We are not learning the lessons that the Covid-19 pandemic taught us, where we have a global crisis and the entire newsroom mobilizes to cover that crisis, said Emily Atkin, environment reporter and editor of the newsletter Heated, in a recent interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter.We understand that this infiltrates every single area of our life.She continued:There is no excuse for a reporter today who doesn’t understand the basic science of Covid-19. Why is it not the same for climate change? Everyone should be a climate reporter. And if you are not a climate reporter right now, you will be.
When asked what further changes he would hope for in his newsroom after 18 months of covering Covid-19, German science editor Stockrahm said,
Wolfgang BlauI would hope for a greater appreciation of the fact that questioning science is a core part of science. It is a misunderstanding of science when journalists primarily demand definitive answers from scientists or from us science journalists.But this appreciation of scientific disagreements shouldn’t be confused with a dismissal of science itself. As a large-scale analysis of roughly 100,000 English-language digital and print media articles on climate change has shown, journalists often understate just how much scientific agreement there is on climate change and its human-made causes.
Interesting perspective on the role of journalism faced with massive global challenges, such as the coronavirus pandemic and climate change. I would argue this reevaluation is long overdue: unfortunately, the journalistic focus on ‘news’, on immediate urgent events with short-term impact, to the detriment of important long-term trends, has already done much damage to the public perception of both these crises.
| Stage of Denial | Coronavirus | Climate Change |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 1: It’s not happening | The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus… This is their new hoax– Donald Trump | It's a hoax; I think the scientists are having a lot of fun.– Donald Trump |
| Stage 2: It’s not our fault | China is to blame because the culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that, these viruses are transmitted from the animal to the people– Sen. John Cornyn | China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn’t care less– Donald Trump |
| Stage 3: It’s not that bad | One day like a miracle it will disappear– Donald Trump | [The climate] will change back.– Donald Trump |
| Stage 4: Solutions are too costly | We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.– Donald Trump | I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax.– Donald Trump |
| Stage 5: It’s too late | It is going to spread further and I must level with you… many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time– Boris Johnson | The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.– Author Jonathan Franzen |
With most news people, there is a strong urge to present new facts and offer balanced views, to constantly keep the public updated, a practice that has been severely exacerbated by the rush to compete with social media. But in the case of long-term crises, these journalistic practices are actively damaging public trust in science and mudding the message by presenting multiple conflicting opinions as if they are all equally valid. There are few fundamental changes that could make headlines, and a news barrage about local disasters caused by extreme weather events is not enough to raise awareness about global warming – it may in fact fuel the opposite reaction, the fatalistic view that we are too late to do anything about it. Journalists need to present the underlying mechanism causing disasters and concrete steps that people and governments should undertake.
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