Why Did the TV Networks Do Such a Terrible Job Reporting On Climate Change Last Year?
Media coverage of climate change is light, uninformative, and declining in scope–just as its impact in terms of extreme weather events is going through the roof. From this article by Media Matters for America:
2017 was the costliest disaster year in the U.S. history. Weather and climate disasters in the country cost $306 billion in total damages, and 16 extreme weather events each cost more than $1 billion in damages. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria were particularly destructive. Maria alone displaced hundreds of thousands of people and may have led to more than 1,000 deaths.
Numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies have linked climate change to stronger and more damaging hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, heat waves, and other forms of extreme weather. Recent research has even quantified the extent to which climate change exacerbated specific weather events. For example, in December, two scientific studies reported that climate change had increased Hurricane Harvey’s rainfall by at least 15 percent.
Yet the corporate broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX — aired just four total segments that discussed climate change in the context of the hurricanes or other 2017 weather disasters. PBS, by contrast, aired eight such segments.
Media Matters for America analyzed climate change coverage on major broadcasters’ nightly news programs and Sunday morning political shows ― including those on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and PBS ― over the course of 2017. While a total of 260 minutes were devoted to climate change during the year, almost all of that coverage (79 percent) related to actions taken by the Trump administration rather than explanatory reports about the phenomenon or the way it affects humans or extreme weather.
OK, so why is this?
One may speculate that corporate-owned media doesn’t want people getting too concerned, and thus involved with climate change and its mitigation. There’s only one place such activity can go: challenging the basic religion of consumerism, and even questioning the validity of capitalism itself.
A less damning theory is that corporate media is about making money, and that the actual process of informing the public is totally irrelevant to its business model.
In either case, it’s a sad day.
Craig,
Or then again, it could be the media reflects what’s interesting to the public (as opposed to the public interest) and the general public has grown bored with endless lectures attributing everything from hurricanes to a summer rain shower to evidence of “climate change”.
Highly politicized leftist terms such as “corporate-owned media”, ” basic religion of consumerism, and “validity of capitalism”, deter the average reader, very few of whom are interested in re-hashed leftist rant’s.
Modern mainstream media struggles for readership, it must give it’s readers what they want or perish. Those, like yourself, who yearn for an era when ‘Pravda’ and other official media outlets controlled the only sources of information and only published news items in the ‘public interest’ as decided by a very small group of secret party elite, will remain (thankfully)frustrated.
The general public have moved on. Public debate is now focused on a new sport of public indignation and a revival of certain Victorian era morality, with all the same hypocrisy and mock outrage.
Headlines Scream “Donald Trump touched my Backside !”, is far more sensational and titillating than ponderously dour warnings about climate change. (it doesn’t matter if the claim is 30 years old, the details vague, and the occasion a very crowded concert where Trump may or may not have been the same proximity, all that matters is the headline).
Mainstream media must both build and ride tides of public hysteria to remain relevant. The media now finds itself in the same position as Emperor Napoleon 111 observed to family while watching an hysterical mob rioting, ” farewell, I must take my leave and join that unruly crowd, for you see,.. I am their leader !”.
The public audiences is fickle, and attention span is relatively short. The more excessive the “crusade” the quicker the public will lose interest, dismiss and distrust the message.
I grant that the public has a limited appetite for this subject, for a number of reasons:
The heavy damage isn’t going to manifest itself for decades, and we have the attention span of ferrets
Disinformation campaigns have had some level of success; 1/4 of Americans don’t believe the theory of climate change
Remarkably, Trump supporters, bless their hearts, believe everything the POTUS says; concerns about climate are thought to be suited only to liberals
Americans are far more selfish today than they were a generation ago; give us beer and Doritos and we’re good
We’re also far less educated in math and science than we’ve been in generations
Craig,
I think I’ve found a book you may have read, or if not you would enjoy.
‘Discourses of Global Climate Change: Apocalyptic Framing and Political Antagonisms’ by Jonas Anshelm, Martin Hultman examines political arguments on climate change using the context of Sweden.
Industrial fatalism, Green Keynesianism, Eco-socialism and Climate scepticism. Ecotopianism, Drawing on risk society and post-political theory, it elaborates concepts such as industrial modern masculinity and ecomodern utopia.
Although the authors are both earnest activists, the book presents a well researched analysis of the eco-socialist movement without descending into mere propaganda or doctrinaire ranting.