On September 10th, Guenther published an op-ed in the Boston Globe, citing another Media Matters finding that there had been a similar silence around Hurricane Laura. In September, as the wildfires raged, the nonprofit group Media Matters published a study showing that only four per cent of ABC, NBC, and CBS news segments on the wildfires the month before had mentioned climate change. Until recently, climate silence was the norm on television. “Climate change.” She added, “If you fail to mention that, it gives people the impression that it’s not happening-that these disasters are acts of God.” “There is a name for the unprecedented intensity and scale and relentlessness of extreme-weather disasters,” she said. Instead, they’ll talk around it, using terms like “historic,” “unprecedented,” and “record-shattering.” According to Guenther, this silence is just as pernicious as denial. Guenther runs a volunteer group called End Climate Silence, which is focussed on combatting something more subtle than the aggressive climate denial espoused by Trump and his allies in government, or on Fox News: when news anchors or weather forecasters breathlessly cover an extreme-weather event-a hurricane, drought, forest fire, or heat wave-without ever mentioning the C-phrase. And they gave their guests space to connect it to the Presidential elections and American politics, and even talk about some of the policy solutions.” They talked about it as the emergency that it is. “I’d been hoping the news anchors would mention climate change. “Frankly, it was better than anything I’d even dreamed,” the activist Genevieve Guenther told me recently, from her home in the West Village. CNN anchors interviewed the former California governor Jerry Brown about climate change and discussed Trump’s appointment of David Legates-a known climate-change denier-to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “NBC Nightly News” did a piece about California climate refugees.
#Radio silence synonym tv#
Within a week of Trump’s California visit, there was a pileup of evening TV news segments on the subject. For once, climate change had broken into the foreground of our insane news cycle. But among some environmental activists there was cause for celebration. You just watch.” He added, “I don’t think science knows” the truth about climate change.Īltogether, an extremely grim tableau. And the President was on television assuring the public that “it’ll start to get cooler. One event that comes up less often is Trump’s California wildfire briefing, early last month. The maskless superspreader event in the Rose Garden. You’ve got Charlottesville, of course, with the marching Nazis holding tiki torches-Trump’s “very fine people.” The peaceful protesters being tear-gassed in front of St. As we flip through our metaphorical national photo album, reminiscing on some of the all-time darkest moments, there are so many to consider. It is now October of 2020, the homestretch or-God help us-the halfway point of the Donald Trump years.