ASEAN Official - Environmental Journalism "Too Gloomy" - BBC

The world's media has been criticised for being too negative in its reporting of environmental issues. Continual coverage of destruction was making people switch off, delegates at the International Media and Environment Summit (Imes) in Kuching, Malaysia, were told.

"We keep crying wolf and we keep overstating the doomsday scenario," said Ong Keng Yong, the Secretary General of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean). "It will not serve the cause of protecting the environment." Mr Yong used his speech at the summit to say that not enough was being done to make the environment relevant to people's "daily life".

"Coverage should not be limited to highlighting environmental problems," he added. "Is the media doing enough? Largely reactive stories on the environment do not grab the public in the way that political or economic stories do, unless they are controversial and negative."

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Mr Yong's comments were endorsed by David Suzuki, a renowned environmental film-maker: "The global crisis is getting worse and worse, but people don't want to hear these things anymore. "The problem is this: the media has the concentration span of a hummingbird." He said that interest in the environment had peaked in 1988, when part of the presidential campaign of George Bush stressed he would be an "environmental president". But interest has been falling ever since, and the media was now "part of the problem".

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Now STOP THAT!! Get out that and do some HAPPY stories, damnit!! :eyes:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4486848.stm

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Experts have highlighted how access to these (oil) reserves will become a lot easier as global warming increases.

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x36036

edit to add

:sarcasm: :grr:

I say that as somebody who firmly believe I will live to see major environmental disaster in some form.

It's the classic "predicting an earthquake" problem. We know that disastrous earthquakes hit with probability 1, but if you try to predict exactly *when*, it's a fool's game, and you will lose all credibility.

Same for predicting climate disaster. And it's even worse, since a climate disaster may not be as obvious as an earthquake. Not until it's in full swing.

Is it any surprise that environmental coverage in the media has declined as corporate control of media has grown?

What's really sad is that people might require constant reinforcement for such an elemental concern.:banghead: