Stop Blaming The Media and Tell The Truth Yourself
You have the power to influence people on climate, nature and equality
The mainstream media won’t change. Stop trying to make it do so.
Stop blaming the media for spreading hate, division and climate crisis denial.
You’re wasting your breath and needlessly losing skin from the tips of your fingers every time you angrily fire off another post.
You’re usually preaching to the converted, anyway. Stop it.
I tell you this as a journalist. I have more than 35 years’ experience in the game. and even working on the inside, I have struggled to get my educational, ethical and environmental stories on to the public-facing pages.
Which is why I packed my trunk and left the media circus, to send out those important messages on my own terms, as a freelance journalist and publisher.
You should do the same. Whatever your line of work.
What’s The Problem?
I always believed that my job as a journalist was to inform, educate and entertain. This very principle was established in the 1920s by the BBC’s first Director-General, Lord Reith.
Sadly, the ‘inform’ and ‘educate’ pillars have largely collapsed in many mansions of the media. These are often set on foundations of bias and misinformation.
A real journalist investigates and gathers information from all sides of a story, then presents the facts for the reader to form an opinion.
This still tends to happen in local journalism. It is straight reporting. Incompetent and error-strewn, sometimes, but nevertheless untainted by higher influence.
The major TV and print channels you’ll be most familiar with - the ‘mainstream media’ - don’t follow the basic principles of journalism training.
Instead, their stories are viewed through the lens of the media owners - the vast majority of them right-wing billionaires.
This article won’t go through who owns what - that information is out there in abundance, and you’ll be more than aware of the political bias of various publications and channels.
You’ll also no doubt be aware of the major players in the media world, from Murdoch to Musk to Marshall, from Bezos to Rothermere. Their agendas are well documented.
What frustrates me these days is not that the media constantly fails to deliver on balance and accuracy - it’s the surrender of the left to this fact.
I am sick and tired of reading articles and social media posts from left-leaning politicians, climate and equality campaigners, attacking the media for failing to tell the world about their own point of view, or the facts that have been ignored.
STOP MOANING AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
The Alternative Media
There are better examples. There are journalists and entrepreneurs who have already realised the scale of the problems and taken positive action in launching their own publications and channels.
I just worry that they, too, are preaching to the converted.
Let’s give them some deserved credit first. Check out Babelfish, Better Future Media, Carbon Brief, Grist, DeSmog, Inside Climate News, The Narwhal, Byline Times, Novara Media, Mother Jones, The Canary and The Tyee, as examples of media outliers and disruptors.
This very publication of mine, Ethical Disruption, is hosted on the Substack platform, and I’m a frequent visitor to the Top 15 rising climate and environment writers in the world.
I am in illustrious company - many excellent, experienced journalists report each week on crucial environmental and ethical issues.
But is it just noise, adding to more noise?
I have already written about the urgent need for environmental communicators to wake up to the fact that the needle is still not being moved towards true progress:
So What Do We Do?
First, we have to recognise that voting for a political party is among the most important actions we can take - in favour, or to the detriment of, our environment and quality of life.
Connecting with people who vote for the planet-wreckers across the world is the most important mission we can now undertake.
If you’re sceptical about that, let’s just remind ourselves of the actions of just one man in the first stages of just one political term - Donald Trump in his current reign of chaos.
Trump has launched a sweeping, accelerated rollback of US environmental protections and an assault on air, water, wildlife and climate laws.
At the same time, Trump has promoted increased fossil fuel production and accelerated extraction on public lands, and in the oceans.
The oil and gas industry spent about $450 million to influence Trump and Republicans in the 2024 election cycle, including direct donations, lobbying and advertising.
See a pattern emerging?
In the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has resigned, as this is written. The Conservatives and Reform immediately called for a General Election, being up-front about policies to resume drilling for oil in the North Sea, but lying about the impact this would have in the short term on energy bills.
Reform UK and their even more racist cousins, Restore Britain, are full-on climate crisis deniers. Funded by fossil fuel interests, of course.
Encouragingly, the Green Party have made impressive advances this past year in the UK, but they have done this by relegating from the public conversation their usual main topic of environmental destruction.
New leader Zack Polanski has concentrated on inequality, the cost of living and political corruption - and The Green Party are now serious contenders to hold a share of power in a probable future hung UK parliament.
Make a Connection
So is that what we have to do? Sneak in by the back door and then make everything better while we’re in?
Of course not. We have to talk frankly and openly about the quite frightening scenarios we face in all our lifetimes, however old we are.
But we have to connect with people while we do this. We have to talk the language of the audience we need to connect with most. They have to believe us, at the end of the day.
All environmental writers should ask themselves these questions when they write a new article / newsletter:
Who am I writing this for?
Could it change the bigger picture?
If it’s yet another report about our planetary woes, that will be consumed by people who are already aware of the facts, then it’s worthy, but just more noise.
We need strong voices to move the dial, shift the needle, disrupt the narrative.
What Can We Learn From The Right?
There is one clear obstacle to effective communication that always gets in the way. Money.
The fossil fuel lobby, tech bros and other billionaires influence public discussion by funding and lobbying influential politicians, and flooding social media with misinformation bots.
They can afford to bankroll TV stations like GB News, which record huge losses every year, but act as an important mouthpiece to a growing audience.
This is difficult to counter.
There are more subtle methods, however.
Ever wondered why so many of the older generation buy Conservative-leaning newspapers? The news narratives permeate their brains like microplastics, without them even realising - I’ve seen it happen in my own family.
But the boomers weren’t pulled in by politics. It was the TV guide. The puzzles section. The sports pages. The celebrity gossip. The competitions.
It’s a clever way to radicalise people.
Meanwhile, the left have caught up with the right in the blossoming world of podcasts. Politicians (like Zack Polanski) have launched their own, to bypass the media and get their messages out to the masses.
But does this really happen? Or does it just reach those who are already sympathetic to those views?
We Need a Plan
For my own part, I’m available to chat through ideas with subscribers of Ethical Disruption, and anyone else who cares to get involved with the mission of connecting.
This is not an easy task. But it is one we have to master. And quickly.
I also share your disappointment in journalists.
We expect more from my industry colleagues than they are ever likely to deliver.
Most of them are generalists, which means they need to know a little about a lot.
So don’t expect them to understand everything about the climate crisis or biodiversity emergency - they need educating, too. And you can connect with them individually, personally, to offer your support in this.
The thing that really gets to me is that journalists are ALL about getting the big story, the big scoop, the front page, the lead article.
Yet so many are failing to understand that they are sitting on the biggest story EVER to have occurred in the whole of human existence.
The facts are there to back it up; the data, the actual measurements, it’s so easy to report. But their news sense is so off-radar, they can’t see it.
What a time to be alive! They could be reporting on the biggest story ever! The extinction of the human race and most other life on earth!
Instead, YOU can do this. We need an army of green, ethical, environmental communicators.
Choose your weapons - Substack, YouTube, Facebook, Podcasts… wherever and whenever, you have the power to influence people.
You need a strong, attention-grabbing message, delivered in the right way, to the right audience - and that means turning up on the right platforms, where they all hang out.
Forget the media. BE THE MEDIA.