I finally got irate enough at RNZ's continued climate silence that I sent them some feedback. See below:
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I have noted a disturbing trend in RNZ reporting and commentary over the past couple of years, and it has reached the point where it has assumed the dimensions of an elephant in a confined space.
Every time you cover a severe weather event (and there has been no shortage of these, as you are careful to point out in the cited article), you omit the obvious driver behind the increasing frequency and severity of these incidents.
Stop pussyfooting around. Name it. Talk about it. Explain the science and the evidence behind it, and tell your audience what is actually going on...and more importantly, what we can do about it.
Climate breakdown is real. It's here, it's scary, it's expensive, and it doesn't have to be relegated to the unspoken background in some sort of fatalistic Kabuki theatre. You have a duty to the people of Aotearoa as a public broadcaster to use your platform to inform on the important matters facing this country. Inaction on climate mitigation and adaptation is making things worse for everyone except fossil energy companies.
The omission of climate attribution in your coverage does not pass unnoticed. It reinforces a widely held sentiment that our media has been captured by corporate interest, and that the politically-expedient line of "we're helpless" is being parroted without critique. By cultivating and reinforcing a narrative of denial and intentional helplessness, you are complicit in a silencing of the voices that we need to hear: those rational actors who would have us make better decisions for the people who will be living in this place in 50 or 100 years and dealing with the legacy of the infrastructure and planning choices we are making right now.
You could do better. But will you?
#climate
--
I have noted a disturbing trend in RNZ reporting and commentary over the past couple of years, and it has reached the point where it has assumed the dimensions of an elephant in a confined space.
Every time you cover a severe weather event (and there has been no shortage of these, as you are careful to point out in the cited article), you omit the obvious driver behind the increasing frequency and severity of these incidents.
Stop pussyfooting around. Name it. Talk about it. Explain the science and the evidence behind it, and tell your audience what is actually going on...and more importantly, what we can do about it.
Climate breakdown is real. It's here, it's scary, it's expensive, and it doesn't have to be relegated to the unspoken background in some sort of fatalistic Kabuki theatre. You have a duty to the people of Aotearoa as a public broadcaster to use your platform to inform on the important matters facing this country. Inaction on climate mitigation and adaptation is making things worse for everyone except fossil energy companies.
The omission of climate attribution in your coverage does not pass unnoticed. It reinforces a widely held sentiment that our media has been captured by corporate interest, and that the politically-expedient line of "we're helpless" is being parroted without critique. By cultivating and reinforcing a narrative of denial and intentional helplessness, you are complicit in a silencing of the voices that we need to hear: those rational actors who would have us make better decisions for the people who will be living in this place in 50 or 100 years and dealing with the legacy of the infrastructure and planning choices we are making right now.
You could do better. But will you?
#climate
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