KATHMANDU, Oct 17: Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, President, International for The New York Times (NYT), has a piece of advice to journalists: You can tell good climate stories even without explicitly mentioning ‘climate’ in the headlines.
Speaking at the Climate Conclave 2024, organized by Nepal Republic Media Limited in Kathmandu on Thursday, Dunbar-Johnson urged news media to normalize the practice of exploring the angle of climate change in every story in line with the pervasiveness of the impacts of the phenomenon to their own audience.
“It should be completely normal to have a paragraph on climate impacts in, let's say, a sports story or a story about company earnings,” Dunbar-Johnson said, “In other words, you don’t need to put climate in headlines to tell good climate stories.”
Worth of stories
Dunbar-Johnson also made an evidence-based argument that readers strongly respond to an action-centric representation of the climate crisis rather than the bleak picture painted by the facts-based negative news and the existential nature of the crisis.
“There is growing evidence that readers and audiences are switching off from the relentless barrage of negative news and the climate crisis, given its enormity and existential nature that can make people feel powerless, helpless and therefore traumatized,” he said.
He also encouraged news media to translate the meaning of various international commitments including ‘net zero by 2050’ on a human level, so that the general public can get a better picture of what the world would look like if such goals are achieved.
“What would our cities look and feel like if they were net zero by 2050? What would our transport systems look like? Our food and agricultural systems? Our energy infrastructure?” Dunbar-Johnson suggested possible ideas for stories.
He urged news media to explore questions such as “What is real, what is greenwashing, where there is backsliding on commitments and when they have and are being met and the resultant impact” to hold governments and businesses accountable for their climate commitments and pledges.
