Dear Editor,
News media seem to handle the natural environment as a backdrop to the daily dramas and delights of human life. But in this century, our dramas are driving nature’s destruction, and that destruction threatens an end to our delights. However, the news carries on regardless, relegating nature to the background. It is time for us to rethink our position on our approach to nature; it’s time for a change.
Recently, we have had a number of issues that have enormous implications for the environmental and public weal – the pollution of the Kara Kara Creek in Region 10; the possibility of the importation of contaminated vehicles from Japan; the pollution of our waterways owing to crude mining activities in our hinterland; and run-offs from chemicals because of agricultural and other industrial activities. Also, the fact that we do not have the appropriate technologies and competencies to investigate, test and evaluate many of these incidents and events in our rural and urban areas, makes us much more vulnerable to all sorts of environmental challenges.
Still, not one of these incidents attracted front page headlines in any of our dailies. The headlines were about politics, economics, crime and sport. Not that anything is wrong with flagging such issues, but how could the media in terms of public responsibility and civic consciousness relegate nature to a mere backdrop. I am very worried about the way our news media are registering and representing the unfolding story of our planet’s ecological collapse. And yes, it is collapsing.
Indeed, there are no historical precedents for our current failure to grasp the moral significance of the ecological collapse of the biosphere.
Quite frankly, I believe that it is time to re-examine and rethink the criteria of significance that guide the daily construction of the “news.” The news has, after all, assumed the status of supreme arbiter of significance in our society; almost everyone stops all activities, at least once a day, to read, listen or watch news reports. No other source of information currently enjoys such prestige and currency. Unhappily, this prestige is being wasted, if those who construct the news focus generally on items of relative triviality while ignoring the earth-moving changes that are happening at a very rapid pace all around us.
Perhaps, the newspapers which arose to express the assumptions of the industrial, pre-environmental era in mid-19th to late-20th century are now merely the expressions of an age that has long passed. Perhaps, too, this is true of many other contemporary current affairs outlets as well, whether print or electronic. Most such publications and outlets carry over the 19th century assumption that the natural world, perennial and relatively unchanging, is mere backdrop to the high dramas of human society. With this 19th century assumption goes the further assumption that what happens within the realm of nature is not our responsibility; nature looks after itself and we cannot intervene in its intricately ordered systems. Not so. In fact, our very presence here is affecting patterns and the general functionality of nature. As the natural world undergoes a huge assortment of anthropogenic changes in this century, the future and fates of different species of all living things are attaining new moral meaning for all of us. In this new era, known now as the Anthropocene, we are entering a new moral universe, a universe in which the old parameters of meaning are shifting. There are new emerging paradigms about the natural environment and our role in it at the global and local level.
Our media, still so stubbornly old-fashioned despite the much-heralded technological advances in delivery, do not reflect this shift and are tragically failing to convey it. Instead, they are creating the impression that items about the ecological collapse of the planet and the destruction of our natural environment are on a par, in terms of moral significance, with everyday items about crime, celebrities, sport, scandals, financial vicissitudes, and trends in lifestyle. Perhaps, this is the deeper reason why our newspapers and web sites based on them, are rapidly losing relevance. As they attempt to cater more and more to what they think are the tastes of the market, they lose their entitlement to names like ‘guardian’, ‘leader’, ‘tribune’ or ‘courier’, let alone ‘mirror’ or ‘truth.’ At the very least, the 19th century category of ‘news’ needs to be thoroughly reviewed. Headlines need to be reserved for what matters most, and the truly earth-shattering developments that mark our times need to be properly flagged, not relegated to low-key, special-interest sub-spots uninvitingly headlined in the back pages of old-style newspapers.
Yours faithfully,
Royston King
Executive Director
Echo
