The Media's Failure With the Biggest Story in the World

[RiverLover]

The Media's Failure With the Biggest Story in the World
4/11/2015

...Pooley is only one of several journalists who have spoken of the failure of the media. In 2009, Joe Romm wrote that, although "our scientific understanding of business-as-usual projections for global warming has changed dramatically," the U.S. public has largely "remain[ed] in the dark about just how dire the situation is. Why? Because the U.S. media is largely ignoring the story." Romm and others have tried to capture in a phrase the size of the story the media have missed:

• Saying that 2010 had been "a stunning year in climate science," which revealed that "human civilization is on the precipice," Romm said that the media have been "missing the story of the century, if not the millennium."

• Pulitzer-prize journalist Ross Gelbspan said, "the fact that the planet is caving in around us" is "biggest story in our planet's history." (2)

• In 2014, Tom Engelhardt said . . . : "Climate change isn't the news and it isn't a set of news stories. It's the prospective end of all news."

To return to Pooley's parable: We cannot imagine that, if we knew that we had only 10 years to divert or destroy a humanity-destroying meteor heading straight at us, the governments and media would continue with business as usual. Governments, at least those with technological capabilities, would work together day and night to figure out the best approach, then provide all the needed resources - many trillions of dollars, if necessary - to prevent the destruction of human civilization.

The U.S. media would, as they did in World War II, explain the nature of the threat and why citizens will need to make sacrifices - perhaps enormous ones, because no sacrifice would be too great.

In that situation, it is possible that a contrarian movement might emerge, declaring the report about the meteor to be a scientific hoax. But if so, the media would surely not take it seriously - unless, at least, many of our best scientists agreed. Rather than spreading the contrarian story, the various news organizations would, recognizing that they had the biggest story since the beginning of human civilization, spare no expense in covering it.

However, with regard to climate change, the media - especially the American media - have acted in a very different way. Far from treating the CO2 threat as the biggest story since the beginning of civilization, they have failed to treat it as the story of the millennium, or the century, or the decade, or even the year.

Dimensions of the Media's Failure: False Balance

The U.S. media's failure to give the American people an accurate understanding of global warming and climate change has several dimensions....

Read more~
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/30006-the-media-s-failure-with-the-biggest-story-in-the-world

*This was one of those great articles that is SO difficult to "snip" any of it. This is such a tragic topic. The root, really, of the deeply frustrating lack of concern & action to save life on earth. The media is either ignoring it, or worse, giving deniers a platform lending false credibility. I hope many of you have the time to read the article in its entirety!!