Press freedom and climate journalism
May 3 was World Press Freedom Day, and conversations centered on the environment.
Hi Checklisters!
We hope that May has been treating you well. Here are some highlights from the field:
✅ This year’s World Press Freedom Day focused on journalistic freedom during times of environmental crisis.
✅ A free press is crucial to the decision-making we as a society need to undertake to meet the challenges of climate change.
✅ In today’s world, environmental journalists face mounting obstacles, even as misinformation continues to evolve and spread.
Top Comment
World Press Freedom Day was observed on May 3, with an emphasis on journalistic freedom in the face of global environmental crises. This is an essential topic, as attacks on science and the widespread reach of mis- and disinformation can damage forms of civic engagement that could otherwise effect real change.
As we’ve seen this month during the flooding in Brazil’s southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, areas affected by environmental crisis can suddenly find themselves contending with a digital deluge of disinformation. A statement from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also noted how disinformation is further exacerbating the humanitarian crisis on the ground.
Meedan is committed to supporting our partners in Brazil as they battle this tide of misinformation.
Meedan fosters research into climate misinformation and promotes high-quality climate journalism
In an effort to root out misleading narratives and support practical solutions, Meedan works with our partners to identify misinformation and refute false claims.
Independent Media Response Fund (IMRF) recipient Annie Lab reviewed and analyzed climate misinformation on Chinese social media to uncover pervasive narratives about the alleged ulterior motives of climate activists and the purported benefits of rising temperatures for China. These themes have much in common with an emerging form of climate denialism that the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) calls New Denial.
A previous IMRF recipient, Sarah Khazem, wrote about desertification in Iraq and went on to earn an Earth Journalism Network fellowship to cover the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties (COP28).
As part of our work in North Africa and Western Asia (NAWA), journalism students affiliated with Meedan’s open-source platform NAWA Media discovered that a popular Egyptian news publisher promoted climate misinformation. The students found that while overall climate coverage rose, misinformation increased with it.
Last year, IMRF recipient Pin Africa, through its Acquire imprint, created an e-course on climate and environmental reporting in Africa. The class helps storytellers gain the tools they need to report on climate change from an African perspective.
Additionally, in a further effort to gear climate coverage toward finding and developing answers to the vexing questions we face, Meedan is working with the Solutions Journalism Network to develop an AI tool that will assess news stories against rigorous criteria for solutions journalism.
Why is a free press important during the climate crisis?
We know that addressing the climate crisis requires aggressive and urgent action. The scale of these transformations demands a concerted, unified effort to implement systemic and wide-reaching change.
Bolivian environmental journalist Miriam Jemio recently spoke to UN Women about the unique struggles that women, Indigenous groups, and rural communities face when it comes to environmental concerns and climate issues. “Access to information is the basis of democracy,” Jemio said. She also noted that when journalists’ safety is put at risk — affecting their ability to report on environmental issues that influence people’s lives — those most impacted by the climate crisis will lack the information they need to push solutions forward.
As part of the Covering Climate Now collaboration, Al Jazeera’s Giles Trendle wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review about how press freedom is essential to climate solutions. When reporters are forced to contend with violence, harassment, arrests, and other forms of intimidation, communities are deprived of vital knowledge and analysis.
“Reporting that is accurate, factual, and impartial—the hallmarks of good journalism—is critical for society to be informed of the magnitude of the climate emergency and its solutions,” said Trendle. “Yet journalism cannot play this crucial civic role if our reporters are being killed, our offices bombed, and our freedom to publish and broadcast trampled.”
Unique challenges to press freedom for environmental journalists
The financial, social, and political interests of polluting organizations and their allies provide an incentive for targeting journalists who cover topics associated with the climate crisis. An International Press Institute (IPI) report on safety and climate journalism noted that a country or region’s overall state of press freedom is a fairly accurate barometer for determining the risk level environmental reporters may face in that location, but there are several unique aspects to this work as well.
For example, as the report notes, journalists who cover climate issues are less likely to be protected, especially if they are freelancers, and they often work in more dangerous, remote environments. They may also expose possible criminal activity within their own communities. Frequently, these reporters are among the first people on the scene to cover an unfolding disaster.
Strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) are among the issues explored in the IPI report. A U.N. Environment Programme article on protecting environmental journalists also highlighted this problem. The widespread use of SLAPPs underscores the fact that courts can be used as both a vehicle for protecting and suppressing press freedom.
Press freedom under attack and climate misinformation on the rise
Even as environmental journalists contend with these various attempts to limit their freedom, the larger media ecosystem is facing a glut of climate misinformation, especially online.
CNN has explored the phenomenon of wellness influencers who pedal climate conspiracy theories, including by espousing that Hawaii’s 2023 wildfires were deliberately started to facilitate land-grabs or to forward a controlling “climate agenda.” A Deutsche Welle article on why climate misinformation matters also points to the fossil fuel industry, astroturf organizations, media companies, political entities, and social media platforms as alleged distributors or spreaders of climate misinformation.
According to a CCDH report on climate denial, we are heading into an era of what the authors call New Denial. Instead of focusing on an outright rejection of climate change, today’s denialists seek to undermine potential solutions, reframe climate change as not being a crisis, and discredit scientists and advocates.
Meedan leads workshop at Palestine Digital Activism Forum (PDAF) 2024
The session will focus on fine-tuning large language models for the Larger World, Meedan’s preferred term for the Global South.
At the upcoming forum, this workshop will feature Dr. Dima Saber and Dr. Scott A. Hale alongside Nighat Dad, founder and executive director of the Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan. Taysir Mathlouthi of 7amleh — The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media — will moderate.
Define_New Denial
“The departure from rejection of anthropogenic climate change, to attacks on climate science and scientists, and rhetoric seeking to undermine confidence in solutions to climate change.”
— CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed, “The New Climate Denial”
Townsquare
June 13-15
Festival 3i is a Brazilian gathering centered on digital journalism and innovation. Journalists, media workers, and students from Brazil and throughout Latin America can register to attend.
June 26-28
GlobalFact 11 will be held this year in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, with a special focus on elections, artificial intelligence, freedom of expression, and information integrity.
July 17-19
DataFest Africa 2024 is a two-day event that celebrates data science and its ever-evolving impact on the African continent while showcasing solutions and innovations.
What else we’re reading
“As floods, fires, and tornadoes surge, and daily as well as weekly publications collapse, local journalism maintains an all-too-slender lifeline in devastated rural communities like mine. Local journalists remain after the Klieg lights go dark and the national media flee our mud-strewn, burned-out Main Streets. We continue to report as our friends and neighbors face the challenge of rebuilding (or not).”
(Jane Braxton Little, The Nation)
“How can journalists inform the public effectively when the fossil fuel industry has a growing influence on the media platforms?”
(International Press Institute)
“In addition to multiple coordinated lawsuits, there are other forms of judicial harassment that aim to silence journalists. For example, politicians, judges, and prosecutors may use their positions to influence the course of proceedings and put pressure on those being prosecuted.”
(Isabela Cruz, The Brazilian Report)
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