TMA Covering the Planet

Internews is hosting a conversation series with journalists called "Turn the Mic Around," where they discuss media and information. This month's conversation focuses on a new global study from Deakin University in Australia that explores the challenges faced by journalists covering climate change and the environment. The study found that many journalists feel threatened or censored, and struggle with the concepts of balance and objectivity. Misinformation is also on the rise, with social media being a main source. However, journalists also reported positive change resulting from their work, such as government policy changes and greater public understanding. Teresa DeMiguel, head of video and climate and environment at the Associated Press, joined the conversation and highlighted safety as a major challenge for climate and environmental journalists, particularly in regions like Latin America where environmental defenders are often threatened or killed. Local journalists face even greate Welcome, everyone, to Turn the Mic Around, Internews' conversation series with journalists on the front lines. Every month, we interview a different expert about the latest developments in the world of media and information. My name is Jamie Bergot, and I'm the president of Internews, and we're a global nonprofit that supports independent media and freedom of expression in more than 100 countries around the world. Grasping how journalists worldwide report on environmental issues is crucial at this moment when attention to the climate crisis is urgently needed. Given this, I am truly, truly pleased to focus this month's conversation on a new global study by Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, that captures the voices and insights of journalists from 108 countries on the challenges and enablers of covering the climate change and the environment. I'm thrilled today that joining me is Teresa DeMiguel, the head of video and climate and environment at the Associated Press, who provided valuable insight to this report. Welcome, Teresa, and thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. So glad to have you. Yes. Let's kick off our conversation by highlighting a few findings in the report, and then I'll look forward to hearing from you to just get your insights as somebody who lives this work every day. So findings in the report. First, and one that's quite grim, is that too many journalists feel threatened because of their work. 39% of journalists surveyed indicated that they sometimes or feel sometimes or frequently feel threatened. And sadly, 39% also say that they felt censored when covering the climate and environmental issues. And the concepts of balance and objectivity remain challenging. 62% of surveyed journalists said they've included statements from sources that deny human-caused climate change in the name of balance. And not surprisingly, misinformation is rising. 58% of journalists said misinformation had increased in the last decade, and 93% reported that they believe the main source was social media. We'll end on a more positive finding. Journalists reported in both surveys and in interviews that they do see change, positive change as a result of their work, including 29% of respondents reporting that they've seen actual government policy changes, and many others emphasizing greater public understanding. So, Teresa, let's dive into this a little bit. And just in your experience, what are some of the most pressing obstacles facing climate and environmental journalists? Well, I think it can depend and vary a lot depending on the region or the country where you're reporting. But in general, what I see is that safety is the main challenge, right? And specifically in regions like where I'm based, I'm based in Mexico City, and Latin America is one of those regions where environmental defenders are being, you know, constantly either threatened or killed because of their work to protect the environment. So, if you unite that Mexico and other countries across the region are places where journalists are being threatened themselves for their work, and then that they are covering issues where their sources are being threatened as well, those two unite to create a very, very complex situation. And to, you know, that usually leads to things like you mentioned, that were findings from this report, which is self-censorship. You can see very much across countries in Latin America, but also countries in Africa or Asia, like the Philippines, Indonesia, where reporters covering environmental issues end up either not covering stories or self-censoring parts of their coverage, because they know that there can be consequences that can, you know, put their lives in danger. So, I would say those are the main issues. And specifically for local reporters, right? It's not the same for a journalist like myself, who works for an international news organization that is usually based in a capital city, to travel to a specific community, you know, report for a couple of days and come back to your capital city, than being a local reporter who is constantly based in a place where these issues are happening. So, I think those are the reporters that are usually more under threat. And that is a very big complication, right? And maybe linked to this, there is also a lot of complications when it comes to data, right? Public available information, either from the government or from companies, it's usually a huge challenge for us, because many governments, particularly local governments, but also, you know, federal governments and companies want to keep away some of their, you know, their data, the information about the consequences of, you know, their operations or their mega projects from the public, from the audience. So, those, I think, are the main challenges that journalists face. Well, sort of building from that, I want to actually ask a question about you personally. I mean, given that journalism is a dangerous profession, given that the environmental beat is a particularly dangerous part of that profession, given some of the constraints you're talking about, what caused you to go down this path? And sort of, why are you focused on environmental journalism? What was your task of getting there, I guess, is a different way of asking that question. Well, I studied journalism and I started working for news agencies in general, which I think is a great, you know, way to start learning journalism, because you usually learn very well the basics. So, I was covering any kind of stories. I was covering politics, you know, culture, any kind of stories. Then I took a year off, a year abroad to just travel. I quit my job at the AP. I was a senior producer. I was working doing mainly video. And I went, you know, just for a year to travel across Asia. And I don't know, it was shocking to me that I was expecting to find these pristine places that in my imagination were there. And I saw firsthand the impact that humans have on the environment. And I started to get really concerned and really obsessed about the climate and environment bit. And I started taking courses when I came back to Mexico on environmental journalism. And I decided that was the bit that I really wanted to cover, because I realized that this was the main issue of our time. I totally can hear you, but how travel sort of impacts so much about your perception when you see things that you think were going to be one way and are quite different. And let's focus on that last point that you were taking about, about the support you need to become an environmental journalist, sort of what types of support do you think is most effective? And particularly, you mentioned that local journalists, you know, out of the capitals are some of the most exposed and challenged. I should say, what generally do we need and are there any specifics sort of for local journalists that can help support their ability to effectively report on the climate? Well, obviously, climate and environment is a very complex bit because it touches on so many other issues, right? So I think learning and any kind of courses that can help build your knowledge, because it is a very complex issue, are really, really important. I think, you know, organizations like the Earth Journalism Network, they help, you know, build this knowledge that will help you out through your career when you focus on a bit like this one. But obviously, the main issue and the main thing that will help you out is financing, right? Financing is the most complicated to find. And I think, you know, that is obviously true for any journalist covering any kind of story. But if you think particularly about environmental issues, you really need more financing. You really need more resources because you have to travel to a very remote location many times. And, you know, if you're covering politics or, you know, financial issues, usually your resources are based in the main city where you're probably based as well. But if you're covering a remote community, an indigenous community that is, you know, in the middle of the forest or, you know, in the middle of the Amazon, you need more financing to be able to cover those stories. And that's usually the main challenge we find. And that is where more support can be, you know, that is where we need more support for environmental journalists. And obviously, specifically locally. And the stories themselves tend to often can be long form investigative as you're sort of dealing with, as you said, is really complex, complex concepts that, yeah, that's that's really interesting. Yeah, I think your sources are usually in remote locations if you're covering environmental issues. And that means if you want to really cover that story, well, you need to travel there. You need to go there. And that means, you know, renting a car and maybe hiring a translator, maybe having a fixer. You know, I am the head of video and I know about how much more expensive it can be to cover stories in that format. That means gear. That means, you know, more people traveling to locations. So that is where financing is absolutely key to support environmental journalists. And we know the pressure of financing on media everywhere in the world. And again, well, resourced from the global media can be more well-resourced to the world's media, much less so. And so finding support to do this really important reporting is so difficult. I just want to reach out to our audience and let you know that I am going to open up for questions in a few minutes. So do put your questions in the chat. In the meantime, I've got just a couple more that I'd love to talk about. One is sort of going from making this investment is to the impact itself. So if you can talk to us a little bit about sort of where you've seen some coverage, whether it's yours or others, that really galvanized public opinion or, you know, impact policy change. Just a couple of examples about why we both care so much about this and why it's worth the investment as well as commitment by journalists to cover this area. Well, specifically, I guess I can talk about my coverage of the Maya train construction in Mexico. This is a huge, huge project being pushed by the federal government. And, you know, it's a project that tries to create a rail line across the Yucatan Peninsula, which, you know, in our minds, maybe a train doesn't look like an infrastructure project that can have so much that impact. But if you think about the places that this train is going to cross, which are areas that are, you know, the second largest rainforest in the Americas after the Amazon, and that is also impacting caves and cenotes, which are the sinkhole lakes in the Yucatan Peninsula, to build the structure that is going to support the train on top, the impact becomes huge and really, really important to local Mayan communities, but also in general to the ecosystems that are there. So I've been covering that issue for about almost four years already, and we could clearly see the impact on greater audience knowledge. And then, you know, that helped a lot, build more power for the local organizations that were trying to fight these mega projects. And, you know, if you think of the final result, the train is still being constructed, but there's been a lot of pressure, there's been a lot of public awareness, there's been a lot of new organizations fighting the project, there's been lawsuits. So there's been a lot going on because of the media attention and the coverage that, you know, me and many other journalists in Mexico did. So I think, you know, sometimes maybe the results can be perfect in the sense of, you know, maybe the infrastructure project didn't stop, but I am sure that we, you know, that things are going to be built in a very different way if there is this public awareness and this public pressure from now on. Yeah, that's well, I hope that we can even get better results. That sounds like a really difficult story to be covering there. And let's go. We have a bunch of questions from the audience. I'm going to turn over here and read these out from the audience. What can ordinary citizens do to support good local environmental journalism besides paying for it? How do you how do you turn to citizen journalists at all in your coverage? Citizen journalist, well, I guess that's a tough question. I guess it as a reader of the audience, it's very complicated to really help journalists. But as a regular citizen, people can help with their votes, voting politicians that are, you know, more helpful or more open to media. That is one way. Obviously, paying for journalism is another way, because, you know, even though many times news are free, journalism is not free. So so that is another way. And yeah, I guess I guess that that's a very complicated question. And I guess it doesn't really land on the regular citizen to to help out journalists. But, you know, it's usually politicians. So that's maybe why your vote is so important. I think that's an excellent answer, and I always think it is, you know, just to ask the people to pay for what they value when it comes to the coverage is critically important as well. Let's see, we've got another one here. What structures are there in place for legal assistance to environmental reporters who are in a threat from governments or corporations? And is there anything that could be done that isn't happening yet? Well, that's a complex question because it will depend a lot on every country, right? I can speak about Mexico. There is a mechanism to protect journalists in general, not specifically environmental journalists. It doesn't work very well, quite honestly. It is the same mechanism that is in place for environmental defenders. It is exactly the same kind of protection that the government grants to a journalist and environmental defenders. And many times people who are receiving that protection and under that mechanism end up, you know, even being killed. So it is very complicated. There are many international organizations that help local reporters who are threatened to actually, you know, leave their countries and go somewhere else. We've got a lot of examples here in Mexico of environmental journalists that ended up having to go into the exile because of their reporting. And there are many international organizations that help those journalists. Yeah, a recent episode of Journal Mike Brown was focusing on exile media, which is just a growing and devastating sort of result of this type of really critically important reporting. Another question, and this is a really important one. Can you talk about the mental health harms faced by environmental journalists? Are there any patterns? Did the research cover that? And are there any patterns that you've seen in your work, I guess, more importantly? That's a great question, and obviously that happens, I guess, you know, not only as a journalist, but also just as a reader. You get this anxiety when you're reading all these stories about how the environmental and the climate crisis are affecting millions of people worldwide. So I guess just, you know, from the starting point of just reading this news, your mental health can be affected. But if you go, you know, you travel locally and you see those impacts first person, you know, any journalist covering a tragedy or covering a crisis is going to face those problems, mental health issues. But I guess environmental and climate crises are so huge and so growingly important and have so many other consequences, like when you're covering extreme weather events, for example, that obviously that is incredibly important. And I would say also, because you as a journalist, when you go on the ground and cover these stories and see that there are threats to you, to your sources, mental health issues arise. Of course, of course, you really have to come back and calm down and, you know, be mindful of how many times you can go to the ground and cover these kind of stories. Sometimes you have to kind of vary a bit the kind of stories you do, because otherwise it's just too much. And I completely agree. We often say at Indonesia in particular, like journalists who are war correspondents and covering a conflict are often living the conflict, right? If they're in the middle of it while they're covering it, it's affecting their families. And I totally agree. I hadn't thought of this before. But environmental journalists are living whatever the changes in their climate are affecting their communities and sort of covering it and and dealing with it very often. So I think that's just a really important point just in general about that. Let me turn to a couple of other questions. I was thinking about looking globally and sort of the importance of collaboration, of sort of cooperation on some global environmental stories. Any examples of cross-border collaboration that you've done? I mean, obviously AP is a global organization, but where you've seen some good examples of that type of cross-border environmental journalism would be fantastic. Well, yeah, exactly. We at the AP have hundreds of journalists across the world, and we at the climate team only have two staff video journalists. So that means I have to work with other journalists from my organization constantly. And that is that is amazing because they obviously bring their own knowledge from the local places that they're covering. And then we help out with the specific knowledge of covering environmental and climate stories. So I would say I do that every day. And I think it's so enriching both for the local journalists that I work with and for us. We at the AP have been, you know, what the climate and environment team have been promoting collaborations a lot. We think this is crucial. We did a beautiful, amazing collaboration with the Press Trust of India. They are also a news agency there, which is pretty similar to the AP in many ways. And a group of us from the climate and environment team traveled there. We traveled to Kochi in Kerala and we did, I think it was over six stories that were reporters from the AP climate team and reporters from the Press Trust of India collaborated and we produced stories locally. And we also did a workshop where we shared our experiences and it was just amazing. And it is amazing to see how some of those journalists who weren't like full time environmental journalists have become more and more environmental journalists. And we have bumped into them in the COP negotiations and things like that. We also did a great collaboration with GRIST, which was amazing. It was called Climate Connections. If anyone wants to check it out, they can just look on the AP website or GRIST. And I would say there are specific organizations like Mongabay that have collaboration in their core as well. And they have been doing amazing collaborations all over the world. And we're getting close to time. I want to sort of two final questions. First, when you mentioned the COP, the climate, the annual climate summits, and you mentioned earlier the Earth Journalism Network, which is our environmental program, support program of journalists. Have you been, I mean, how important is it for journalists from around the world to be able to go and cover those massive conferences that happen on an annual basis? What's your perspective on that? Yeah, I've been twice. I think it's really a huge conference where, you know, maybe politics are more in place happening in that kind of summit than environmental issues, of course. But what is really, really important is that hundreds of people from all over the world who are key in their local communities in fighting, you know, or preserving their territories come together into the same place. And, for example, two years ago in Egypt, I traveled to Sharm el Sheikh, to the COP, and we decided to interview several women, indigenous women from different locations that were there at COP, trying to make their voices heard. Because many times what happens in this kind of huge summit is that we only hear two politicians who are usually men and who are in the negotiations. And we don't pay so much attention to these people who, you know, give their lives to preserve their territory. So we interviewed a dozen of them and we had them on camera telling, you know, why they were there, why they needed their voices heard, because many times solutions to the climate crisis come from indigenous communities and particularly women. So I think it's one of those places where you realize how big, you know, the climate crisis is and how many other issues it touches, right? It's politics, it's economics, it's social issues. That is a perfect segue into my last question. This is a really difficult beat, as we talked about. So what gives you hope? It sounds like those women at the COP are one example of that. But where do you see sort of progress in the coming years might come from and why do you keep doing this? What gives you hope to sort of moving ahead? I guess people are realizing more and more that this, you know, the environmental and the climate crisis are not things that we'll see in the future. We're seeing that right now, right here in our communities, everywhere in every corner of the world. And that is leading to more interest from the audience. I can see how our stories are getting more and more attention. And that is also leading to more journalists being interested in this bit. And I love it when I have people from the AP who are, you know, like regular news journalists who come to us and say, hey, you know, I want to cover more of this. Is there a training that you would recommend or how can I get more training to do climate stories? Those are the things that give me hope. And obviously, you know, I try to incorporate solutions every time I'm writing about climate stories. And those solutions usually come from indigenous communities, from the civil society, from women's groups, from young people. So those are the people, those are the stories that give me hope and that I try to always incorporate in every story. Let's, you know, stay away from the dichotomy of, you know, bad news and the bad guys. And then, you know, these people who are doing good things, let's unite those in the same story. So we always, every time we read a bad story about the climate crisis, we can also see that there are ways to fight it. Well, that is a wonderful way to end this conversation, really, I completely agree with that beautiful answer you just gave. So thank you so much for joining us and spending time with us today and for everything that you do at the AP. Everyone, thank you for joining us as well. This is, that's it for this edition of Turn the Mic Around. The full report we've been talking about covering the planet, I think, has been posted in the chat. You can also learn more about Internews' work supporting environment, environmental journalists and journalists in broadly around the world at internews.org. While you're there, please do follow us on social media or click on that donate button because we're not able to do this work without you. Thank you all very much. Until next month. Thank you. Thank you.