Why Journalism Matters
Turning up the volume on coverage of the climate emergency. Condemnation for arresting French investigative journalist. And Russia adds another war crime to the list: targeting journalists
4 minute read
Shout louder—it’s an emergency! Climate Changes Everything
“The planet is on fire but the fire can be put out…but the media is still way too climate quiet.
“We played Covid big because we saw that it was an emergency. The scientists told us it was an emergency. It was killing people all over the world…by the way climate change is killing people all over the world today. It’s just not what’s written on their death certificates.”
--Mark Hertsgaard, co-founder and executive director of Covering Climate Now, speaking at the recent Climate Changes Everything conference
If there is a journalist with a mission in today’s climate-conscious world it’s Mark Hertsgaard who four years ago set up Covering Climate Now along with Kyle Pope as a way of galvanising and globalising climate journalism. It now reaches billions of readers through 500+ media partners in 57 countries.
Besides providing comprehensive media coverage across many subject areas, CCN also searches for and examines solutions, fighting back against the panic and the gloom.
The onward momentum of this desire to save humanity from itself has culminated in perhaps one of the most important developments in climate journalism to date.
Last week at the Columbia Journalism School in New York a groundbreaking conference was held: Climate Changes Everything: Creating a blueprint for media transformation.
Unprecedented conversation
Leading climate journalists from around the world gathered for two days to ‘have an unprecedented conversation about how to cover a world on fire.’ If you haven’t heard of it until now, that’s simply an indication of how the voices crying out for the changes that can put the fire out have not been amplified enough by the world’s media.
In a salient warning, written for the Guardian by by Hertsgaard and Pope, they direct their critical rage at the news industry.
“Despite our living through the hottest summer in history, as well as wildfires, tropical storms and crazy-hot oceans, the news media continue to be outdone by the rest of popular culture when it comes to covering the most urgent story of our time.
“Inexplicably, climate crisis remains a niche concern for most mainstream news outlets. In the US, most TV coverage of this summer’s hellish weather did not even mention the words “climate change” or “climate crisis”, much less explain that the burning of oil, gas and coal is what’s driving that hellish weather. Too many newsrooms continue to see climate as a siloed beat of specialists.
“There are, of course, notable exceptions – the Guardian, for example, has long delivered science-based, abundant, comprehensive coverage of the climate crisis as well as its solutions – as have other big global outlets such as the AFP news agency.
“ But those outlets, as excellent as they often are, are among the outliers; much of the rest of the media – particularly television, which, even in today’s digital era, remains the leading source of news globally for the largest number of people – struggle to find their climate footing.”
Live streamed
The Climate Changes Everything conference was live streamed to the world with the main sessions being recorded and available on the Covering Climate Now website. Compulsory watching for anyone and everyone.
The conference also emphasised the importance of covering solutions as well as problems. It was co-sponsored by the Solutions Journalism Network, a worldwide organisation WJM has reported on in the past, that encourages journalists to cover the whole story, not just the exciting, dramatic, sensational elements that make the top of the news.
Hertsgaard and Pope also remind us that major elections are due next year in the US, UK, European Union, India, Indonesia and Egypt that may help shape the world’s approach to the crisis.
“Election coverage should help audiences understand what the candidates will do about the climate crisis if elected, not just what they say. It should hold candidates accountable by asking them not (as Fox did at the first US Republican debate last month) whether they believe in climate change but rather, “What is your plan to deal with the climate crisis?”
CCN also honoured three outstanding climate journalists at the conference with their 2023 journalist of the year awards. Manka Behl of the Times of India, Damian Carrington of The Guardian, and Amy Westervelt of Critical Frequency in the US.
“Every news outlet on earth can learn from the engaged, hard-hitting journalism that Manka, Damian, and Amy bring to the climate story,” said Mark Hertsgaard. “It’s reporting like this that arms the public with the power that knowledge gives.”
Reference
Covering Climate Now: Climate Changes Everything
The Guardian: covering the climate crisis seriously
3 minute read
Condemnation for arrest of investigative journalist reporting on France’s complicity in ‘Egyptian executions’
The French Republic, one of the crucibles where the modern concept of freedom of the press was forged , has taken the extraordinary step of arresting and detaining an investigative journalist and searching her home.
Ariane Lavrilleux who reports for the investigative news outlet Disclose was arrested last Tuesday by the country’s domestic intelligence agency. She was later released without charge after two days in custody, but France24 reported a former member of the military, who was also arrested Tuesday will appear before a magistrate to face further prosecution.
Lavrilleux’s detention was linked to her reporting on leaked government documents that revealed French intelligence’s alleged role in an Egyptian government program to target civilians for ‘arbitrary execution’ in Egypt’s plan to eliminate *suspected smugglers coming into the country from Libya.
Disclose, other leading French media outlets and press freedom organisations like Reporters without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) protested vociferously against this action by the French state. Disclose called the detention and arrest “unacceptable”.
The General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) started an investigation into Disclose’s Egypt Papers report in 2022 that they said was ‘compromising national defence secrets and revealing information that could lead to the identification of a protected agent’.
Alleged misuse
The exposés initiated in November 2021 by Disclose into what was called Operation Sirli ‘chronicled the alleged misuse of French intelligence by the Egyptian military in an operation originally meant to identify Islamic militants’.
Disclose used a social media post on platform X(formerly known as Twitter) to explain that its reporting “relied on several hundred top secret documents to unveil a campaign of arbitrary executions” orchestrated by Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sissi “with the complicity of the French state.”
In a statement Amnesty International France said: “It is very worrying that the work of journalists focusing on the opaque field of defence is almost systematically investigated by the DGSI.”
Amnesty International's secretary general Agnes Callamard added: "It is deeply chilling that, almost two years after the revelations that France was allegedly complicit in the extrajudicial executions of hundreds of people in Egypt, it is the journalist who exposed these atrocities that is being targeted, rather than those responsible."
The principal findings of Disclose’s investigation using the leaked documents was that the French defence and Security ministries were used to help the Egyptian dictatorship target civilian and drug smugglers under the cover of ‘fighting terrorism’.
19 bombings
The initial Disclose articles said French forces were complicit in at least 19 bombings against smugglers between 2016 and 2018 in the region.
This growing military relationship between Egypt and France was further driven by the opportunities for the French arms industry to sell hardware, some of which could be used for ‘internal repression’ by the Egyptian regime.
Disclose added further that “Between 2014 and 2021 alone, Egypt ordered close to 12 billion euros worth of [military] equipment from France.”
According to statistics published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) between 2014-2018 Egypt accounted for 28 per cent of France’s arms exports, making it by far France’s biggest foreign customer.
The detailed Egypt Papers investigation by Disclose can be read on their website in both French and English. See link below.
Reference
3 minute read
Russia charged with targeting journalists during its war on Ukraine
Russia’s involvement in war crimes in Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion are well known and documented. As a consequence Vladimir Putin has been indicted for these atrocities by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
But now it is possible to add another crime to the charge list—the deliberate targeting of journalists. These allegations are examined in an essay written for the The Conversation and published in Nieman Lab by Kelly Bjorklund and Simon J. Smith of Staffordshire University in the UK.
They report that least 15 media personnel have been killed while doing their jobs in Ukraine.
Bjorklund and Smith write: “Along with targeting civilians, hospitals, schools, orphanages, residential buildings, communications centres, and places of worship, the Russian state has been accused by the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) of deliberately targeting journalists.”
Shameful war
“If Russia had not unleashed this shameful war, all our colleagues, journalists, and media workers could continue to work successfully, create quality information content for their audience, write articles, make reports, and shoot TV stories and documentaries. They could benefit people and contribute to Ukrainian and world culture,” says NUJU President Sergiy Tomilenko.
“But the aggressor state decided they should die leaving their families in severe grief, people uninformed, deceived by Russian propaganda and intimidated.”
To mark these sacrifices the NUJU has opened an exhibition in Kyiv dedicated to all those journalists and media workers killed and imprisoned as a result of the war. The exhibition is entitled Executed Free Speech and is being held at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine and displays the personal belongings of some of those who have died. “
Bjorklund and Smith catalogue the journalists who have been injured and killed despite being clearly identified as members of the Press. These include a Sky News TV crew who were ambushed and shot by Russian troops despite being clearly identified as press, and Swiss photojournalist Guillaume Briquet who was shot in March 6, 2022 while driving in a car with press markings .
However, the first international journalist killed in Ukraine was Brent Renaud who died while travelling with photographer Juan Arredondo in a civilian-driven car. On the same day Ukrainian photojournalist Maks Levin and his bodyguard Oleksiy Chernyshov were both killed. Reporters woithout Borders (RSF) concluded that the two had been deliberately executed after being interrogated and tortured.
The unfortunate history of journalists killed in conflict is that almost always the crimes go unpunished.
Unesco research indicates that nine out of 10 killings of journalists do not result in convictions and this impunity “leads to more killings and is often a symptom of worsening conflict and the breakdown of law and judicial systems.”
The situation is considered so serious that the UN has established the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists which is marked worldwide every year on November 2.
Dangerous environment
Since Putin has been in power Russia has become an increasingly dangerous environment for journalists as Bjorklund and Smith explain:
“Threatening, attacking, disappearing, and murdering journalists is not a new tactic of war in general. It is certainly not unknown in Russia, where the state is involved in targeting or issuing assassination orders for Russian journalists such as Elena Kostyuchencko for her reporting on the war in Ukraine.
“Forty-eight journalists and media workers have been killed in Russia since Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999. Many of them were killed in contract-style murders without arrests or trials.”
Reference
National Union of Journalists Ukraine
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