IN AN UNPRECEDENTED COLLABORATION OF MEDIA, PLANET FRIENDLY NEWS IS JOINING MORE THAN 250 NEWS OUTLETS from around the world, with a combined audience of more than one billion people, to participate in “Covering Climate Now”. The project co-founded by the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) and The Nation — with lead partner, The Guardian — is aimed at strengthening the media’s focus on the climate crisis.
All outlets have committed to featuring eight days of climate coverage starting September 15 in the lead-up to the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York on Sept. 23. This is when the world’s governments will submit plans to meet the Paris Agreement’s pledge to keep global temperature rise “well below” 2 degrees Celsius.
“The need for solid climate coverage has never been greater,” said Kyle Pope, CJR’s editor and publisher. “We’re proud that so many organizations from across the US and around the world have joined with Covering Climate Now to do our duty as journalists—to report this hugely important story.”
The project now ranks as one of the most ambitious efforts ever to organize the world’s media coverage around a single topic. The Guardian, CJR and The Nation are joined by major newspapers, magazines, television and radio broadcasters, and global news agencies in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
All this week, the Planet Friendly News blog will feature stories from partners in the Covering Climate Now project including:
interview with international best-selling author, Naomi Klein, on her new book, “On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal” (The Guardian);
interview with UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, about the Climate Action Summit (The Nation);
article by leading environmentalist and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, on the global climate strike (The Nation); and
article on the rise of climate change illnesses (The Guardian).
Among the outlets participating in Covering Climate Now are: Bloomberg; CBS News; The Times of India; Agence France-Presse; national public TV broadcasters in Italy, Sweden, and the United States; scholarly journals such as Nature, Science, and the Harvard Business Review; and publications such as Vanity Fair, HuffPost, and The Daily Beast. Covering Climate Now also includes Canadian news outlets such as Maclean’s, The Toronto Star, TV Ontario, Corporate Knights, The National Observer, as well as specialty websites and university media.
“Collaboration with like-minded colleagues makes both journalistic and business sense in today’s media environment, and The Nation is happy to encourage such collaboration and proud to share our climate coverage as part of this exciting initiative,” said Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of The Nation.
As our readers know, Planet Friendly News has been focused on covering the climate crisis from the outset and we are more than happy to be part of this initiative because we believe better informed citizens will demand that governments, industry and institutions take much needed action.