Climate Change Journalism: From Agony to Agonistic Debate

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Starting from a politicized outlook on climate change, this essay criticizes mainstream journalistic norms for failing to enable an agonistic, democratic debate about how to move forward. Based on a targeted search for examples from the reporting (and reflection thereof) of two Dutch-speaking alternative news sites (DeWereldMorgen and De Correspondent), we seek to illustrate how their respective (climate) journalists look for truth, generate democratic debate and hold power accountable by combining practices from constructive journalism, slow journalism and advocacy journalism. We find these journalists to focus on patterns, root causes and underlying values, rather than on novelty or exceptional events. Furthermore, an impartial and detached style of reporting is explicitly denounced in favor of an open and reflexive choice of news-making based on advocacy.Keywords: climate change; journalistic norms; (de-)politicization; objectivity. RESUMO:A partir de uma visão politizada da mudança climática, este trabalho critica o jornalismo convencional por falhar em promover um debate agonístico e democrático sobre como seguir em frente. Com base em uma busca direcionada por exemplos nas reportagens (e respectiva reflexão) de dois sites de notícia alternativos em língua holandesa (DeWereldMorgen e De Correspondent), nós buscamos ilustrar como seus respectivos jornalistas (do clima) buscam a verdade, geram debate democrático e responsabilizam o poder combinando práticas do jornalismo construtivo, do slow journalism ("jornalismo desacelerado") e da advocacia jornalística. Nós consideramos que esses jornalistas se focam em padrões, causas e valores subjacentes, ao invés de novidades ou eventos excepcionais. Além disso, denuncia-se explicitamente um estilo de comunicação imparcial e neutro em favor de uma escolha aberta e reflexiva de produção de notícias baseada na advocacia.Palavras-chave: mudança climática; normas jornalísticas; (des-)politização; bjetividade.PEPERMANS, Y.; MAESEELE, P. Climate Change Journalism: From Agony to Agonistic Debate 126

Manufacturing Consent: Rereading News on Four Climate Summits (2000-2012)

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Fast-food information, information quality and information gap: a temporal exploration of the notion of information in science communication on climate change

“…Whereas academic slow-writing initiatives call for temporal deceleration in general, in the context of open letters, the interviewees saw the news media as playing a central role in producing information quality. Contrary to general notions of the fast-paced news media environment (Pepermans and Maeseele, 2017), information in the news media (as opposed to social media) was perceived by the interviewees as “longer lasting” As one interviewee put it: “I think an open letter like that may be taken perhaps a bit more seriously. Perhaps it has a longer life.…”

The Interpretive Interface: Where Journalistic and Pluralistic Discourses (Don’t) Meet

“…The positivist journalistic paradigm underlying these routines was found to impede a pluralistic debate: by limiting its scope on protests as news events, it fails to encourage a broad ideological discussion on the concerns and demands of social movements (Reul et al, 2018). However, although routines and practices rooted within the positivist journalistic paradigm have often been found to impede pluralistic debate (Pepermans & Maeseele, 2017;Raeijmaekers & Maeseele, 2014), the same outcome can be found when studying news media that adhere to a more openly engaged way of manufacturing news, however established through different discursive practices. In this case, it's interesting to look at recent studies on so called hyper-partisan news sites, especially on the far-right.…”