Giving Compass' Take:
- Wolfgang Blau discusses how collaboration between multiple teams in the newsroom has become more common with COVID-19 coverage and can provide a model for reporting on the climate crisis.
- How can journalism on the climate crisis become as effective and informative as coverage of the COVID-19 crisis? How can journalists combat disinformation about climate change?
- Read about why philanthropy needs to support environmental and public health journalism.
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In early January 2020, the BBC reported about a new “mystery virus” in Wuhan, China. Since then, news organizations around the world have learned important lessons from covering COVID-19 that could become valuable for how they cover the climate crisis.
Never in the history of modern news journalism has a science story — the story of a new pandemic, its prevention and treatment — dominated the news agenda for as long as COVID-19 has. When I asked science journalists if they could think of any precedent, some mentioned the space race between the former Soviet Union and the U.S., from the “Sputnik shock” in 1957 to the moon landing in 1969. While the space race did garner enormous media attention, its effects on everyday life can’t be compared to those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it didn’t dominate the worldwide news agenda as much as COVID-19 has.
“The last 18 months have been a step change for our newsroom,” said Sven Stockrahm, science editor of German news organization Zeit Online. “Of course, our workload has been staggering, but we are delighted to see how normal it has become for all teams in our newsroom to first consult with the science desk before publishing a story that deals with aspects of COVID-19.” The degree of interdisciplinary collaboration with the science desk is new, and it could prove a model for how news organizations cover the climate crisis.
Today, news reports about the climate crisis primarily come from a newsroom’s science, politics or economics desk. A few news organizations already understand, though, that the climate crisis is more than a beat or a topic — it poses urgent questions that affect all sectors of society. Based on this understanding, journalistic coverage of climate change needs to involve all teams of a newsroom, including its culture, finance, real estate, lifestyle, fashion, health, and sports journalists.
When sports journalism mentions the financial aspects of a team, a transfer, or a tournament, nobody would be surprised to see “business journalism in the sports section.” Climate journalism needs to become just as integrated in every vertical.
Read the full article about reporting on the climate crisis by Wolfgang Blau at Nieman Lab.