Climate & Society Weekly Reflections

Taking advantage of my employee tuition benefits, I have been taking classes part-time in addition to my full-time job to complete the Master of Arts in Climate & Society program at The Climate School, Columbia University. This series is a weekly blog assignment for my Spring 2023 course, Applications in Climate & Society. The series captures my thoughts and reflections based on the provided prompts.

Week 4 - Feb 13

Prompt: What is one new thing about journalism that you learned from the speakers in class today? What kind of climate stories resonate with you the most and why?

Moderator: Clarisa Diaz — Quartz

Speakers: Daniel Wolfe — Washington Post, Izzie Ramirez — Vox, John Keefe — NY Times, Nathan Rott — NPR

One thing that struck me as I listened to the invited speakers is that within climate journalism, as with all forms of journalism, privilege can also color one’s experience and career. It’s already a form of privilege to be able to work as a journalist associated with an institution with prestige and funding for relatively more competitive salaries, benefits, and job security like the New York Times and Washington Post. On Twitter, I follow the work of freelance, self-funded, or crowd-sourced journalists as well as their documented trials and tribulations associated with running their own newsletter and outputs like Substack. Compared to these independent and freelance journalists, the speakers on the panel have many advantages, such as the credential and ability to reach out to more sources, budgeted funding to travel to locations, and guidance and support from other non-competing colleagues. To be in an editor position at a relatively early stage in their career is also not a common or easy-to-achieve milestone for many brilliant and hardworking reporters and journalists. The pay gaps along gender and other group breakdowns, as well as between reporter vs editor vs contributor, continue to create barriers for many women and people of color striving to have a stable career—much less a successful and impactful one.

I have heard several comparisons of journalists to researchers and storytellers, that journalists inform themselves as much as possible on a particular issue, topic, story, or subject in order to relay the most salient information to the general public. The journalists themselves are not necessarily subject experts by training, but typically would be assigned stories or “beat” that are most relevant to their experience and exposure. I think this nature can often lead to climate stories approached from angles, interests, and concerns that are more relevant and approachable for the general public. Sometimes, when an “expert” spends so much time studying and examining a particular subject in close proximity, they might lack other contexts or awareness of how to communicate or relay the most pertinent and key messages to “non-experts”. In this vein, I am drawn to climate stories that link climate issues and impacts with a specific community, area, or field that I am not usually exposed to, like philosophy, mycology, or even spirituality. These types of stories enable me to learn from different perpsectives and knowledge that I am not already aware of or may never otherwise come across.

As a climate adaptation professional and a creative, I can still recall how excited I was when I first came across Atmos, a magazine dedicated to telling compelling and relevant climate stories through art, design, and photography. Holding the beautiful physical print in hand in 2019, I still remember how groundsbreaking it was to flip through the pages and see the way climate stories are written, photographed, and visualized in almost luxurious and captivating ways that these types of stories are rarely ever afforded. Atmos, through the words of its editors and writers and in its stories and spreads, solidifies its commitment in putting equity and justice at the core of its mission. Atmos clearly struck a nerve and found audience in young and savvy people who otherwise may not have naturally felt connected or drawn to climate issues and stories before.

Recently, Atmos published an article that sparked heavy criticisms from online readers and experts alike, as evident on the magazine’s social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. The author had written a story about the impacts of a growing population of wild horses on the natural environment and ecosystems of the American West, but neglected to so much as mention the role of the meat and dairy industry’s livestocks that outnumber the wild horses as much as by 30 times. Online commenters point to the lack of representation in indigenous voices that have tended and coexisted with the wild horses and the incomplete data analyses to attribute the degree and scale of impacts to the wild horses vs livestocks. Some commenters questioned how the horses’ natural tendency to clip the grass with their teeth when grazing can be more damaging than the cattle herds’ grazing by pulling off the entire plant. Others referenced the history and role of the Bureau of Land Management—whose representatives were extensively interviewed in the article—in the mismanagement and degradation of these same natural environments and ecosystems.

As far as I know, there is no official response or update from the writer or Atmos. On social media platforms where netizens continue to express their concerns, the social media managers are doing their best to respond in non-direct and deflective ways—further fueling the frustration. Seeing that the author of the article has little to no other climate and environmental stories in their porfolio, I suspect that the failing may simply be due to the author’s lack of experience and expertise in covering these topics rather than by intentional choice as many angry commenters have suspected. However, given that Atmos has more other experienced writers and editors, the lack of internal fact-checking and editorial input seems strange. It can also lead to a larger question about whether the magazine does much fact-checking and editorial quality check at all. This story is not the first article by Atmos that drew critiques and contentious debate.

In the larger context of how climate issues and stories are covered and reported in the press, even well established institutions like The New York Times often find themselves in contentious discourse for something it had published or the people to whom it had given a platform. Given its mission, I wonder if Atmos is striving to learn and improve from these flops, or that these criticisms are simply unavoidable and therefore not prioritized concerns. Nevertheless, I would hope to see that reporters, journalists, editors, and their employer publications continue to learn and improve on how they cover issues and tell stories that inform and educate, in ways that do not create and further perpetuate existing inequities and injustices.