The media's role in the climate change debate needs to be examined. Al Gore says the fix is in, the debate is rigged.
In Rolling Stone, Gore says we have corporate interests and right wing ideologues on one side, and the voices of science on the other. The media, he says, is supposed to be the referee. But the referee here has failed to do his job because he can't work out whether he's in the news or entertainment business.
Gore writes: "Is he responsible for ensuring a fair match? Or is he part of the show, selling tickets and building the audience? The referee certainly seems distracted: by Donald Trump, Charlie Sheen, the latest reality show – the list of serial obsessions is too long to enumerate here. But whatever the cause, the referee appears not to notice that the Polluters and Ideologues are trampling all over the "rules" of democratic discourse. They are financing pseudoscientists whose job is to manufacture doubt about what is true and what is false; buying elected officials wholesale with bribes that the politicians themselves have made "legal" and can now be made in secret; spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on misleading advertisements in the mass media; hiring four anti-climate lobbyists for every member of the US Senate and House of Representatives … And if more of the audience is left confused about whether the climate crisis is real? Well, the show must go on. After all, it's entertainment. There are tickets to be sold, eyeballs to glue to the screen."
In Australia, chief scientist Professor Ian Chubb echoes his comments, saying the media gives undue weight to climate sceptics.
For the media, the confusion of roles and the search for the quick grab is the issue. It's unlikely to change. That means the public will have to find alternative sources. As a result, it will be harder to get any action on the climate crisis.
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