Mainstream media ‘fails in climate change coverage’

Journalist Wen Stephenson may have lost some friends in the mainstream media over his criticism of how the media has seriously failed in their coverage of climate change.

The journalist says the mainstream media need to “cover it like a crisis” and “need to pay attention to the environmental movement working to tackle it.”

As he says, countless lives are at stake, and with children of his own, he is aware of how not getting serious now could negatively impact their lives in the future.

In a story in The Phoenix entitled, A Convenient Excuse, Stephenson talks about how he confronted his journalist and editorial colleagues over their failure to get serious over what could really be called “the story of the century.”

Stephenson used to be an editor at The Atlantic and The Boston Globe, and has worked on NPR and PBS programs, and he considers himself well-informed and engaged, according to an account in Boston’s NPR news station entitled, Has the Media Failed in Covering Climate Change?”

As NPR points out, after leaving as senior producer of NPR’s On Point two and a half years ago, Stephenson threw himself into an intense study of the effects of global warming. The experience changed him, and Stephenson felt compelled to share what he’d learned. Knowing that it might bar him from ever working for a mainstream media company again, Stephenson decided that he had to become a climate activist.

Now Stephenson is back, according to NPR, with a message for his former journalism colleagues: You are failing.

As Stephenson writes in his story:

“What’s needed now is crisis-level coverage. And you guys know how to cover a crisis. In the weeks and months — nay, years — following 9/11, all sorts of stories made the front pages and homepages and newscasts that never would have been assigned otherwise. The same was true before and after the Iraq invasion, and in the months following the 2008 financial meltdown. In a crisis, the criteria for top news is markedly altered, as long as a story sheds light on the crisis topic. In crisis coverage, there’s an assumption that readers want and deserve to know as much as possible. In crisis coverage, you “flood the zone.” You shift resources. You make hard choices.

“The climate crisis is the biggest story of this, or any, generation — so why the hell aren’t you flooding the climate “zone,” putting it on the front pages and leading newscasts with it every day? Or even once a week? Why aren’t you looking constantly at how the implications of climate change and its impact pervade almost any topic — not just environment and energy stories?”