{"id":3499998,"date":"2024-02-23T11:03:49","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T11:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3499998"},"modified":"2024-02-23T11:14:20","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T11:14:20","slug":"heated-challenging-objectivity-in-climate-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2024-02-23\/heated-challenging-objectivity-in-climate-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"HEATED: Challenging objectivity in climate journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><em>Objectivity has been a main tenet of journalism since early in the 20th century, but its application is loosely defined and humanly impossible to achieve, some media experts argue.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Presenting an issue like climate change as a debate with two sides, as is still somewhat common, is often justified under the banner of objectivity, but it\u2019s only one of many dissonant standards that environmental reporters are held to, argues podcast guest Emily Atkin.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>A journalist with a range of reporting experiences at top media outlets, she quit her day job to launch the acclaimed newsletter \u201cHEATED,\u201d which was spurred by a desire to report on the human causes of climate change and ecological destruction more directly, and she joins the show to explain her reasoning and why she thinks ideas like objectivity are outmoded.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t trust a reporter covering the opioid crisis who looked at all these kids dying and didn\u2019t say \u2018this is a problem,\u2019 right?\u201d she says.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It\u2019s common to hear the word \u201cobjective\u201d used in relation to the work of journalists. However, its definition and application are hotly debated, with some experts arguing it\u2019s either <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecrimson.com\/article\/2022\/10\/17\/yepes-objective-journalism-doesnt-exist\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">impossible<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mediaengagement.org\/research\/objectivity-in-journalism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">impractical<\/a>\u00a0to apply in the profession, with some instead urging \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/23\/opinion\/objectivity-black-journalists-coronavirus.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">moral clarity<\/a>\u201d as a new, more accurate standard.<\/p>\n<p>Climate reporter Emily Atkin says that adherence to a loosely defined standard of objectivity is holding back climate reporting in the mainstream media, and that building trust with readers is more important.<\/p>\n<p><em>Listen here:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"iframe-class\" title=\"Embed Player\" src=\"https:\/\/play.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/29939763\/height\/128\/theme\/modern\/size\/standard\/thumbnail\/yes\/custom-color\/000000\/time-start\/00:00:00\/hide-playlist\/yes\/download\/yes\/font-color\/FFFFFF\" width=\"100%\" height=\"128\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.mongabay.com\/list\/climate-change\/\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Climate change<\/a>\u00a0and environmental issues overlap both\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.mongabay.com\/list\/human-rights\/\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">human rights<\/a>\u00a0and science, yet they\u2019re sometimes debated in the mainstream as if they\u2019re purely factual topics that must be devoid of human investment. For instance, to \u201ccall out the polluters for polluting\u201d is sometimes deemed advocacy by both readers and editors, says Atkin, in explaining why she started her independent newsletter,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/heated.world\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\"><em>HEATED<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be fighting about whether or not we were being too \u2018activisty\u2019 by calling out polluters, when I really thought that that was what journalism was supposed to be,\u201d she says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This dynamic isn\u2019t relegated to the environmental or climate beats. Preventing reporters who care about civil rights from covering protests also has precedent, though such policies are inconsistently applied. But Atkin argues that, just as with war or health crises, you wouldn\u2019t want someone who is completely detached from the human consequences of these to be reporting such news anyway.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t trust a reporter covering the opioid crisis who looked at all these kids dying and didn\u2019t say \u2018this is a problem,\u2019 right? We don\u2019t consider that to be necessarily a breach of journalistic objectivity, but for some reason we still consider it to be a breach of objectivity for the climate crisis,\u201d Atkin says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Presenting an issue like climate change as a debate with two sides, as is still somewhat common, is often justified under the banner of objectivity, but it\u2019s only one of many dissonant standards that environmental reporters are held to, argues podcast guest Emily Atkin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3500007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79718,79720,213535],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3499998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-society","category-society-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3499998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3500007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3499998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3499998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3499998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}