Media Blame Gender Reveal Parties, Not Climate Change, for West Coast Fires
Discussing the West Coast heatwave and fires, corporate media have been extremely hesitant to frame the discussion around climate change.
Karlin Itchoak on Wildlife Refuge Drilling, Steven Rosenfeld on How to Vote
Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling is being reported as a Trumpian bad idea. Is that enough?
‘The Industry Chose to Protect Billions of Dollars a Year in Its Own Profit’
“Exxon, as far back as the 1960s, really knew the extent to which climate change was going to be the path that we were on, the modern kind of climate disruption that we’re seeing, almost a climate disaster happening every week.”
As Covid-19 Forces Emission Reductions, Media Offer Oil Industry Elegies
If you’re looking for corporate media to celebrate the good news of the drop in demand for oil, you will be disappointed. Heck, you won’t even find an acknowledgement of the tradeoffs of oil demand and planetary health in last week’s breathless coverage of the unprecedented market collapse.
Diane Archer on Medicare for All, Sriram Madhusoodanan on Fossil Fuel Accountability
Before millions were unemployed, before Covid-19 began its sweep, healthcare was already a crisis, and the arguments against overhauling it were already visibly tired and specious.
‘Public Ownership Can Eliminate Some of Those Warped Incentives Associated With Monopoly’
“This is a huge opportunity for California to create an energy system that’s rooted in climate justice, that’s rooted in the realities of the changing climate, and how they’re going to ensure that they actually are creating a resilient California.”
Paul Paz y Miño, Saqib Bhatti & Beverly Bell on Environmental Justice & Cross-National Solidarity
There will only be an increasing number of frontline struggles between extractive, climate-disrupting industry and those willing to stand up to it. Corporate media’s inadequate attention, and unwillingness to truly call out the moneyed interests causing present and future harms, make them more often part of the problem than the solution.
Media on Climate Crisis: Don’t Organize, Mourn
While US media have indeed ramped up their coverage of the climate crisis, they continue to give short shrift to what are arguably the most important factors for determining our future: what specific human practices are responsible for the changing climate, why carbon emissions continue to rise, and what we can and should be doing about it.
‘We Have to Bust In and Insist That Power Be Shared in a Different Kind of Way’
“We try to bring you voices you might not hear elsewhere: activists, researchers, reporters and teachers, who can illuminate what big media are getting wrong—or missing entirely—why it matters, and what we can do about it.”
Australia Wildfire Coverage Is Long on Koalas, Short on Causes
Media have mostly remained resistant to addressing which human policies helped lead us to Australia’s fire disaster, and what will be needed to prevent matters from getting much, much worse.
We’re Still Waiting for ‘Early and Often’ Climate Debate Questions
Election Focus 2020: Across all the Democratic presidential debates thus far, questions on the climate crisis have accounted for only 7% of all questions, or 1 in every 14.
False Equivalence in the Age of Trump
Election Focus 2020: Even in the Trump era, corporate media, forever insistent on an “objective” approach that always hears out “both sides,” continue to exhibit a dangerous blindness to their own biases.
Sanders’ Plan to Fight Global Climate Disaster Too Ambitious, Says NYT
Election Focus 2020: It’s as if the New York Times can’t resist slipping in gratuitous digs at Bernie Sanders any chance it gets, even as the world burns.
Media Failed to Connect Climate Crisis and Utility Blackouts
Corporate media refused to discuss climate change as a factor in this year’s major blackouts in California and New York, described by for-profit utilities as a response to wildfires and extreme heat waves.
WSJ, NYT Celebrate ‘Shale Revolution’ for Investor Class, Despite Its Leading to Our Doom
It is hard to think of a more palpable example of corporate journalists seeing themselves aligned with the interests of the investor class, against literally everyone else on the planet, than the celebration of the “shale revolution” and US “energy independence,” despite the ongoing climate catastrophe.
Major Media Bury Groundbreaking Studies of Pentagon’s Massive Carbon Bootprint
Groundbreaking studies of the US military’s outsized contribution to the climate crisis received no coverage in virtually all the US’s biggest newspapers and TV news channels.
The Incredible Belief That Corporate Ownership Does Not Influence Media Content
Corporate ownership of media interferes with the core societal function of the press: reporting and investigating key issues at the intersection of public need and governance.
ABC Debate Lowlights
Election Focus 2020: After CNN’s remarkably substantive and thoughtful town hall on the climate crisis, we wrote that the following debates now had a solid foundation from which to go deeper on climate for a larger audience. Unfortunately, ABC took it as an opportunity to do even less on the crisis.
Marjorie Cohn on Afghanistan’s Unending War, Amit Narang on Deregulation & Corporate America
New Yorkers who were here for September 11 remember vigils, hugs from strangers and signs all over the streets reading, “Our grief is not a cry for war.” But war is what came, to the delight of many in media—first to Afghanistan, which the US invaded on October 7, 2001, and never left.
Climate Minimizers Don’t Deny Climate Change—but Find Endless Reasons to Reject Sanders’ Plan to Stop It
Election Focus 2020: While the majority of corporate media do not outright deny the reality of the human-caused climate crisis, they downplay the threat that climate change poses to all of us.
