Obvioiusly, climate change is raaaaacist and seeeeexist
Who’s talking about climate change on TV? Mostly white men.
If you watched news about climate change on TV last year, chances are you saw a white man on-screen.
According to an analysis published this week by Media Matters For America, a nonprofit media watchdog, people of color made up just 8 percent of guests interviewed or featured in the major broadcast networks’ climate coverage in 2020 — we’re looking at you, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox Broadcasting Company. Women were also less likely to be in front of the camera, comprising 28 percent of guests.
Could it be that “people of color”, by which Media Matters means black people, really just do not care about the climate scam? That it’s not something they’re interested in? That, perhaps, especially in 2020, they were more interested in other issues, like police reform? Why are all these white people, especially white males, always trying to force others to be a part of their cult?
The total amount of time that these broadcast networks spent on the climate crisis was down 53 percent compared to 2019. Climate-related segments claimed 112 minutes of airtime over the course of the year, less than your average movie. That’s not because there weren’t worthy stories — wildfires blazed, the Arctic lost historic amounts of ice, and 2020 was tied for the warmest year on record — but likely because the pandemic consumed our lives. The study found that broadcast coverage rarely mentioned the connections between coronavirus and climate change, such as how both disasters disproportionately impact people of color and lower-income communities.
Well, gee, the pandemic was just so inconvenient for the Cult of Climastrology, what with all the people getting sick, people dying, people losing their jobs and businesses.
The underwhelming representation of people of color isn’t new. 2020 marks the fourth consecutive year — as long as Media Matters has been tracking the numbers — that less than 10 percent of network television’s climate guests were people of color. Only six women of color were featured out of the total 89 guests the report identified.
“This lopsided representation flatly ignores the reality that, due to historical and current injustices, climate change disproportionately affects communities of color,†the report’s authors write.
White people telling black people they should care, and black people continuing to not care. Rather white privilege of these climate cultists, eh?
Why, then, have people of color and women repeatedly been underrepresented in broadcast television? Allison Fisher, the director of Media Matters’ climate and energy program, suggested that television news outlets often don’t make the effort to speak to frontline communities, relying on climate scientists and politicians instead. In 2020, a presidential election year, politicians were the most common guests for climate change segments. While climate activists were more commonly featured in prior years, broadcast TV only featured one activist guest this past year — Greta Thunberg, the small but mighty Swedish activist.
Wow, that was patronizing. They totally discount what POC want to think for themselves, that they are not allowed to make their own decisions, that they must think in a certain way, if only the Credentialed Media would talk to them more.
The problem runs deeper than television — it’s partly a reflection of diversity issues in climate science, advocacy, journalism, and politics. Although numbers have ticked up in recent years, people of color still make up a very small percentage, sometimes less than 10 percent, of top environmental groups’ staff, according to Green 2.0, a nonprofit watchdog. If the people leading the most well-known organizations are consistently white men, Fisher said, they’re going to be the ones featured on television.
Did anyone consider that POC might not want to be involved? That they don’t care about those subjects or want to work in those industries? That, perhaps, they care about other things?
Read: Bummer: It’s Mostly White Men Talking About Climate Apocalypse On TV »