Laura Slattery: Media must stop its jolly heatwave reporting and get serious on climate crisis

Like a lot of people, I have only positive thoughts about ice-cream. I prefer the less airy kind found in freezer tubs, but the soft-serve stuff that clouds perilously atop cones has its place. That place is often in the news.

Whenever the sun comes out, stock photographs of these piped creations — media shorthand for pleasure — bloom into view, thrust against blue-sky backgrounds with a hint of promenade, a hint of beach. It is more reflexive than anything else. We are programmed in this country to equate hot weather with good weather. Ice-cream sales will indeed swell along with our ankles. Big Gelato doesn’t have to do very much except show up.

And yet, last week, it just wasn’t that kind of heatwave, was it? It wasn’t one of those upbeat, fun heatwaves.

By Wednesday, the sprinkles were out, the emergency sprinklers were on, and news outlets’ choice of imagery was all charred houses and buckling runways.

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Even when it was apparent that this heatwave was manifesting as a record-breaking omen of worse extremes to come, one strand of the British media doubled down on their deliberate dismissals before performing brazen overnight reversals.

Has there ever been a swifter or more shameless U-turn than the Daily Mail’s front-page segue from “Sunny day snowflake Britain had a meltdown” (Tuesday) to “Nightmare of the wildfires” (Wednesday)?

We know about the Daily Mail, we know about GB News. They have their commercially driven delusions

Meanwhile, GB News went viral for a “Don’t Look Up moment” after meteorologist John Hammond warned viewers that the UK was about to go from “nice” to “potentially lethal” temperatures. “John, I want us to be happy about the weather,” said presenter Bev Turner, laughing. “Haven’t we always had hot weather, John?”

No, Bev, not as hot as this. That was the entire point. But we know about the Daily Mail, we know about GB News. They have their commercially driven delusions. What about well-meaning impartiality strivers such as the BBC?

With any large media organisation, it is easy to find “good” and “bad” examples of coverage that don’t necessarily reflect the totality of its coverage. It seems especially unfair to pick on the BBC when it is currently broadcasting Big Oil v the World — a thoroughly unequivocal three-part documentary on energy sector lies — and interviews more than enough climate experts to irk the professionally irked at GB News.

And yet there was a point early last week when what it seemed to want to do most was station reporters by lidos and riverside campsites for chats with people having a marvellous time. It made Sky News’s much-mocked “live footage of the sun” seem appropriately bleak by comparison.

The health advisories and grim scientific realities were woven into the BBC segments too, of course. Pensioners unamused by the heat and disturbed by its historic degree were among the vox-popped. People who watched their east London village combust relayed their experience on air.

But at the outset, it felt like there was a jolly, outdoorsy template — a default tone much closer to the crisis-what-crisis approach than it should have been. It made me think about how it is just operationally easier, and more picturesque, for television broadcasters to position cameras by swimming enclaves and spritz-stocked garden bars than it is for them to seek out irritable, sleep-deprived heat sufferers barely coping inside closed-blind homes, their lives orbiting their sole free-standing fan. Still, maybe next time?

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No Irish media outlet has escaped valid criticism by climate experts in recent decades, with a notable moment of reflection arriving last summer when Jon Williams, RTÉ's then managing director of news and current affairs, admitted that the broadcaster was “wrong not to make clear” the connection between recent extreme weather events and climate change. He described this as “a sin of omission”.

As they try to redress other sins of omission, Irish television and radio broadcasters may find a new €5 million climate-themed round of public funding welcome.

Funded equally by Minister for Media Catherine Martin’s department and Minister for Climate Eamon Ryan’s department, round 44 of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) Sound & Vision scheme — applications for which close at noon on Tuesday — invites production companies to submit ideas for programmes that will “educate, motivate and empower Irish viewers and listeners to build knowledge, skills, attitudes and values necessary to actively adopt sustainable climate actions”.

This programming should “move beyond raising awareness of climate change” and into the realm of “encouraging and facilitating the changes we urgently need across Irish society”, with a focus on measuring any behavioural shifts it prompts.

Last week, swathes of southern Europe were ablaze, with pockets of southeast England joining them

The scheme’s wording here is interesting in light of recent research by DCU’s FuJo Institute, which found that 46 per cent of Irish people believe news outlets should “focus more on what governments or large companies should do” to tackle climate change, which is rather more than the 21 per cent who agree news outlets should “focus more on what individual people should do”.

That research, commissioned by the BAI as part of the Reuters Institute’s digital news report, also found that 36 per cent think news outlets should “take a clear position in favour of climate change action”, but slightly more — 38 per cent — think they should “reflect a range of views on climate change and leave it up to people to decide”.

It is not obvious if “range of views” here is meant to refer to what is happening to the planet, which is simply fact, or what to do about it, which is contested on the news most days.

Even if the news media soon evolves beyond frivolous illustrating of heatwaves with pristine 99s on the pier, false balance, misinformation, misunderstandings, skewed priorities and the industry’s own crisis in under-resourcing may all continue to undermine the accuracy of reporting on what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change memorably called “code red for humanity”.

Last week, swathes of southern Europe were ablaze, with pockets of southeast England joining them. Last time I checked, California’s latest forest fire was out of control.

Frankly, when smoke is also rising from crackling undergrowth in the park nearest your home and the Dublin Fire Brigade is busy issuing cautions about flammable vegetation, it starts to feel as if reaching for a mini-Magnum will only help so much.