Page 196 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

190 A. RUSBRIDGER AND B. BREVINI

facing the planet. Why was it that the coverage of this subject wasn’t
remotely commensurate with that? I think there are numerous reasons.
I don’t think it’s one. I think it’s part of the fault of the readers. They
maybe feel fatalistic, they maybe feel threatened, they maybe feel they’ve
read it before, they maybe feel there’s nothing they can do about it.
Probably people don’t much like reading about it. That translates in the
modern world to something that is very measurable. If you’re editing a
paper and you can see what the readers are reading and not reading… that
could influence their decision. You think, “If they don’t want to read about
it, why are we writing about it?” I think that newspapers are [in poor]
financial condition anyway. They’re all laying off staff and that kind of
expertise is not there any longer… I think it’s almost for politicians to take
the decisions that are needed in the absence of any debate, and if there’s
not debate in the media then how on earth can politicians start educating
the public about what’s likely to be needed?
BB: Post-truth seems to have become the ‘buzzword’ to describe this
year’s political climate. Fake news increasingly dominates social media,
while traditional media institutions struggle to find continuous and
reliable sources of funding. In these times, where do you see the future
of climate change coverage heading?
AR: I think again it’s a very complicated question, and I think it’s going to
involve a long conversation with the big West Coast media companies who,
at the moment, are cleaning up in terms of revenues but not willing to take
the responsibility for what they publish… the Googles and Facebooks as
well are going to have to be made more accountable and more transparent.
They’re going to have to start behaving more like editorial companies and
less like distribution companies. I think that’s one part of it which will deal
with—which should deal with—a lot of the issues that are rising up at the
moment about the so called post-truth society. Media companies are going
to have to, I think, be more concentrated on convincing people, on win-
ning back trust. I think a lot of the media have combined entertainment
with journalism and have not exercised the same standards of transparency
that are expected in public life nowadays. That’s something they’re going
to win back, that trust, in many ways. For instance, to the extent there’sno
such thing as truth… the mainstream media are as bad as anyone else. If
you’re running a media company today, how would you demonstrate that
you have a higher standard of truthfulness than some of the other stuff is
available out there? I think that has to be more transparent: your sources