By: Bob Hackett

Bob Hackett — Thu, 12 May 2016 05:49:52 +0000

With thanks to Kendall Hutt for writing on this important topic, the responses from other interviewees indicate the need for a few clarifications:
1. Neither I nor my colleagues are arguing that journalism can solve the climate crisis, or that action should wait for media reform. It is not about passing the buck to the media. Rather, the question we are asking in Journalisms for Climate Crisis, is what kinds of journalism can help multifaceted attempts to address this problem, at political and other levels.
2. The key blockage to wider public engagement and mobilization around this issue is *not* a lack of information about the science of environmental risks; nor is it the unwarranted attention that used to be given in news media (especially in the US) to climate science deniers. Rather, it is a ‘hope gap’, a lack of news that normalizes, informs and encourages active citizenship on climate change, and news that connects the global scale of the challenge with local impacts, contributions and actions – much as Mr Korauaba advocates with respect to Kiribati.
3. The choice is *not* between coverage of science, and ‘detrimental’ focus on politics. Rather, the question is what type of politics is covered – the machinations of political elites and failures of conventional politics as usual in addressing climate change; or the grassroots, typically local active citizenship of ordinary people – the kind of journalism that is far more likely to be found in alternative than corporate media.
4. The ‘vested interests of fossil fuel industries’ is *not* a reason to oppose democratic media reform. Quite the opposite is the case. One rationale for media reform is to ‘scale up’ the practices of alternative and independent journalism, capable of critically examining the destructive impact of such vested interests.
5. Readers who want to follow this up seriously might consult the report News Media and Climate Politics, by Kathleen Cross et al, at policyalternatives.ca; and articles by Shane Gunster in Canadian Journal of Communication (2011), and “Radical optimism: expanding visions of climate politics in alternative media’ in A. Carvalho and TR Peterson, eds., Climate Change Politics (2012).

Comments on: Call for new media strategies for climate change journalism

By: Bob Hackett