Media Should Dedicate Space to Climate Crisis
Media Should Dedicate Space to Climate Crisis
I wrote a short article asking media to dedicate time or space to climate content. Notice how in the site navigation I have a link to a dedicated climate section. E.g. if you are a general news site, you would have a section called Climate in the same way you have World, Your Country, Weather, etc....
TLDR: Media needs to do more. News outlets should add climate sections along with the rest of their news sections.
I'd like to see more actionable content like how to convince city governments to do stuff. E.g All the stuff a lot of the urbanists talk about are better in almost every way than the car dependency we have in the US. The NIMBYs are relentless in my area. They organized on next door to show up at a zoning meeting in my area to try and prevent a rezone so a developer could build 4 story condos rather than practically useless offices now that most office stuff can be done remotely.
they should but they won’t – it’s not in the interests of their owners
Several outlets do; I've seen good coverage in:
- The Guardian
- The Washington Post
- The New York Times
- Le Monde
There are a bunch of tiny outlets which provide specialty coverage:
- Volts
- Drilled News
- Grist
- Heated
- Heatmap
- Desmog
- Canary Media
- Carbon Brief
The big thing that's missing has been TV news coverage, where it gets ~1% of news minutes
I'll check out those small outlets and consider adding them to my own page.
I meant sites should have a dedicated section or page. Like on a news site along the other sections like World, Opinion, Business, etc, have a link to a climate page. I'll double check those outlets and see if they do that.
I am open to other suggestions for things to post on my own page.
Interesting article regarding broadcast networks. Thanks!
Depending on where you are, some do. The state media in Denmark has a dedicated category called "climate" that covers all climate related news. That includes news about climate projects being challenged by red tape and so on. Of course being state media they don't directly take a stance, but just reports.
Do you really think that the weather is more important than any of these works of investigative journalism?
It is more than just weather, nobody said that anyway. We are on track to make large sections of the earth uninhabitable for humans, crop failures, costal city flooding, and catastrophic weather events. Suffering at a scale we haven't seen since WW2, possibly worse. If you are under 50, probably in your lifetime, maybe even under 60.
It sounds like the intent is for media outlets to add a climate page along with the rest of their sections and for A/V media to add a few seconds to their regular content to say: Donate to X climate organization, or adjusting your thermostat saves Y emissions and X% dollars, or visit our climate page, or call your city council, use your imagination.