According to the Virginia-based news aggregator DailyClimate.org, coverage dropped by 20 per cent from 2010 and by more than 40 per cent from 2009.
Last year at least 7,140 journalists and opinion writers published some 19,000 stories on climate change, as opposed to more than 11,100 reporters who filed 32,400 stories in 2009. “Particularly noticeable was the silence from the nation’s editorial boards: in 2009, newspapers published 1,229 editorials on the topic. Last year, they published less than 580 — half as many, according to DailyClimate.org’s archives.”
Robert J. Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science at Philadelphia’s Drexel University says: “It’s not in politicians’ interest to talk about it because, to really deal with climate change, we really have to change the way we live, especially in America. Nobody wants to hear that.”
Note EU-Digest: Could it also be that the press around the world has been somewhat silenced because they have been "charmed" by interest groups and lobbyists from the energy and natural resources sector ? Published statistics show that these efforts have been mainly led by forces from the oil, gas, electric utilities and nuclear energy industries, which regularly pump the vast majority of their political campaign contributions into conservative coffers.
In the US, since the 1990 election cycle, interest groups from the energy and natural resources sector have contributed more than two-thirds of their campaign contributions to Republican/conservative candidates.
Open secrets.com recently published a list of the top contributors (2011- 2012) in the energy field. Red showing the contributions made to politically conservative forces and blue the amounts donated to more moderate political forces supporting efforts to curb global warming by reducing green house gasses and additional investment in alternative energy resources.
| Contributor | Amount |
|---|---|
| Exxon Mobil |   $872,694 |
| National Rural Electric Cooperative Assn | $761,200 |
| Koch Industries | $652,400 |
| Exelon Corp | $591,494 |
| Murray Energy | $502,433 |
| Chevron Corp | $467,996 |
| FirstEnergy Corp | $384,300 |
| Dominion Resources | $359,295 |
| Duke Energy | $346,951 |
| Southern Co | $325,976 |
| Mewbourne Oil Co | $310,000 |
| Alliance Resource Partners | $309,850 |
| Valero Energy | $296,700 |
| American Electric Power | $290,000 |
| Edison Electric Institute | $277,825 |
| DTE Energy | $276,750 |
| National Mining Assn | $276,250 |
| NextEra Energy | $268,400 |
| Energy Future Holdings Corp | $260,675 |
| Occidental Petroleum | $248,089 |
For more: Climate change coverage by the media diminishing as Earth continues to heat up - thestar.com
No comments:
Post a Comment