Dear Friends,

CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK’S PODCAST

If the climate emergency is a crime against humanity and the planet, who’s the biggest criminal? ExxonMobil? Kelcy Warren? Donald Trump? Congress? China? Joe Biden? (Sure, Biden’s so much better than Trump on climate, but with all the mixed messages he’s sending, the President doesn’t seem to get the emergency part.)

There are some really bad players on that list, yet none as bad as the mainstream media. Across the world, the climate emergency is exploding like never before. Yet silence dominates the corporate media’s coverage.

Take Hurricane Ida. An analysis by Media Matters found that six of the biggest commercial TV networks — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and NBC — ran 774 stories about the storm from August 27-30. That’s a lot of air time — over 30 stories per day, per network! Yet only 34 of those stories even mentioned climate change.

When TV news programs fail to connect hurricanes, derechos, heat waves, and wildfires with the changing climate, viewers don’t make the connection either.

Even though the US mainstream media isn’t covering the climate emergency as it should, some so-called “alternative” media (like us!) are doing our part — as is this chicken.

As Mark Hertsgaard of Covering Climate Now wrote in a recent column in The Guardian, “It’s media malpractice not to mention that burning fossil fuels drives extreme weather events like Hurricane Ida.”

As Media Matters points out, “Scientists have repeatedly warned that global warming is making storms like Ida stronger and wetter, and even proved the extent to which human-caused warming has increased the damage caused by specific storms. Before Ida even hit land, climate scientists were warning that the storm could rapidly supercharge due to the warm ocean water it would pass over in the Gulf of Mexico.”

So what gives, NBC, CNN, Fox, et al? If you ran a story about a fire, you’d tell us what caused it. When you cover a mass shooting, you dig deep into what motivated the killer. Why is it, then, with coverage of a storm on steroids due to climate change, that only 4% of your stories cite the cause?

Not only is the evidence clear, but the impacts are clear — and deadly. The World Health Organization estimates that climate change is already causing over 150,000 deaths annually. Yet for over fifty years, key individuals, institutions, and governments have chosen to ignore scientific truth and made decisions that have created the conditions that are now killing people, and countless other living beings.

What do we call it when someone takes an action that knowingly kills someone else? A crime. And since climate change could have been avoided, it’s fair to label as criminals those who perpetrate, enable, and profit from climate violence.

More than any force in the world, the US mainstream media could provide the spark that gets us to turn the corner on climate. If the media covered climate like they’ve covered COVID, the public would be on board for deep personal and political action in short order.

Politicians would be on board, too. They’d have to be. Remember, politicians respond to three things: voters, money, and the media. And if the media and voters are screaming “climate action now!” the power money has over politicians would pale.

Of course, all forms of media are culpable, but none more than TV. As Hertsgaard writes, “Broadcast television’s failure is especially egregious in that it’s still the leading news source for most people. (About 45% of Americans get most of their news from television, while 18% rely primarily on social media, according to the Pew Research Center.) And it repeats the mistake TV news made while covering the extreme weather events of 2020. In the face of unprecedented fires in Australia and California (remember the orange skies over San Francisco?) and kindred calamities, only 0.4% of commercial TV stories mentioned the climate crisis, Media Matters found.”

In 2016, partly in response to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ignoring climate change during the presidential campaign, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes devoted a solid week to the climate emergency. Great start. Then Hays and MSNBC dropped their focus as quick as you’d drop a smoldering family portrait charred in a western wildfire. Why? According to Hayes, the problem was that “every single time we’ve covered [climate change] it’s been a palpable ratings killer.”

And therein lies the problem. It’s all about ratings, about ad revenue, about beating the competition. In a word, it’s all about money. If we don’t make real progress toward climate sanity real quick, neither money nor ratings will matter.

The media can and must lead the charge — and it’s up to each of us to pressure them to do so. Last year, I dropped my 30-year subscription to The Des Moines Register after repeated conversations with editor Carol Hunter convinced me the paper would never give climate the serious coverage it demanded. Which brings me to …

CALL TO ACTION!: Do something this week — anything! — to let your preferred mainstream media outlet know you aren’t happy with its lack of climate coverage. Let me know who you contact and what kind of response you get. Thanks!

Ed Fallon

*******

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS WEEK’S PODCAST:

(01:50) Double whammy: Ida devastates Gulf and Atlantic coasts, with Toni Messina and Markalain Dery;
(15:32) Carbon pricing bill in the US Senate, with Bruce Hagen;
(29:25) The biggest climate criminal is not who you might think;
(42:42) The great US climate migration has begun;
(55:30) In the midst of fall harvest, think ahead to spring, with Kathy Byrnes.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel, and listen to the program on these and other local affiliates:

– KHOI 89.1 FM (Ames, Iowa)
– KICI.LP 105.3 FM (Iowa City, Iowa)
– WHIV 102.3 FM (New Orleans, Louisiana)
– KPIP-LP, 94.7 FM (Fayette, Missouri)
– KCEI 90.1 FM (Taos, New Mexico)
– KRFP 90.3 FM (Moscow, Idaho)

Please support the local businesses and non-profits who make this program possible. Click on their logos on the Fallon Forum website and in our weekly email, and visit Dr. Drake Family Psychiatry, Story County Veterinary Clinic, Bold Iowa, and Birds & Bees Urban Farm.

Thanks for supporting the progressive alternative to the right-wing shock jocks!

Ed Fallon