24 March 2008
The Environmental Section Challenge
Posted by Aether under: Community News .
In The Dream of the Earth, Thomas Berry writes insightfully about our western culture’s belief in how we define progress through continuing economic growth. This jurassic paradigm is based on a purely exploitive mindset, and he calls it our mythic drive to control the world. An indication of our relentless pursuit of dominance over the earth is that we don’t have ecological or environmental sections in our major newspapers or newsweeklies at all, let alone on an equal standing to the sports section, the financial section, the arts and entertainment sections, or even the comics.
This willful head in the sand attitude with the occasional coverage of an environmental “controversy” is so blatantly ignorant that it borders on cultural criminal negligence. Ecological issues in this day and age are easily more relevant than the vast majority of national and international “news” stories, and yet they are still relegated to the realm of the fringe, for joyously slandered greenies and tree hugging dirt worshipers. I recently encountered the perspective that in the American presidential process currently unfolding, between the debates and all of the various forms of media coverage so far, there have been tens of thousands of questions asked the candidates relevant to the election. Less than 2% of these questions have had anything to do with the environment, climate change, global awareness, global community or the like. Less than 2%.
A search for “environmental news” reveals many dedicated environmental news services and I applaud their efforts. But I am wanting to see environmental news in the mainstream media, and the examples are few (though many more than when T.Berry wrote his plea on p. 76 of The Dream of the Earth).
The Times of London has a dedicated Environment section. Kudos to them! They were the first as far as I can tell.
The New York Times has an environment segment within their science section… it’s a start.
And surprisingly enough, MSNBC has an environment section, though it is somewhat sensationalized with the overall heading “Get the latest Global Warming and Conservation headlines from around the globe”. Does sound kind of tabloid to me, but the coverage is there.
So here stands a challenge to the world’s newspapers, newsweeklies, and nightly broadcasts. In light of overwhelming evidence from practically every arena of life, we, the human component of planet earth dedicated to building mutually enhancing human earth community relationships, would love to see actual reality represented within the popular media as it is commonly presented as news to all of our human relations on a daily basis. It’s a get with the program kind of thing. It’s a “what we focus on is what is real” kind of understanding. It’s a call to wake up and smell the collective coffee, because when all is said and done, we are all in on this together, and moving to Argentina won’t solve anything.
Always Love,
Eric
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