Toronto Star October 4, 2024
Five eminent CBC alumni are urging the public broadcaster to deepen its coverage of the climate crisis in the face of an escalating “civilizational threat.”
“As journalists, members of the CBC family and as Canadians concerned about our future, we ask that the CBC treat the climate breakdown as the existential crisis and civilizational threat that it is,” reads a copy of the letter obtained by the Star.
Drafted by former broadcasters David Suzuki, Peter Mansbridge, Adrienne Clarkson, Paul Kennedy and Linden MacIntyre, the call to action was delivered to Brodie Fenlon, head of CBC news, on May 1, 2023. Attached were a raft of recommendations, including a “daily climate emergency report” for the broadcaster’s flagship news and current affairs shows.
While the authors say they received a respectful response at the time, their request to meet was declined. Now, two scorching summers of extreme weather events later, the CBC’s climate coverage remains inadequate, they say.
“Over the past two summers, I think we’ve seen the CBC get better about connecting these extreme unnatural weather events to climate change,” Suzuki said in a press release Friday.
“However, the CBC has not done nearly enough to make the next connection — between climate change and our continued reliance on fossil fuels. And consequently, the public’s understanding of that connection remains very weak.”
Kennedy noted that, a year later, CBC has made steady improvements to its climate coverage, including introducing new climate programming, allocating specialized reporters to the file and providing journalists with internal professional development training.
“But overall, as the world continues to break temperature records, the prominence of this reporting remains incongruous with the severity of the crisis,” he said.
In a statement to the Star, a spokesperson for CBC noted the broadcaster recently “redoubled our focus on climate journalism,” citing a blog post by Fenlon in 2021.
In an update earlier this year, Fenlon provided an update on the broadcaster’s climate initiatives, including a new special project called “overheated,” establishing a national climate unit, launching the CBC’s News Climate Dashboard and creating a dedicated space on its website and news app for climate coverage.
Despite the CBC’s recent investments in climate coverage, the 2023 letter notes: “We need more. Much more.
“Decades of under-reporting on the climate and ecological crisis by all Canadian media have left the Canadian public poorly informed about the causes of, solutions to, and urgency to act on the climate crisis.”
It cites a 2022 study that found just 55 per cent of more than 4,000 Canadians correctly answered that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the primary cause of climate change.
“Canadians need to understand the severity of the crisis, but also hear about credible solutions to confront it to stave off climate fatalism, as well as an interrogation of unproven solutions that could delay climate mitigation,” the letter reads.To this end, the letter outlined six recommendations:
- Develop a daily climate emergency report to be embedded in CBC’s flagship local, national and current affairs shows, including all local morning radio programs and national shows.
- Develop and implement climate and environment-specific standards and language to be enshrined within CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices, similar to recent actions taken by the Guardian.
- Provide training on basic climate science, policy and best practices for climate communication to every journalist across beats.
- Join Covering Climate Now, an international consortium of reputable media outlets committed to rigorous climate reporting.
- Provide more international coverage of global efforts to mitigate climate change and how the climate crisis disproportionately impacts the Global South and Indigenous and marginalized communities everywhere.
- Report annually about CBC’s climate reporting, to demonstrate it’s following through on its commitments.
“We know the CBC is under attack. We know that public broadcasting is significantly underfunded in Canada to fulfil this critical purpose,” the authors write.
“But we also know that Canadians who depend on the CBC, including ourselves, will defend it — especially if you give people what they need and continue to adapt to our changing planet.”
Source: Toronto Star