Mainstream Media Attention to IPCC Report Neglected Real Cause of Emissions

It is outrageous that the mainstream media only spent a single news cycle addressing the major report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last month, which sounded an alarm for humanity, warning that, “unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach.”

Despite the urgency of the message — that we’ve arrived at the “now or never moment” — mainstream media’s attention to the report, which is titled “The Physical Science Basis,” barely lasted 24 hours.

For that brief span, when the “Code Red” message was broadcast in front page stories across the U.S., some analysts, organizers and climate journalists were already detecting a deeper silence in both the report and its media coverage, one that nearly guarantees that efforts to confront the crisis in time to reverse course will be undermined. Journalists taking their cues from the Society of Environmental Journalists webinar held in advance of the report’s release, or its advice piece on how best to cover the reports, or the IPCC’s own press release and suggested headlines and takeaways may be unaware of the silences structured into these materials.

Read the article on TRUTHOUT