A prominent journalist recently took to Twitter to vent about how, globally, media editors have opted to not run with story pitches which portray “climate doom and gloom” and instead choose to publish stories which push solutions to an approach instead of looking at the actual problems.
Eco-Business reported last week that the shift to solutions journalism is merely indulging "privileged" readers who are tired of negative stories but ignore the struggles of people on the front line of the crisis who are actually experiencing the droughts, floods and heat waves first-hand.
“Stories about climate solutions in the international press "solution" angles apply to a tiny fraction of the real-life stories that matter, but they take up an increasingly big slice of the climate content that the public – particularly in rich countries – gets to read,” climate journalist Lou Del Bello told Eco-Business.
Lou Del Bello, a Delhi-based climate reporter, vented her frustration on Twitter that Western newspaper editors have been turning down “doom and gloom” climate story pitches from freelance journalists because their “privileged” readers were tired of negative stories and were suffering from climate anxiety.
“You know who is not tired of the doom and gloom? People living in places where complex problems are part of their daily lives, and who can’t afford to get tired of the negativity,” she said.
The international media was “failing to acknowledge the relentless reality of climate change for the sake of their privileged readers’ comfort,” Del Bello wrote.
Del Bello’s justifiable anger comes almost a month after the release of the research, by PR firm Cognito, which found that coverage of climate solutions such as hydrogen, bio-energy, and carbon capture had increased by 50% over the past year.
Del Bello argued that not all climate stories worth telling have a solution, and if this were the case, climate change would easily be solved.
Numerous media houses and journalists agreed with Del Bello saying that “people living in places where complex problems are part of their daily lives, can’t afford to get tired of the negativity.”
“These ‘solution’ angles apply to a tiny fraction of the real-life stories that matter, but they take up an increasingly large slice of the climate content that the public – particularly in rich countries – gets to read.
“Editors increasingly ask for solution stories, and journalists who need to pay the bills increasingly end up pitching ideas with that straightforward angle, leaving out those more complex narratives which are more difficult to sell,” she said.
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