Media Storm - World on fire: El Niño and Labour’s ULEZ debate

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

LIVE SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT: Media Storm will be live at the London Podcast Festival this September, on Saturday 16th at 7pm! Book tickets now to join us as we breakdown the craziest headlines of 2023: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/media-storm-2/ Around the world, El Niño is causing extreme weather events and soaring global temperatures to alarming levels. Meanwhile in the UK, Labour is playing internal blame-games after a by-election defeat in Boris Johnson’s old seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. What do these two stories have in common? Running through the UK’s political factionalism is a debate over London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s plan to expand ULEZ. This is a debate about climate policy, but climate is missing from its coverage. In this bonus episode, Mathilda and Helena discuss the week’s top headlines and the missing links between them. We’ll then revisit a studio discussion with climate podcast producer Thimali Kodikara, to examine what the mainstream media could be doing better. Buy the team a coffee on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MediaStormPodcast  This bonus episode is created by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia). The music is by Samfire (@soundofsamfire). More on Media Storm Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/mediastormpod or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mediastormpod or Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@mediastormpod like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MediaStormPod send us an email [e-mail] check out our website https://mediastormpodcast.com Media Storm was first launched the house of The Guilty Feminist and is part of the Acast Creator Network. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/media-storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Save when you fuel up for your next road trip. Get up to 7 cents per liter in value every time you fill up at Petro Canada. That's 3 cents per liter in instant savings plus 20% more points when you link an eligible RBC card to your Petro points. Find out more at RBC.com slash Petro-dash Canada. Conditions apply. Hi Media Stormers. We're taking a mid-season investigation break to pull together our live show,

which, if you haven't heard, will be at King's Place London on Saturday the 16th of September so get your tickets in the link below. But we wanted to get together to talk about what's going on in the news this week and some things that struck us as significant. Matilda, what's something that you found significant in the news this week? Something I found significant from a media storm perspective is how two very interlinked news stories have been reported very separately. One of those stories is what's happening in UK politics

with Labour infighting over Sadiq Khan's U-Level expansion. The other is what's happening in the world, with the El Nino weather event causing heat waves, wildfires, and flash flooding across continents. Okay, I'm interested. But first, can you talk us through what each of these stories involve? Yeah, so Labor's splits. So everybody wins and everyone gets surprise. Three by-elections and a victory for each of the three main parties. Labor was defeated in one of the by-elections in Boris Johnson's old seat of Uxbridge and South Reislep on Friday, which led to a bit of a blame game. I don't think there's any doubt that Ulaz was the reason that we lost the by-election in Uxbridge.

Labour leader Kirstama and his deputy Angela Rainer have both pointed to Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, and his backing of the divisive policy to expand the U-Lez to all London boroughs. U-Lez is London's ultra-lower mission zone, and Kahn's decision to expand it means more people who have older models of cars that run on diesel and are deemed too polluting will have to get rid of those cars. And now the world news you think this relates to, El Nino.

El Nino is a naturally occurring warming phenomenon in the Pacific that's causing extreme weather, with scientists confirming the first week of July was the hottest in history. This has impacted Europe. Greece has been especially hard-hit by wildfires. Residents in 15 cities across. Italy have been told to stay out of direct sunlight this afternoon.

It's impacted South Asia. Locals are struggling to cope after days of intense heat scorch India's two most populous states. East Asia. In South Korea, at least 37 people are known to have died after flash flooding triggered landslides and power cuts. And the United States. The water temperature off the coast of Florida yesterday spiked above 98 degrees. Ocean water, 98 degrees. Okay, so in Celsius, that's about 37 degrees.

Whoa, wait, stop, 37 degrees Celsius. That is like a hot bar. Oh, my God. So, yeah, as you say, I have heard these two stories reported back to back in broadcast this week, and they've been reported as two distinct and separate stories. But if El Nino is a naturally occurring weather event, why would that not be the case? Because what we're seeing around the world

is what happens when El Nino coincides with the warming effects of man-made climate change and it is predicted to temporarily push the global average temperature over the 1.5 target set by the Paris Climate Agreement. I'm scared. That's terrifying. And so I wonder whether the media shouldn't be drawing connections

between domestic stories about climate policy and worldwide stories about climate change. I also wonder whether this is part of a wider problem with how the media sub-categorises world and domestic news or political and social news in ways that encourage politics to become all about elections and not about real world responsibility.

Okay, but Labour's infighting isn't just about the ULES. It's also about benefits and Kirstalmer saying he will, wouldn't drop the Tory's two-child benefit cap. And even the ULES debate isn't just a question of climate. Some councils have claimed that Sadiq Khan didn't follow statutory requirements or conduct proper consultations. Local MPs say the policy will have disastrous consequences for local businesses and low-income households who could lose cars on which their day-to-day lives depend.

All true. And there's a lot right about the way it's reported, but I feel there are missing parts. Kans-Yule's policy doesn't seem to be a very smart move for him politically, and yet he's decided to make it his personal manifesto. Why? Maybe it's about more than politics. Radical. So here's a story. Ten years ago, a nine-year-old girl called Ella Kissy Debra died in Lewisham, London, seemingly from asthma. Seven years later, a coroner ruled that air pollution was a direct cause of her death, making legal history.

He pointed out that toxic emissions in Lewisham exceeded legal, national and international limits. And this led London mayor, Sadiq Khan, to declare air pollution a public health crisis. He has repeatedly cited Ella's death in his Ulaz arguments, and the girl's mother, Rosamund, publicly supports the policy. See, I remember that story. It was huge. And yet, its connection to the Ulaz policy hasn't really been made in the media. In fact, a lot of the coverage I've heard about labour infighting this week makes it seem as if the most important part of the story is the factionalism and electoral outcomes.

Shouldn't that be secondary to all of this? Right, because climate change, here in the UK at least, often feels like a very abstract overseas notion, which is an illusion. And I wonder if the way that we as a media report on and sub-categorise climate news feeds that illusion. And, you know, it's not just labour in fighting we could apply this logic to. At the moment, we're seeing lots of governments that participated in the climate summit, COP 26,

softening commitments they made at the time, citing the cost of living crisis as the cords. For example, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has just suggested he might not ban petrol and diesel vehicle sales after all. Exactly. Obviously, we're not saying that the media should be weighing in on one side of the debate. a lot of these policy debates are more complicated than just climate. But I do think we need to contextualise because it felt almost comical hearing these stories reported back to back with no awareness of their relevance to one another. So do you think the media is guilty of, if not downplaying, distancing the climate crisis?

Whether that's to help keep it palatable to readers so they keep clicking and subscribing or to not piss off valuable corporate sponsors who may be implicated. Yeah, but I would also say that it's not distinct to the media. I think it's how almost every sector of society copes with the concept of climate change by compartmentalising it. And not just every sector, every individual, including myself. Because if we were to start framing domestic policy discussions like you, Les,

in the context of news about the world being on fire, that would be pretty uncomfortable for all of us. That would force us to question, are we actually willing to do what it takes to reverse climate change? Or are the sacrifices just too big? Uncomfortable. Very. Now, we talked about what the media could be doing differently. In the studio discussion that followed our investigation into big oil last season,

our guest was climate podcast producer, the Mali Kodikara. And so much of what she talked about is super relevant this week. We're going to play that discussion now, and you'll hear us discuss some headlines that were current at the time, including headlines about the UK heatwave last July, and around the protests by the Climate Action Group Insulate Britain. We're going to keep the discussions around these headlines in, because they're still incredibly relevant today. I mean, in this chat, you could literally substitute Insulate Britain with just-stop oil protests that have happened more recently, and you can see the similarities in the negative coverage, as the media

fails to report on the context of the climate crisis. But for now, I'm Helena Wadia, and I'm Matilda Mallinson. And this is climate news, not just another media storm. It'll start getting cooler. You just watch. This is our line in the sand. I am not sure that I'm going to be able to feed my children. They want you to go back to the blim and dark ages.

It's frightening nonsense. You don't win any support. Teams is not going to come from inside that. But it's not leadership. We have a choice, collect the action. collective suicide welcome back to the studio where we discuss how the media reports on marginalized communities and some of the stories making headlines today this week we are looking at climate communities on the front line of environmental damage the corporations

causing that damage and the marketing campaigns that conceal it and with us is a very special guest. She is an artist by training and producer by profession, co-host and series producer of the groundbreaking climate podcast, Mothers of Invention. The show explores feminist solutions to climate change and champions the views of unsung heroes from all over the world fighting battles of climate justice. Welcome Thimali Kodikara. Hello ladies. How are you doing? Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Let's start with the investigation we just heard and see if we answer any of Matilda's questions. So, when it comes to corporate greenwashing, do you think the mainstream media is failing to hold companies to account? And if so, what should they be doing

differently? I mean, there's absolutely no question. They're not holding corporate media to account yet. That's not to say it's not possible, but definitely fact-checking up the wazoo is highly necessary. But then of course, as we know, media has many different objectives, political objectives that come from funding or ownership. And so I think it's very important that we do our own research. You know, we have to sort of follow the science and follow the money a little bit and make sure that those two things are correlating before we even think about why the media perspective is covering corporate action in a particular way. So I think it is absolutely down to the responsibility of great journalism to do it, but we can't always be reliant on every source to

provide that for us. Yeah, definitely. I think that's something people really need to understand when they're consuming the news is that whether or not they want to be, news outlets are often beholden to corporations because they receive ad revenue from those companies. So even the Guardian, which has actively tried to scale back the funding it's received from large energy corporations and which has a business model that doesn't overall depend on advertising. It will still say that fossil fuel-related investments will still represent a very small fraction of their funds. And in the US organizations, news outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post,

which might be seen as very, very rigorously investigative and quite progressive on topics such as climate change, they have in-house brand studios that have work. with corporate partners to produce and design content that could definitely be classified as greenwashing over the years. So it's just something that we all need to bear in mind and remember that these relationships do exist and that news outlets do not exist in a vacuum. I mean, you took the words out of my mouth, Matilda, because we have to sort of keep a perspective or journalists and newspapers should also be keeping the perspective of, you know, these fossil fuel companies being guilty until proven innocent. And that's how we start avoiding some greenwashing

strategies. Do you have any tips for listeners or any tools that we could use to, to check up on the green credentials of companies? It's not a media tip, but I've been working a little bit with a company called Ecosia. And Ecosia is like a, it's like a search engine. Yeah, it's the Google that plants trees, right? Yes, yes, exactly. I was trying to avoid saying the word Google, but you're Right, absolutely. It is the Google that plants trees. But also what's interesting is that when you do search something on their platform, you are planting trees, but they've just added this greenwashing facility where you can see how fossil fuel intensive a company is if you're searching for it. They put in little icons now. So there are like initiatives that are happening from folks who are thinking about climate first, not income first. Great tip. Well, as we learn with all our topics, language is a very powerful and a very political weapon in the media arsenal, and climate coverage is absolutely no different. So since 2019, the mainstream media has largely shifted from using the term climate change to the term the climate crisis. And this followed a massive international campaign and a shift in the vocabulary being used by the UN and the UN spokespeople. Why is that shift in language important?

Well, I like the way that you put it, actually, Helena, because it's not necessarily the term. It's more the transition between these two terms that has been so important. It's helping us recognise that there is urgency. The climate crisis and the way that report it is not the same as talking about any other issue because time is completely critical

to the way we discuss it. You know, we are at 1.1 degrees of temperature rise at this point, and we have to stay below 1.5 degrees of global temperature rise. So to be able to help people understand urgency is how we get more and more people on board, for sure. Can you think of any other vocabulary like that that needs changing on this topic? I think more than vocabulary at this point, it is concept. And for me that concept is climate justice. It's really astonishing to me that so much reporting is still happening within borders, border frameworks. The climate crisis is a global crisis. It's affecting everybody on planet Earth. It has been affecting certain communities for entire generations, for

hundreds of years at this point. And we're so willing to talk about carbon or animals or biodiversity, which is all great and all absolutely true and critical that we know about all these things. But we also have to recognise the importance of the justice issues that have had fallout from all of this, the human rights aspect of climate change. And none of that is being reported on nearly as much as it should. Yeah, that's so interesting that you talk about kind of zooming out and looking at the bigger picture because it actually reminds me I do newsroom training for journalists on how to report responsibly on domestic abuse. And what is interesting about that is that we ask the same thing.

We ask journalists to zoom out and look at the bigger picture in terms of how many women mostly are abused on a daily basis so that the incident that they're reporting on doesn't seem like an isolated incident that's come out of the blue. And it's kind of the same thing. Like we need to zoom out and look at the bigger picture so that everything that's being reported on is being reported on in the context of a global climate crisis. I really get reminded of when the group insulate Britain were protesting in the UK. For those of you don't know, insulate Britain were a group of protesters demanding the government insulate all Britain's homes

by 2030. And they blocked roads and they blocked motorways in protest late last year. And I think nine of the activists were jailed. But the most common words that were used were like chaos and stopping ordinary people going about their lives, nuisances, inconveniences, kind of forgetting the point of what a protest is meant to be an inconvenience, right? But many, many articles when reporting on the activities of the interlate Britain group

failed to actually mention who the group are, what they were calling for, and failed to link to the wider effects of non-insulated homes. So context is so important. And actually the point you're both making about how this is a global issue and it needs to constantly be contextualized in a pattern of global crises, this brings me to a question actually, which is lately we have seen, and this has been seen as a positive development, news organizations introduce climate sections on their website, news organizations hire climate editors and climate correspondence to report specifically on this issue. And that has prose because it helps to make climate news immediately visible and accessible, and it standardizes practice, regularizes practices of climate reporting. But is there also the case that it could be an excuse to section off climate stories

rather than embedding the issue across other news? In other words, are other stories missing the climate context? And I'm going to go to you on this, Imali, but it's something that I think of frequently as an immigration reporter that a lot of the immigration crises we're seeing reported and a lot of the conflicts happening elsewhere in the world are climate stories but you don't see that context in that news. Absolutely. I'm so, so glad you brought up that point because, you know, I think we are long overdue recognizing that climate is not a subject that belongs to environmentalists and hippies. It belongs to every single one of

us. It needs to be contextualized to our lives. The context is the thing that is totally missing. In my experience, you're going to capture an audience, you know, maybe 5% of an audience on the science, frankly. Like you, most people don't have a visceral, emotional relationship to statistics. People need to feel themselves in this subject because people only want to save what they can relate to. It's a sad reality, but it's true. That's why the UK is getting on board now is because finally, the climate issues

are happening on people's front doorsteps. You can see it. You can live it. And I feel like that human experience has been so missed for so long because that kind of separation of climate from everyday news, it kind of, as you said, frames it

as like a scientific phenomenon rather than a human one. You know, before, when I thought about climate change, what I thought about most was those nature documentaries, David Attenborough, melting ice caps and skinny polar bears, which is obviously extremely sad. But I didn't see much of the human cost. Could you just tell us really, like, what are the main human costs?

What are the biggest human costs of climate change that are happening right now? We're talking about people who are having to migrate away from their homes, people who are unable to grow food on their landscapes, people who are developing new diseases through their water systems, people whose homes are literally disappearing into the water. Like these aren't imagined dystopian stories from the future, which is how the UK mainstream. media has sort of described climate to us as like something that will happen sometime in the distant future. But that's because it was going to happen to the UK later than it has been happening to largely black and brown, indigenous, global south, Arctic people all over the world. So now we have to start connecting the dots between what's been happening to people

far, far away from us and realizing that by supporting them, we can support ourselves too. Absolutely. I think it's fair to say that downplaying and denying climate change is less prevalent in mainstream news than it used to be. But we do want to talk about climate catastrophizing because on the flip side, there is an issue of over-sensationalising incidents and creating that kind of sense of hopelessness. where people think, oh, well, what can I do about this? If the world's going to end, it's going to end.

How do we report on the crisis in a way that doesn't sensationalise and that presents it as we've been talking about as a man-made issue with man-made solutions while still emphasising that urgency and the scale of devastation? I don't know that I've seen much over sensationalising of the climate crisis, honestly. I think it's deep breath, probably way worse than is being reported. But to your point, what is extremely important is that we stay completely hooked on the facts.

We have to give people something to walk towards. We have to start envisioning a future that, you know, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren can actually thrive in. People need to feel like they can do it. something, that there is a way out of this. The defeatism either comes out of complete despair and fear or from complete privilege as well to be able to say, well, I don't care as nothing. I can do about it. I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm checking out of this conversation. In the meanwhile, there are people all over the world who are fighting their arces off to make sure

that we all have a safer future available. So let's talk about your podcast now. Let's look away from the mainstream and look at Mothers of Invention. So this is co-hosted by Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland and a former UN High Commissioner of Human Rights. I mean, how did you score that? Cash. Yeah, yeah. And Maeve Higgins, who is a New York Times opinion writer

and a very funny person. The show stands apart in the field of climate communication. How so? The show was launched with, the intention of bringing levity and humour to the conversation because people are terrified by this subject matter and we laugh a lot and that is something that women certainly women of colour people from marginalised groups that is historically how we get through real trauma and trials and so we really try to capitalise on that and make people who are climate curious

come and join the conversation with us and feel like they're set in a safe place. The other part of it is thinking about how to support the mostly women we've had on the show on the back end. So we're trying to help them get together, help them share resources, job opportunities, funding opportunities, and mostly helping them find platforms to be able to talk about their work in an environment where people don't give them platforms or opportunities because they are so, condescended to. And then on the front end of the pod, I'm trying to figure out ways through the editorial of getting the audience to get their butts off seats to go and do something to actually participate in the climate movement, figuring out lots of different ways that people can continue to learn after the podcast has ended. I feel like we should talk about the tagline of the

podcast because it's very interesting. I'm sure you've chosen it for a very particular reason, but I want to unpack it just a little bit. The slogan is, climate change is a man-made problem with a feminist solution. What made you choose that strapline and why should male listeners not feel alienated by it? Well, I mean, man-made obviously is somewhat tongue-in-cheek

because there are plenty of men that are putting in some effort into the climate movement. But historically, men are people that have fueled extractive capitalism. that brought us to the climate movement. Colonialism is what caused climate change, also fuelled by manpower. So it's sort of an acknowledgement of that. But also on the other side of it,

women are overwhelmingly more vulnerable to the climate crisis than men are. To give an example from the show, we had a guest on called Hindu Umaru Ibrahim, who is a nomadamani, indigenous woman from Chad. Chad had a huge lake on it, a massive, massive lake that was, you know, a source of food and a source of water for masses of communities in several countries surrounding it. 90% of that lake has dried up. What that's meant is that the women who tend to

actually be the farmers in the community, lots of people don't know that, but women are the farmers of the world. Women are often left at home because the men will migrate to the cities have to separate themselves from their cultures to try and make money to get resources to bring home but that means that women are left behind often in extreme temperatures where they're not able to grow food. They're often looking after several children. It's a multi-layered war zone effectively for these women. Women are also often not taught how to swim. They don't know how to drive.

They don't know how to escape from vulnerable circumstances, often also wearing traditional clothing that's sort of wrapped around their bodies. They can't run. Certainly, my aunt was killed in a tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2004. And she, this is the situation for her. She was, you know, dressed in a sari. In her 70s, she couldn't run anywhere.

She drowned and died sadly. So this is happening to thousands of women all over the world. Yeah, miserable statement, but true. Yeah. No, no, what you just showed is how these systemic inequalities manifest in so many ways that we wouldn't even think about until we hear these lived experience stories. And I guess the point is the same about when it comes to responsibility,

The gender distinction is an important one, but it's not pointing to the individual responsibilities of today's men over today's women. It's saying that this is a patriarchal system. That is the point that's being made by the tagline. Time now for a current affairs crunch. Let's look at some of the recent stories making headlines. We can't not talk about it because the media can't stop talking about it. The heat wave.

In some senses, the heat wave has been a springboard for greater acknowledgement of the climate crisis in our daily news. But have we also seen the return of both-sidism, also known as this kind of false balance reporting in climate issues, with mainstream news commentators dismissing the abnormal weather as a cause for alarm? For context, let's listen to this now infamous GB news clip. I want us to be happy about the weather and every single... I don't know whether something's happened to meteorologists

to make you all a little bit fatalistic and harbingers of doom because all of the broadcasts, particularly on the BBC, every time I've turned on anyone's talking about the weather, they're saying that there's going to be tons of fatalities.

But haven't we always had hot weather, John? I mean, wasn't the 76, the summer of 76? That was as hot as this, wasn't it? This kind of commentary really echoes all over Twitter, that people who live through the heatwave of 1976

have been criticising the doom and gloom climate chat overlaying this one. What are your thoughts on how the heat wave in the UK has been covered? Positive, negative, somewhere in between. I sort of think that the UK is incredibly far behind on talking about climate. The UK has consistently ignored and talked over

through this fantastic arrogance, I don't really know how else to put it. And now all of a sudden, we're discovering the UK has a great deal to learn from other places in the world. Because the issue really is around the UK doesn't know it's history. Climate is not a magical science problem that just showed up. Climate change has happened because of an excessive greed. It's a greed problem. and that greed has been led by a lot of these nations in the global north. And so there's been an aversion to having this conversation for a really long time

in a very transparent way. So I think the UK media has a huge task on its hands. But I think there's a lot that can be learnt from international media on how to move forward. I think what you're saying about Britain not knowing its history, but also just having a huge responsibility and just really a huge lack of understanding was so perfectly summed up in the daily mails to front pages from the heat wave.

I think it was Tuesday, 19th of July and Wednesday, 20th of July. Tuesday, 19th of July, read, sunny day, snowflake Britain had a meltdown and it's got, you know, schools close, workers stay home, a shop shut. And then they put extreme heat in inverted commas.

The front page, the very next day, hottest UK day ever, 40.3 degrees, nightmare of the wildfires and pictures of wildfires that happened in the UK. London's burning, terrified residents fled as their homes went up in flames. From snowflakes to wildfires,

that is an alarming 180, even for the daily mail. Oh my God. Like, I'm sure that people who care about climate in the UK are really, infuriated by those headlines but I have to say I saw this same thing happen in the US and you've the right now are coming around to talking about these issues because they know they have to

there's no getting around it now and a lot of that has happened because regular people started finding out the facts and they couldn't they couldn't hold this opinion down anymore I just think it's so illuminating that we can talk readily about climate change when we feel it on our doorstep. Why weren't we having these debates when devastation began elsewhere? Droughts in the Sahel, famine in Sudan, flooding in Bangladesh, none of these held a candle to one day of 40 degrees here in the UK. We're so driven by what affects us, but that hasn't helped us because if we'd started addressing climate crises elsewhere, as the global issue that they were, maybe we wouldn't be seeing that today. And I think national introversion has always been a problem in the media and maybe we need a less localised, less domestic news agenda

to help us understand that we all have a stake in this fight. Oh, go on, girl. The Mali Kodi-Kara, thank you so much for joining us as our guest on today's media storm. Where can people follow you? And do you have anything to plug? You should probably listen to my podcast, Mother's Invention. It's all right. It's an all right pod. I'm really shit at social media. I hate it.

But you can find me on Instagram. One loud bellow. And occasionally on Twitter, too, apathy sucks eggs is my handle. Because it does. Let's be real. Apathy sucks it. I actually chose that name like two decades ago. My mom's been trying to get me to get rid of it for years.

But it still works and makes people laugh. Please feel free to get in contact with me. I don't know. In terms of plugs, I'm going to be speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival on August 24th. So you can have a listen in or come watch me there too. What Thimali says about women and climate in this episode set in motion media storms next investigation, which looks at the gendered impact of humanitarian crises and the ungendered response. And we are so excited that we are going to be joined

by Nazanine Boniadi for that episode, activist, actor and star of the new Rings of Power. That episode will be out in two weeks on the 10th of August. Next week, we'll be collaborating with entrepreneur Sadiah Khan, who is host of the podcast Immigrantly for a special crossover episode. See you then.