"Increasingly sophisticated and better-funded disinformation is making climate coverage trickier both for journalists to produce and for the public to fully understand and trust.
But telling the story, and understanding it, has never been more urgent with half of Earth’s population eligible to vote in elections that could decisively impact the world’s ability to act in time to stave off the worst of the climate crisis.
Swayed for 30 years by fossil fuel industry propaganda, the media has been as likely to unknowingly amplify falsehoods as they were to bat them down. It’s only in recent years that more journalists started to shy away from “both-sides-ing” the climate crisis – decades after scientists reached an overwhelming consensus on the scope of the problem and its causes.
The good news is that while the fossil fuel industry’s PR tactics have shifted, the stories they’re telling don’t change much from year to year, they are just adapted depending on what’s happening in the world."
Amy Westervelt and Kyle Pope report for the Guardian April 14, 2024.
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