Page 189 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

14 JOURNALISM, CLIMATE COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA ALTERNATIVES 183

limitations of traditional ‘objective’ journalism; they both honour the
importance of framing and self-reflexivity in media, and recognize that
journalism is implicated in the events it reports. Both seek a broader range
of sources and more attention to context, positive developments,
long-term processes, social structure, and creative ideas for solutions. And
preliminary evidence from experimental settings in Mexico, the Philippines,
Australia and South Africa suggests that by contrast with conventional war
reporting, PJ framing does generate a greater degree of empathy, hope and
cognitive engagement with counter-hegemonic arguments vis-à-vis war
propaganda (McGoldrick and Lynch 2014)—precisely the kind of impact
climate justice communicators hope for.
CJ and especially PJ, however, have found it an uphill battle to gain
traction within conventional media. The reasons have to do with profes-
sionalism, resources and power.
First, both paradigms challenge aspects of the regime of objectivity, par-
ticularly strong historically in the US, which emerged in tandem with the
commercialization and corporatization of the press, partly as a means of
legitimizing growing media concentration (Hackett and Zhao 1998). Civic
journalism does not advocate support for particular parties or policy options,
but it does call for the press to abandon its neutrality on one key question—is
public life working? Similarly, PJ calls for neutrality with respect to the
contending sides in a conflict, but also for an explicit commitment to ren-
dering visible the options for nonviolent conflict resolution. Furthermore,
narratives that contextualize conflict may be open to accusations of parti-
sanship in determining the relevant context: in the case of the 2003 invasion
of Iraq, should journalists emphasize Saddam Hussein’s previous use of
chemical weapons against the Kurds, or the failure of UN arms inspectors to
find weapons of mass destruction? These two contextual themes were pre-
ferred respectively by supporters and opponents of the invasion. Both para-
digms thus seek a journalism that self-reflexively intervenes in political reality.
Second, in an era when major multi-media conglomerates are disin-
vesting in journalism, both CJ and PJ methods require a much greater
investment of organizational resources than the standard reporting of
official statements and photo-ops. In the US, CJ has apparently stagnated
after media chains like Knight-Ridder stopped seeding it financially.
Skeptical observers had suggested it was supported by media companies
only as a circulation-building strategy, not as a philosophical commitment
to deliberative democracy. PJ faces even further challenges, not only the
resources needed to report and contextualize conflicts in distant places and