: Five ways media and journalists can support climate action while tackling misinformation #IndiaNEWS #International It’s a fact: media shapes the public discourse about climate change and how to

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Five ways media and journalists can support climate action while tackling misinformation #IndiaNEWS #International
It’s a fact: media shapes the public discourse about climate change and how to respond to it. Even the UN’s own Intergovernmental Panel of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC) warned clearly of this for the first time in the latest of its landmark series of reports.









According to the IPCC, this “shaping� power can usefully build public support to accelerate climate mitigation – the efforts to reduce or prevent the emission of the greenhouse gases that are heating our planet – but it can also be used to do exactly the opposite.
This places a huge responsibility on media companies and journalists.
The Panel also noted that global media coverage of climate-related stories, across a study of 59 countries, has been growing; from about 47,000 articles in 2016-17 to about 87,000 in 2020-21.
Generally, the media representation of climate science has increased and become more accurate over time, but “on occasion, the propagation of scientifically misleading information by organized counter-movements has fuelled polarization, with negative implications for climate policy�, IPCC experts explain.
Moreover, media professionals have at times drawn on the norm of representing “both sides of a controversy�, bearing the risk of a disproportionate representation of scepticism on the scientifically proven fact that humans contribute to climate change.
So how can journalists be a force for good amid these challenges and what UN Secretary-General António Guterres has deemed a ‘current climate emergency’?
UN News spoke with Andrew Revkin, one of the most honoured and experienced environmental journalists in the United States, and the founding director of the new Initiative on Communication and Sustainability at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.
Mr. Revkin has been writing about climate change for decades, even before the IPCC was created 30 years ago, for renowned media organizations such as The New York Times, National Geographic and Discover Magazine. He has also participated in events led by the UN Environmental Programme, the UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction, UN-Habitat and other UN agencies.
Drawing on Mr. Revkin’s broad experience, and the expertise of UNESCO and the IPCC, here are five ways in which journalism can support climate action and fight misinformation.



© Fernando Allegretti

Journalist Andrew Revkin on the Amazon Jurua River back in 1989.

1. Stop being so (overly) dramatic
As climate change takes hold, people are increasingly demanding information about what is happening, and also about what they and their governments can do about it.
According to UNESCO, three of the media’s traditional roles – informing audiences, acting as watchdogs, and campaigning on social issues – are especially relevant in the context of a changing climate.

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