http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34980491
In this article, peppered with the dry, British sarcasm that keeps me coming back to BBC, Jon Sopel outlines the terribly ironic fact that the American media loves weather disasters, but is conveniently ignorant that these disasters are the implication of a changing climate. It goes on to discuss that, although President Obama has been making strides to make climate a policy priority, it is being systematically blocked and dismissed by Republicans.
There’s no doubt in my mind that this is rooted in money. Our system is set up in such a way that those who fund the media and political elections are the ones who potentially have the most to lose if humans are, in fact, causing the climate to change. This will always end in coverage to be skewed and blur the truth of climate change and politicians to always vote against changing the status quo. The only way for America to get its head out of the sand is to uproot this system.
Shawn, I enjoyed reading about this perspective on the way weather events are presented in the US. Considering that I hear about most of them in my environmental classes, I have often learned about the connection of these events with climate change. However, I believe if I did tune into the news more often to learn about these weather events I would observe some of this weather report without mention of climate change. This does seem to be clear evidence of the influence political agendas have in the media, and it is a shame that when climate change does play a role in these events it is not mentioned. I am sure many more people would begin to support climate change action if they saw the proof of significance and the importance of the issue in this form of media.