Can the media be trusted to report honestly on climate change? That was the question posed this week at our latest Cloud Café online debate. And the answer, according to guest speaker Dr Jonathan Fuller, is a definite no.
Jon, founder of Climate Genocide Act Now, said crucial information about the existential threat presented by climate breakdown is being routinely withheld by the media.
Billions of people are already vulnerable to climate change, with rising temperatures, disease, sea level rises and worsening storms already happening and several low-lying island states expected to disappear into the sea within 25 years. The Gulf Stream is likely to shut down and temperatures could dip to minus 20°C or rise abruptly and severely, leaving countries unable to feed themselves. And the UK government hasn’t done anything to adapt, still allowing developers to build on floodplains and ignoring that the country doesn’t have enough water to survive a drought.
Yet few media outlets report the frightening trends and some actively encourage readers to oppose, abuse and even assault climate campaigners, while lobbying the government to slow the rate of action on climate change.
Calling continued investment in fossil fuels “the ultimate crime against humanity… technically genocide in international criminal law”, Jon said that the media are complicit in this by “inciting” the government to continue its policies.
He singled out the Guardian and Observer as being better than others at reporting climate news. Among the worst are the Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Star, the Express, and the Sun, which portray activists as “upper-class toffs, eco fanatics”.
The media, said Jon, promote fracking and the expansion of fossil fuel industries, lobby to get rid of net zero targets, and deny the benefits of insulation, heat pumps and onshore wind, low traffic neighbourhoods, bus lanes, and low-emission zones.
“There’s a relentless stream of misinformation and disinformation,” he commented. “They campaign to maintain lifestyles that they know will kill people. They’re engaged in warfare, attacks on democracy and on people, particularly the young and those in the global south. Sometimes you just despair and wonder how can people be so cruel.”
Among the lies are false claims that the cost of decarbonising will cost households thousands of pounds each year. And climate change deniers like Nigel Farage are given coverage while knowledgeable people like the UN Secretary General are not given comparable opportunities to put their case.
Part of the reason for the media ignoring the emergency is that they fear losing readers if they report upsetting news. A more sinister reason is the “crystal clear” link between the media owners and the fossil fuel industry; for example the Murdochs – owners of the Times and the Sun – have financial interests in oil and gas companies while the company that owns the Telegraph’s debt is a fossil fuel lobbyist.
“For newspaper owners there will be a day of reckoning,” warned Jon. “The young will one day be in charge and they’ll be the judges, the police, the prosecutors. They will want to know why media organisations knew [the truth] and carried on [lying].”
Among broadcasters, the BBC covers some aspects of climate change but is reluctant to broadcast the most alarming scenarios, said Jon. Even outlets sometimes thought to be reliable, like Channel 4, still report on the benefits of airport expansion while ignoring the deaths being caused by climate change.
“It doesn’t get into the public consciousness… the vast majority are not aware of the threat,” said Jon. “The press has a duty to tell people the scenarios are real and dangerous. But suppression of facts is everywhere you look. The truth is being withheld.”
Neither does the media report on the attempts being made by CGAN to prosecute the UK government for inciting genocide. Instead, protesters are being prosecuted. “The media have stolen from the young what they need to defend themselves – information,” said Jon.
Children are told a certain amount at school about climate change, he added. They’re told about some of the impacts; they know that polar bears are affected, for example. But they don’t hear about the effect on UK agriculture or the failed rains in Africa. They don’t know that extreme rainfall here will overwhelm the critical infrastructure that keeps them alive.”
He said the situation was inflicting “terror” on young people, with the result that many of them have decided not to have children.
Campaigners need to counter the deliberate campaign of suppression by the press by disseminating their own news, through newsletters and social media, he said. “We’ve done everything we can to get the media to tell the truth. But the right-wing press won’t change, so we have to get our own information out. We have to talk about genocide, annihilation, use language that good people will find uncomfortable but we owe it to the victims to use it. And we need to emphasise the positives [of taking action]: affordable homes, energy security, food supply security, employment, how we would deploy technology to insulate homes.. a dynamic vision and policies to give people quality lives.”
The Green Party has the right policies to save the young and give them hope, added Jon. “We can take that terror away from them. We can survive this.”
Watch the full talk below.