What
chiefly distinguishes liberal elites from the right on the issue of
climate change is that the former recognise the threat but only in the
abstract, while the right deny there is
even a theoretical threat. Our liberal politicians and media may not be
climate deniers, but they are climate concealers.
If that sounds harsh, consider how all western state and corporate
media have remained almost completely silent on the decisive role played
by man-made climate change in recent disastrous "news" events like
Hurricane Harvey, or the devastating floods in south Asia.
Here
was a chance to underline the pressing threat of climate change, and
address all the data that has been pouring in recently to confirm a
steady and catastrophic rise in global temperatures.
The
corporate media typically justify their silence about this growing body
of evidence on the grounds that it is difficult to make it interesting
or intelligible to the public. Here they had the ideal peg to hook that
data on, and yet they still could not raise their voices. In this
regard, the failings of the media, especially the BBC, which is paid for
by taxpayers and is supposed to have a public remit, were
unconscionable.
Media Lens's excellent new alert addresses this
failure head-on and explains why the media cannot acknowledge the proof
of climate change.
ML: "The truth is, on a national and global
scale, corporate media are effectively covering up the root causes of
this mass extinction event: rampant capitalism that mostly benefits a
tiny elite of bankers, financiers, big business and the politicians that
shape state policy on their behalf. Corporate media are an intrinsic
component of these same state-corporate interests: they are the PR wing
of a vast world-encircling system that is burning the planet. And it's
all sold with a smile as 'democracy', 'freedom', 'open markets',
'aspiration' and other 'Western values'."
