The polite, non-intrusive note in the hotel room is a delicate reminder of the drought that swept through the region these last summers. The true meaning is – you are a guest for a while, but for others this city is their home. So, save water resources, please, be eco!
ECO? Eco-friendly? Because it’s the new trendy? Or because there is a real problem with global warming? Seasons marked by extreme heat, drought, floods or freezing cold winds are only the tip of the iceberg.
Media – be it regional or national, be it audiovisual or press, digital or traditional, cover these extraordinary events 24/7, restlessly, providing information on developments on the go, reaching out to people in disaster zones with helpful advice and context how to act accordingly.
Covering climate changes and disasters is a specific topic of global importance. CIRCOM Regional focused on it during several of its Annual Conferences. “There is quite simply nothing more serious facing us”, said Eibhlín Ní Chonghaile, award winning journalist and presenter when she opened a dedicated session on climate change during the 2022 Annual Conference. The forum took place in Galway, Ireland and was hosted by TG4, the Irish language broadcaster. “For broadcasters (the issue of climate change) poses another challenge – how do you keep a topic, that’s a permanent crisis at the top of the agenda”, stressed Eibhlín Ní Chonghaile.
For Tara Peterman, one possible clue was “work on storytelling in this permanent crisis mode”. This was right after the COVID pandemia.
“What are the lessons we can learn from any crisis. But that is ongoing, it means that it has to be more relevant to people’s lives, it has to be about human stories. We have to be real about the scale of the problem and also be real about the scale of the transformation that’s needed to decarbonize”, said Tara, who was Executive Producer for climate change at RTÉ News & Current Affairs.
Tara Peterman and Erika Bjerström, the SVT’s first Global Climate Correspondent, shared their experience in covering climate crisis and finding the right approach to engage audiences. While pointing out that climate is justice and social story, Erika Bjerström stressed on the need to look for engaging stories. “We try to bring the audience climate issues where they live”, she said. On another note, Erika brought into the conversation the difficulties and the requirements from editors a climate reporter faced in their work – both from good to bad (even with hate mails being part of the picture). And – type of “please, don’t be depressing, give some hope, but hold accountable relevant“ actors from industry to politicians who at a time seem to lack any kind of adequate response. Another requirement was to come up with solution-based stories.
Katy Tallon, who was Manager at Bafta Albert Ltd, widened the scope of the discussion putting it in to the broader context of diversity and sustainability. She reminded that climate has been reported one way or another for over a century. In the beginning of the 21 century things have changed. Katy Tallon spoke about the new dynamics. Audiences attitude has been changing – they are more and more perceptive to climate change. Also, media landscape has changed – many media are doing climate segments.
Watch the Reporting Climate session at the 2022 Annual Conference in Galway, Ireland, hosted by TG4.
With the formation of new professionals like Tara Peterman - Executive Producer for climate change coverage and Erika Bjerström - the first SVT Global Climate Correspondent, an important organizational approach began to take shape – media were restructuring their news operations responding to the need to find out new journalists profiles. This first step was followed by creating dedicated news teams and even newsrooms . At the Annual Conference in Poznań in 2024, Milana Kneževic of NRK spoke about how the Norway`s public service media responded and created its Climate Newsroom. „Since 2020 NRK has had its own climate team and it had a strategic investment in climate journalism“, Milana told the audience. In 2018 a survey showed that audiences wanted more coverage on climate and environment issues. Since then, NRK walked the road from defining the problem and having a working group to propose solutions, to developing a strategy and to setting up 2 dedicated teams to deal with the topic. There was one news team in Oslo and another one for long forms based in Bergen. On the production side, Milana put the emphasis on quality. “Climate change is so huge, it’s impossible to cover everything. So, we are making effort to do fewer stories but to do them bigger and better”, she said. However, the decisive factor for changes was the strategic thinking and the adoption of new mindset acknowledging the emergency of the situation and the need to act and get results.
Watch Milana Kneževic’s presentation on NRK Climate Newsroom at the 40th Annual Conference in Poznań, Poland, hosted by TVP3 Poznań.
At the same forum Anne Tézenas du Montcel, economic and climate journalist and climate expert from France, put the conversation in a new framework. She delved in the new role for journalism in ecological transition. To explain her point of view she described a two-fold dilemma – technology development and climate crisis. The context would be “the end of the real world (reality) and the ascend of “the “mind” and the digital technologies”. The real problem is climate change and more precisely – the global warming with Europe warming being twice faster than the global average. “We need to come back to reality”, said Anne Tézenas du Montcel. In this come back, where there was a difference between commitments and actions, journalism had a new role to play. Despite the complex context, driven by dynamics in economy and communication challenges (one of them being the “climate denialism”) journalism has got the potential to be the key factor to push forward environmental agenda. “Climate coverage needs a 360 degrees approach” said Anne and explained the nature of it: causes are intricate, ecosystem is the new mindset and there is a complete new paradigm to learn with new laws and institutions, new risks and temporalities and a new geopolitics game.
Watch Anne Tézenas du Montcel’s presentation “Journalism as the Key to Ecological Transition” at the 40th Annual Conference in Poznań, Poland, hosted by TVP3 Poznań.
The session on Climate Journalism also included three case studies of covering climate change on the spot. Pere Bosch i Grané, reporter and anchor of 3cat, Catalonia, Spain shared his experience of reporting the heatwave and drought in his homeland. The media gave a new twist to Bruce Lee’s “Be water, my Friend” advice – 3cat adopted a “drop by drop” approach. This would mean to adapt to the situation, to know your audience and their expectations and on top of it – find a way to explain a topic that is very big and very complex. 3cat ran in to an unexpected problem – the audience began avoiding reports about the drought (type of “We know there is drought, we are in it, we don’t want to hear about it” and switch to another channel).
How 3cat solved this – watch the Pere Bosch i Grané’s presentation “Covering Drought and Heat in Spain”at the 40th Annual Conference in Poznań, Poland, hosted by TVP3 Poznań.
Veronika Červinková, a journalist from the Czech Television (ČT) in Brno, the Czech Republic, told the story of a tornado hitting the South Moravia region and how the regional televisions covered the disaster. Key lesson was – “prepare for the unexpected”. The newsroom created a special data base of information to be prepared in the future and to coordinate work in the field in case of emergency. An important aspect is how reporters choose respondents to include in their reports . Veronica also spoke about the need to take care of the media teams in the field as they were subjected to strong emotions.
Watch Veronika Červinková’s presentation on covering a tornado in the Czech Republic
Covering Floods in Slovenia was the focus of Barbara Štor`s presentation. Barbara, the journalist from RTV Slovenia, showed how Slovenian public service media covered “The biggest disaster in Slovenia history” – the flash floods on 3-4 August 2023 that affected 2/3 of the country. Despite advance weather warnings “none of us was prepared to what really happened”, said Barbara, who happened to be the reporter covering the disaster and one of the local people who suffered from the floods. Journalists in the field were facing challenging conditions – from trying not to get in the way of the emergency activities to paying attention to people in stress and even taking care of TV teams’ own safety. The media coverage went beyond the immediate reporting. It continued in the following weeks with analysis, information on the consequences and continuous reporting on how life has been going back to normal.
Watch Barbara Štor’s presentation on the flash floods in Slovenia in August 2023
The Poznań case studies on disasters coverage was the continuation of a line which started during the 35th Annual Conference in 2017 in Ponta Delgada, Portugal, hosted by RTP. Journalist Isabella Di Chio shared her experience in covering for Rai regional channel TGR the (then recent) earthquake in Italy and Luciano Barcelos of Portugal`s RTP Azores spoke about the responsibilities of media when covering environmental emergencies.
Isabella Di Chio, experienced TV reporter and presenter spent 8 months in Amatrice, the epicentre of a major earthquake that happened on 24 August 2016. She became really integrated in the local community and Rai was the only media that stayed in Amatrice for months, thus having the chance to be in place when two more strong earthquakes struck. “Be permanently present in the field and in touch with the people”, stressed Isabella, pointing at the need to build trustworthy bonds with people and dedicated to a TV segment where human stories were broadcasted. The Italian public service media also went far beyond the disaster itself and followed the reconstruction of the region.
On the other hand, Luciano Barcelos of RTP Azores, Portugal, made a historical discourse how disasters were covered, beginning with a volcano eruption on the Azores in October 1522 and through the 20th century. Then he shared few ideas about responsibility of journalists in such circumstances having in mind that catastrophes disclose the difficult relations between media and the governments and ruling institutions. “Establish bridges of trust among journalists, politics and civil protection is essential to provide good public service. Do not omit but also do not speculate”, said Luciano while being well aware of the difficulties for public service media to operate as trustworthy source of information in times of digital technologies and social media.
Watch Isabella Di Chio’s personal story as reporter in disaster zone and Luciano Barcelos encompassing discourse on PSM duty – both presented at the 35th Annual Conference in Ponta Delgada, hosted by RTP Azores
Conclusion ...
Climate change and preserving nature are the biggest challenges of our generation. We are all on the move as we ought to change our mindset since we have to leave our children a sustainable future on a clean planet (Sorry, Musk, Mars is still a nice dream – but just a dream for now).
“Saving our planet is now a communication challenge. We know what to do, we just need the will”. These words of the prominent film director and environmentalist Sir David Attenborough were cited more than once for obvious reason. So, the only conclusion is – yes, we just have to do it.