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Why media reluctant to report on climate change
The media, climate campaigners conclude, are the best alliance to fight for environmental causes. Conversely, when the media choose to ignore an issue, there is little hope for it to gain traction and public support.
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Hundreds of activists and students took the the streets in Jakarta in the Climate Strike movement to demand the government to take climate change mitigation more seriously. (JP/A. Muh. Ibnu Aqil)
A
s students in Europe, the United States, Australia and several countries in Africa started organizing climate strikes, a journalist from Europe asked whether climate change was a big issue in Indonesia.
Other colleagues wanted to know whether Greta Thunberg, the petite, pony-tailed 16-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome turned climate activist, inspired Indonesian schoolchildren the way she does children around the world to demand better climate action.
Sadly, it’s much less so. Thunberg, the youngest candidate ever nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, is little known among children across Indonesia. And while Indonesian media do cover climate issues, they rarely convey the insistence or urgency over climate-astute policy. In conclusion: Neither climate change nor Thunberg are big in Indonesia.
Here are several reasons why. Firstly, climate reporting is often of complex scientific reasoning. Just as not all men are created equal, not all journalists are eloquently knowledgeable of the science behind climate change. Those who have the grasp of climate science would be far fewer than those who don’t.
But even if half the newsroom is decorated with degrees in science, there are also funding and resources issues. Climate news often calls for field reporting — going places with climate emergencies or visiting disaster laden regions caused by climate shift.
Both can be long and costly. While resources in most media today are in short supply, justifying climate reporting can be hard. Especially since readership or clicks for science news is difficult to guarantee.
In other words, science reporting needs more resources but attracts a smaller audience — again, not the best combination to encourage the newsroom to report on the subject.
