When the Covering Climate Now Project was announced in late April, Bill Moyers made this remark in his keynote address to the Conference of Covering Climate Now project of The Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation.
Reporting the truth is always the basis for any moral authority we can claim as journalists. Reporting the truth about climate disruption, and its solutions, could be contagious.
The Columbian Journalism Review and The Guardian (along with The Nation and others) shouldered the crucial task of transforming the media’s coverage of the climate crisis.
We want to highlight the good coverage that’s being done (there’s lots of it) and find ways to encourage more of it. We want to figure out how to persuade newsroom managers that covering the climate crisis is our journalistic responsibility and also need not lose money.
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We want to share ways of telling the climate story that draw in viewers and readers and empower them to take action. We’re as much about solutions to the problem as we are about detailing the problem itself. Above all, we want to break the climate silence that still pervades too much of the news media. [Emphasis added.]
Acknowledging the temerity of news bureaus to focus on climate news while realizing that humanity is quickly running out of time to act, the Covering Climate Now project is attempting to overcome competitive forces in journalism to foster cooperation and make a courageous stand to join in an intense week of climate coverage in the lead-up to the UN Climate Summit convening in New York on September 23. Nations are expected to show how they will limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. They are proposing a week of concentrated climate coverage in the lead-up to the UN Climate Action Summit 2019: We Can Win this Race, beginning September 16.
It remains to be seen whether journalists will step up to the bar and report the truth of climate catastrophe. There is evidence that some media sources are acting upon the challenge laid down by Covering Climate Now while others still do not get it.
In Mid May, Mother Jones republished The Guardian article More Than 20 Democrats Want to Be President. Only 2 Have a Climate Change Plan in collaboration with the Climate Desk which boasts 18 partners from Grist to High Country News to YaleEnvironment360. This particular article is interesting for its unvarnished truth:
The world’s scientists warn that governments have about 11 years to put in place strategies to cut emissions from power plants, cars, buildings, factories and land use. Once the next US president takes office, they will have nine years.
Passing large-scale climate legislation or writing new regulations for industry could take years, even if it is the next president’s primary priority. Any new administration will need to enter office with a detailed proposal and timeline to make a dent in the country’s share of climate pollution, experts agree.
There is also evidence of the continued existence of the self-censoring notion that there is some kind of debate as to whether climate is changing or not, at least in Canada. Canadian Public Broadcasting reviewed its own climate terminology in view of The Guardian’s reform, yielding this:
Senior CBC management told staff they were able to use the terms “climate crisis” and “climate emergency” when covering the wide-ranging impacts of temperature rises around the world.
“Neutrality is an important principle in our journalism,” said Paul Hambleton, standards editor of CBC News. “We recognise that ‘climate crisis’ and ‘climate emergency’ are increasingly common expressions in debates over what to do about global warming.
“‘Climate change’ and ‘global warming’ offer a neutral starting point for that debate, but as with all our journalistic decisions, context matters.”
Context matters a great deal. Our context is this:
We are currently the first generation to feel the sting of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it.
~ Presidential Candidate Jay Inslee
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls for global action on climate change
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