Media - duty of care.
Media should have a duty of care requirement to prevent misleading the populace about major issues such as climate change. By presenting sensational news in such a way that the weight of opinion among the public is skewed, they are not doing humankind any favours.
It could be argued that anyone who takes popular news sources at face value deserve what they get, but a relatively small percentage of the population have the education - let alone the time and the will, to weight new stories appropriately. I feel that, in a few decades, when we look back at what we could have achieved - what we could have saved if only we'd started taking action sooner, we'll see that the popular media did not cover itself with glory.
Some kind of rating system - some way of pointing out that the psuedo-scientific freak shows that pop up purporting to represent the 'other side' of the 'debate' about anthropogenic climate change are not actually representative of a whole lot of good science, and may not constitute genuine reason for doubt.
A credibility rating? A Surgeon General's Warning, perhaps? Or how about limiting news stories on such infuential matters to a percentage that represents the weight of opionion in reality? For every climate-change-is-not-real story, a few thousand stories on scientific research whose findings support, or thus far appear to support, the theory that climate change is being caused or exaccerbated by human behaviour? I'd like to see that.
Of course, it wouldn't do much for tabloid sales, but... are the profits of media corporations more important than facts, the knowledge of which among the general populace will be the major factor in deciding who runs democratic countries?
It could be argued that anyone who takes popular news sources at face value deserve what they get, but a relatively small percentage of the population have the education - let alone the time and the will, to weight new stories appropriately. I feel that, in a few decades, when we look back at what we could have achieved - what we could have saved if only we'd started taking action sooner, we'll see that the popular media did not cover itself with glory.
Some kind of rating system - some way of pointing out that the psuedo-scientific freak shows that pop up purporting to represent the 'other side' of the 'debate' about anthropogenic climate change are not actually representative of a whole lot of good science, and may not constitute genuine reason for doubt.
A credibility rating? A Surgeon General's Warning, perhaps? Or how about limiting news stories on such infuential matters to a percentage that represents the weight of opionion in reality? For every climate-change-is-not-real story, a few thousand stories on scientific research whose findings support, or thus far appear to support, the theory that climate change is being caused or exaccerbated by human behaviour? I'd like to see that.
Of course, it wouldn't do much for tabloid sales, but... are the profits of media corporations more important than facts, the knowledge of which among the general populace will be the major factor in deciding who runs democratic countries?
posted by Jac | 10:04 am
|
1 comments
