Re: Welcome to the Future of Climate Coverage, Where the Journalists Are the Activists

[Woke pedophiles]

On 13 Nov 2023, The Patriot <patr...@protonmail.com> posted some
news:uitf32$mok7$2...@dont-email.me:

> The media is nothing but lie machines for clicks and profits these days.
The New York Times and Los Angeles (El Segundo) Times are two of the least
trustworthy.

In late September, with hundreds of journalists watching, Covering Climate
Now co-founder Mark Hertsgaard began a two-day media conference with a
call to arms.

Climate change, he told attendees at Columbia Journalism School, isn't
just a "problem" or "crisis." It's an emergency—one that requires
breathless, around-the-clock coverage. Think COVID, Hertsgaard said,
except it's the planet that's sick.

"We know how to cover emergencies—we cover them a lot. … We saw that
during COVID, right?" Hertsgaard said in a session titled, "The State of
Climate Journalism: Issuing a Call to Action."

It’s an interesting comparison. During COVID, the press, at the direction
of various "experts," ruthlessly policed its own coverage. The possibility
that the virus leaked from a lab, now considered the most likely scenario
for its emergence, was roundly derided as a conspiracy theory. Those who
questioned the utility of paper masks and the costs of remote learning
were scorned. And in a cautionary tale about the mainstream media’s
approach to "the science," the University of Pennsylvania scientist who
pioneered mRNA vaccines spent years in the scientific wilderness, enduring
sneers and abuse from the scientific establishment. She just won the Nobel
Prize in medicine.

For most people, this isn’t a story of journalistic triumph. For
Hertsgaard, a journalist and the author of Hot: Living Through the Next
Fifty Years on Earth, it is a template, and he now spends his time telling
other journalists exactly how to cover global warming. Some might say that
is not very journalistic, but nobody seems to be complaining.

Covering Climate Now presses media organizations to "make climate a part
of every beat in the newsroom." Its partners include top TV networks and
print publications, such as ABC and CBS News, MSNBC, Time, HuffPost, and
Vox, and its money comes from the nation's wealthiest liberal foundations,
including the Rockefeller Family Fund and the David and Lucile Packard
Foundation.

And the conference was held at the Columbia Journalism School. Days later,
the former Columbia Journalism Review editor and publisher, Kyle Pope,
left the publication to join Covering Climate Now full time, but not
before plugging the conference. "We are fast approaching the moment when
every reporter is going to have to be a climate reporter," Pope said in a
Sept. 18 press release. Columbia Journalism School, the release continued,
"is leading the charge and challenging the way our climate is currently
covered."

Today, the journalists are the activists, and the conference itself
reflected the blurred line between climate journalism and climate
activism. Covering Climate Now's conference featured two interviews with
climate activists, but the rest of the gathering’s roughly 20 panels and
speeches were led by journalists from the nation’s most prominent outlets,
from NBC to CBS to Time. Those journalists—such as CBS national
environmental correspondent David Schechter and Time senior correspondent
Justin Worland—echoed Hertsgaard's rallying cry, portraying climate change
as a do-or-die issue that transcends industry norms and standard
practices.

Pope and others stressed the need to weave climate coverage into "every
other story." Perhaps they haven’t been reading the New York Times, which
raised the alarm this summer about the impact of climate change on summer
camps and linked it to a rise in mental health disorders. CNN warned it
may cause a tequila shortage.

On a panel about "Climate Change And The 2024 Elections," journalists from
Time, Telemundo, and CBS News worked to swat down the notion that media
outlets should present facts for viewers to consider as they "make up
their own minds." Instead, former CBS News vice president Al Ortiz said,
the press should "get over" their fears of advocating for one political
party over another. Climate change is too urgent, he suggested, for
Republicans to win another election.

"I think it's unrealistic to think that you can just approach it from a
clinical, scientific point of view—here are the facts, everybody's going
to make up their own minds," Ortiz said. "The fact is that if you have the
Republican Party take over both the executive branch and legislative
branches of governments, you're going to stop climate change policy in the
government for five years."

"And we don't have five years," Ortiz continued. "We're way past that. And
I think it's important to remind people of that. … It's not something that
can be depoliticized."

At other points in the conference, panelists condemned the Republican
Party for engaging in climate "misinformation and disinformation." In some
cases, the panelists themselves marshaled misinformation to defend the
pitfalls of green energy and other climate-focused solutions.

Time's Worland, for example, said it is "misinformation" to allege that
green energy leads to higher prices for American families. But President
Joe Biden's Energy Department has acknowledged that so-called clean
electricity is roughly four-and-a-half times more expensive than natural
gas, and offshore wind and other green developments in New Jersey are
expected to increase energy rates by 10 to 20 percent.

The conference also included an interview with former United Nations
climate official Christiana Figueres, who downplayed the amount of
minerals required to produce green energy in comparison to oil and gas
production. An electric vehicle requires six times more minerals than a
gas-powered car, and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more
minerals than a gas-fired plant.

Readers shouldn't expect Covering Climate Now's media partners to report
those facts. Under the group's blueprint, green energy's shortcomings—and
the policy experts who highlight them—are not to be platformed. Climate
change is too important an issue, CBS's Schechter said during a conference
panel, to leave the audience "thinking that there are two sides to this
story" or a subject of "meaningful scientific debate." Instead, those who
argue in favor of oil and gas should be ignored.

Worland, Figueres, and Schechter did not return requests for comment.

Covering Climate Now lauded the event as a "roaring success on all
levels," noting that "hundreds of journalists" flocked to New York City to
attend. Those who didn't can still incorporate the group's practices into
their coverage. The Covering Climate Now website includes "reporting
guides" complete with story ideas, questions to ask local politicians and
companies, and language for journalists to echo in their pieces. One such
guide says there is "simply no good-faith argument" against the "need for
rapid, forceful action" to fight climate change, while another contends
that an "extreme weather story that doesn't mention climate change is
incomplete and potentially even inaccurate."

Judging by Covering Climate Now's member roster and speaker lineup, most
of the mainstream media are on board with the group's climate coverage
revolution. Journalists who aren't should take heed from Democracy Now!
founder Amy Goodman, who used the conference to send a message to any
detractors: Watch out.

"We have to make it unacceptable for journalists—even general political
journalists—to not ask these questions," she said.

https://freebeacon.com/media/welcome-to-the-future-of-climate-coverage-
where-the-journalists-are-the-activists/