Dorothy Hernandez (@dorothy_lynn_h), a volunteer with the ONA Resource Team, compiled these key moments from the ONA20 session on Oct. 7, 2020. To view a recording of the session, register for on-demand access to the ONA20 archive. Session participants included:
- Bernadette Woods Placky, Chief Meteorologist, Climate Matters Director, Climate Central
- Frank Mungeam, Chief Innovation Officer, Local Media Association
- Edward Maibach, Distinguished University Professor and Director, George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication
5 key takeaways:
- Lots of key insights from the Yale Climate Opinion Maps 2020 that can help drive reporting on climate change. More people are interested in climate stories: 8 out of 10 Americans are interested in learning more about climate change, through their news media. But approximately one out of four say they read these kinds of stories at least once a month, meaning half say they’re seeing or reading stories about climate change in their news media less frequently than once a month.
- The opportunity for journalists is that there is a demand for this content but they’re not seeing this reported in news media; one out of four people say they hear about it in the media once a week.
- So how to do it?
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- Make it local
- Make it relevant
- Make it actionable
- Climate change is more than just a weather story. It can cover health, sports, agriculture, economics, racial equity and justice. “We need to make those connections for the public,” says Bernadette Woods Placky.
- There are lessons learned from how journalists covered COVID to how to tackle climate reporting.
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- Frank: “We have to figure out as newsrooms, how to deal with more than one global crisis at a time. And COVID is real, and it’s appropriate that everyone has devoted the resources they have to it, but it is a responsibility that falls on us to be able to do two things at one time, and in some cases to find the climate connection to some of our reporting related to COVID.”
- Bernadette: “You’ve done a great job with COVID, you really dive into some complex challenging issues like gun rights and shootings in schools, you can never run away from those stories, you’re good at it. Now, take that same approach with climate change, because there are so many resources.”
Memorable/tweetable quotes:
- “One really way to have your reporting have impact and reach is make it local. And the other big one is make it relevant.” —@frankwords
- When someone calls climate reporting fake news, “your defense toolkit includes focus on facts, right? We are not the ones engaging in opining on this topic, source the experts, quote the people who know … reliable factual scientific data. Focus on what people see and experience.” —@frankwords
- “The shift in numbers that alarm is now 30% and dismissives has dropped to 10%. It’s a loud minority. Trust the data on the silent majority.” —@frankwords
- We’re at the point where we need to … [recognize] it’s not just, “Oh, we should do a story on climate. It’s recognizing the climate story in other stories we do.” —@frankwords
- “Follow the facts. You’re not the only one doing this. You’re not on an island, as may have been the case 10 years ago. There are a whole slew of people doing this.” —@BernadetteWoods