental impact on the planet, confront what some see as the biggest challenge to our planet since the threat of nuclear war — climate change¹⁷. One of the reasons why climate change journalism deemphasises the role individuals play in climate change could be because they do not want to come across as a mouthpiece for environmental groups. Journalism scholars have noted that climate change reporting has a deficit of credibility because it is often seen as advocacy or comes across as foreboding and fatalistic¹⁸. This is why editors employ compensatory textual strategies — such as using the term climate change instead of global warming — to regain a ‘semblance of neutrality’¹⁹.
The media plays an essential role in the way society perceives the environmental concern, according to studies, climate change was the second most important issue to people in the UK after Brexit, 60% of [British] people think climate change requires a high level of urgency and that people are a lot more concerned now because of the increase in weather extremes, media reporting and climate activism¹⁹. As much as Molek-Kozakowska laments that certain publications, do not mobilise their audience enough by explicitly calling them out and emphasising how their individual actions contribute to climate change, Howarth, Parsons & Thew find that the concern felt by the public in the United Kingdom is not met with ‘sufficiently ambitious’ political action, saying: “As we have seen recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, the choices people make will be guided by government regulations, social practices, and individual decisions, all of which will be shaped by the availability of information and the way in which it is communicated.”²⁰
Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University, recently remarked that while seeking alternative views and interpretation of facts is fine, journalists should never use propaganda and disinformation as a counterpoint to facts or try to use the opinions of an economist, lawyer or politician as a foil for a scientist’s evidence-based information.
Joubert argues that environmental journalists are unlikely to balance their story with dissenting voices, in this day and age, but the editorial policies — balance, fairness, etc — of news organisations might give rise to a new form of climate denial, namely, climate distraction.
Endnotes
¹pp152 Bødker, H. & Neverla, I., 2012, ‘Introduction’, Journalism Studies 13(2), 152–156.
²pp152 Bødker, H. & Neverla, I., 2012, ‘Introduction’, Journalism Studies 13(2), 152–156.
³pp73 Molek-Kozakowska, K., 2017, ‘Popularity-driven science journalism and climate change: A critical discourse analysis of the unsaid’, Discourse, Context & Media 21 (2018), 73–81.
⁴pp89 Simon, J., 2009, ‘Unnatural Disaster: The Crisis of Environmental Journalism’, World Policy Journal, Spring, 2009, 26(1), 87–94.
⁵pp321 Howarth, C., Parsons, L. & Thew, H., 2020, ‘Effectively Communicating Climate Science beyond Academia: Harnessing the Heterogeneity of Climate Knowledge’, One Earth 2, 320–324.
⁶ Bødker, H. & Neverla, I., 2012, ‘Introduction’, Journalism Studies 13(2), 152–156.
⁷pp74 Molek-Kozakowska, K., 2017, ‘Popularity-driven science journalism and climate change: A critical discourse analysis of the unsaid’, Discourse, Context & Media 21 (2018), 73–81.
⁸Kruger, V., 2017, ‘4 guidelines for writing about climate change’, Poynter Institute, viewed 11 June 2020, from https://www.poynter.org/educators-students/2017/4-guidelines-for-writing-about-climate-change/
⁹pp153 Bødker, H. & Neverla, I., 2012, ‘Introduction’, Journalism Studies 13(2), 152–156.
¹⁰pp152 Bødker, H. & Neverla, I., 2012, ‘Introduction’, Journalism Studies 13(2), 152–156.
¹¹pp88 Simon, J., 2009, ‘Unnatural Disaster: The Crisis of Environmental Journalism’, World Policy Journal, Spring, 2009, 26(1), 87–94.
¹²pp88 Simon, J., 2009, ‘Unnatural Disaster: The Crisis of Environmental Journalism’, World Policy Journal, Spring, 2009, 26(1), 87–94.
¹³pp101 Kalof, L., 1998, ‘Understanding the Social Construction of Environmental Concern’, Human Ecology Review, 4(2) Winter 1997/98, 101–105.
¹⁴pp210 Eshwar Anand, V., 2014, ‘Development Journalism: A Catalyst for Positive Change’,
¹⁵pp39 Schoenfeld, A.C., Meier, R.F. & Griffin, R.J., 1979, ‘Constructing a Social Problem: The Press and the Environment’, Social Problems, 27(1), Policy Processes (Oct., 1979), 38–61.
¹⁶Whitmarsh, 2009: 410 in Molek-Kozakowska, 2017: 74
¹⁷Revkin (2014) in Molek-Kozakowska (2017)
¹⁸pp74 Molek-Kozakowska, K., 2017, ‘Popularity-driven science journalism and climate change: A critical discourse analysis of the unsaid’, Discourse, Context & Media 21 (2018), 73–81.
¹⁹Tong, 2015 in Molek-Kozakowska, 2017: 74
²⁰Howarth, C., Parsons, L. & Thew, H., 2020, ‘Effectively Communicating Climate Science beyond Academia: Harnessing the Heterogeneity of Climate Knowledge’, One Earth 2, 320–324.
