Bill Gates And Other Liberals Fund Plan For The Climate Crisis To Be In All Newsrooms

Some of the nation’s largest liberal foundations are backing an initiative aimed at transforming how climate change is reported in the media, encouraging journalists to adopt specific tactics and narratives to highlight the issue.

The initiative, known as the Climate Blueprint for Media Transformation, emerged from a 2023 climate conference hosted by the Solutions Journalism Network and Covering Climate Now. Both organizations receive support from prominent liberal donors, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation. The Gates Foundation, in particular, has been involved in efforts to reduce meat consumption, while the Hewlett Foundation has focused on shaping media coverage through its partnerships with journalists.

The Climate Blueprint serves as a 14-part guide on how reporters should approach climate change in their work. Each section is authored by a different journalist or activist, covering topics such as “Community Engagement” and “Climate Justice.”

In the opening section titled The Everything Story, Covering Climate Now deputy director Andrew McCormick urges reporters to “take bold action” and integrate climate change into stories across all news beats, including crime and sports.

Similarly, Kyle Pope, co-founder of Covering Climate Now, expressed in the Columbia Journalism Review that too much media attention has been given to topics like the Kardashian family, while critical issues like rising ocean temperatures have been neglected. Pope stated that climate change has only begun to receive significant coverage “very recently” and urged journalists to prioritize it as “the most important story on Earth.”

In a section on “Community Engagement,” India Currents audience engagement editor Prachi Singh suggests that reporters should move beyond meeting deadlines and instead focus on building connections with communities disproportionately affected by climate change, such as “women, people of color, Indigenous peoples, and the LGBTQIA+ community.”

Investigative journalist Amy Westervelt takes a more pointed approach, urging reporters to expose the ties between universities and fossil fuel companies. She advises journalists to build relationships with professors who may be critical of their institutions’ dealings with the energy sector.

 

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jennifer Oldham emphasizes the need for journalists to earn the trust of climate activists. “Validation is paramount,” she notes, offering tips on how reporters can cover climate campaigns in a way that gives them the attention they deserve.

“Be intentional with your language,” Oldham adds. “Do you call an event a ‘demonstration’ or a ‘riot’? Words matter. Calling an encounter a ‘violent clash with police’ criminalizes demonstrators without offering a comparable criticism of law enforcement’s actions.”

The Climate Blueprint also highlights the emotional toll that covering climate disasters can have on journalists. Yessenia Funes, a New York-based journalist, points out the need for media organizations to provide mental health resources and flexible work schedules for reporters covering extreme weather events.

“Ultimately, climate and environmental reporters can’t carry this burden alone,” Funes writes, calling on the industry to build support systems, including access to high-quality health care, for journalists dealing with the ongoing emotional strain of covering the climate crisis.

This effort to intensify climate change reporting comes at a time when some question the accuracy of climate crisis predictions. For instance, The Washington Post recently published a chart showing that Earth’s current surface temperature is near its lowest point in the past 485 million years.

Additionally, a 2004 Pentagon report predicted severe climate-driven disasters by 2024, including nuclear conflict and famine, with Great Britain supposedly turning into a frozen wasteland. None of those predictions have come true to date.