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Sierra Supporter Presses Media for Better Climate Coverage

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In Energy
Jan 19th, 2016
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Blue Planet

From Sierra Club Canada Foundation

The new year began with one of Canada’s leading daily newspaper taking heat from two of its readers for its lukewarm coverage of the climate change crisis.

The readers’ letters, published in the Toronto Star January 1, point to one of the steps you can take—today, next week, and regularly through the year—to help raise environmental awareness in your own back yard. (Because, after all, how often do we get to shout out Yes In My Back Yard!?)

Warm-Weather Fun for Christmas?

The story began with a December 22 Star article about the “warm-weather fun” Torontonians could look forward to as a green Christmas loomed. Longtime Sierra Club supporter Lyn Adamson of Toronto responded, writing about the profound sadness of “knowing that we are in a fight for human survival on planet Earth and most of us don’t even know it.”

Despite the ambitious long-term carbon targets set at the United Nations climate summit in Paris, “I looked in vain for some serious coverage of the very dark side of this unseasonably warm December,” Lyn wrote. “I have yet to see it.”

She urged the Star to commit to “much more extensive coverage of this climate crisis,” noting that “we rely on you, the media, to tell us just how urgent this crisis is. Can we count on you this year, 2016, to make reporting on climate a top priority?”

Hamish Wilson echoed Lyn’s argument. “I’m kinda disgusted at the Star for such feeble frippery of non-coverage of extreme weather so shortly after the COP conference,” he wrote. “It is basically dishonest to attribute this warmth to simply El Nino, and fail to explore linkages between El Nino events and climate change.”

When Journalists Set Out to Win

The tradition of crusading journalism has gone out of fashion these last few decades, but it’s almost as old as journalism itself. And there are recent precedents for what Lyn and Hamish (and you and your friends?) are asking their local daily to take on.

In March 2015 in the United Kingdom, The Guardian launched its Keep it in the ground campaign “to tap into a rare commodity in the climate debate—hope,” wrote reporters Emma Howard and Damian Carrington, “In particular, we are aiming to give a fresh focus on the solar revolution already under way and transforming the global energy system. We want to show that the transition to a world run on clean energy is possible, and indeed already happening,” ahead of last year’s United Nations climate summit in Paris.

That month, The Guardian launched a petition calling on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Wellcome Trust to divest their fossil fuel assets.

“The usual rule of newspaper campaigns is that you don’t start one unless you know you’re going to win it,” explained retiring editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger. “This one will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable. But we are launching our campaign today in the firm belief that it will force the issue now into the boardrooms and inboxes of people who have billions of dollars at their disposal.”

If It’s Good Enough for the Pulitzer Committee…

Then there’s the intrepid gang at the non-profit, non-partisan InsideClimate News, winners of a raft of journalism awards including the coveted Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2013. ICN’s exposé on the 2010 Kalamazoo River diluted bitumen spill shone a spotlight on what the reporting team called “the biggest oil spill you’ve never heard of,” triggering serious questions about differences in the physical composition and potential hazards of crude oil versus the product that comes out a tar sands mine.

And don’t be surprised if InsideClimate News adds to its award tally in the next several months. Remember last year’s blockbuster revelations that Exxon, several other fossil fuel majors, and the American Petroleum Institute all understood the risks of climate change and the connection to their own product, as early as the late 1970s? You heard about it because of yet another ICN investigation.

All in a Day’s Work

It really isn’t that much to ask. This kind of diligent, meticulous reporting is supposed to be all in a day’s work for a serious journalist. Which means that, if you want to set a higher expectation for your local media, you’re on firm ground.

It doesn’t take long to write a letter to the editor. To encourage a few friends or relatives to do the same. Then wait a few weeks, watch for another time-sensitive issue to come up, and do it again.

Even if your letter isn’t published, you can be pretty confident it’ll be read. Over time, there’s a good chance that you’ll change some minds, and shift some coverage as a result.

Check your local news outlet’s guidelines before you send a letter to the editor! Here are sample instructions from the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail.

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