Change the paradigm background

From here it was necessary to appeal to their heads and directors of newspapers, television networks and talk shows to take advantage of the conference in Rio de Janero to a shift in the criteria of newsworthiness that affect our beloved planet. Do not treat soil consumption only when a flood is dead and injured. Not to mention tons of oil drilling only when they invade the oceans. Do not allow to deal with these issues only by specialist magazines. But aware of these issues constantly and critically in order to raise awareness of an ever greater number of people and citizens. Maybe just working with us newspaper industry.
The appeal started by Marco Fratoddi, Managing Director of The New Ecology, which opens with a beautiful editorial the June issue of the Journal of Legambiente. We, along with other editors and journalists environment, we gladly embraced the cause and wanted to make our small contribution, with the hope that the message gets to as many professionals work every day to make information, which can first try to change the paradigm background, so that it will be a change shared by all.
Simona Falasca


Appeal to the media by the heads of environmental information

The directors of newspapers with a general circulation
The directors of television networks
The wires of the talk show
Environmental information in Italy is suffering from a serious contradiction. The state of health of the planet, in fact, makes the news when the damage is done: like two years ago, after the oil spill in the Gulf of Louisiana showed that the multiple criticality of this fossil, or in connection with the floods that periodically rage on five continents causing casualties and massive damage. Beyond these catastrophic events, which inevitably derive a space in the record, the issue of climate change, with the changes now also found in our latitudes, is largely ignored by large-circulation newspapers and television programs. We send tens, hundreds of debates and talk shows, monopolized by politicians in office, without devoting a minute issues that have become urgent as the loss of biodiversity, adaptation to new environmental risks, opportunities related to the remodeling of our economy in management efficiency. Just look back a few months to fully grasp this paradox: immediately after the floods in Lunigiana, the Cinque Terre and Genoa the theme of hydrogeological got a wide media coverage of our house. But now, in the dry season, the phenomenon of land use, which each year causes the loss of about 500 square kilometers of land has disappeared from the front pages of newspapers. Nor does it goes in search of remedies that local governments are implementing (or not implementing) to prevent the consequences that the rains of autumn cause our fragile land and the communities who live there.
Environmental information is also subject to a further misunderstanding. The causes of the ecological crisis, which is bound up with the economic, are now scientifically recognized. Yet the search for easy sensationalism of the title or effect of a misunderstood level playing field, which has its own raison d'etre way around the ethical and political issues, has instead allowed without scientific information, and thus the foundation of be placed on the same level of proven phenomena. The view has been put on the same level of facts, often to refute them instrumentally. The example of climate denial is the most obvious, having given space scientists who had expertise and opinion leaders expressing unsubstantiated opinions in order to remove the results obtained by researchers studying for many years, within the international organizations, the physics of the atmosphere.
On the eve of the Rio +20 this attitude seems even more worrying are the only trade publications to raise with the attention it deserves this appointment, for the rest of the UN conference on the environment comes in the general silence. We know that if anything were to have any significant trace of this event, which is leading in the Brazilian metropolis representatives of governments around the world, quickly disappear from the front pages the day after its conclusion. Elsewhere, it is clear, exceptions prove the rule: in Europe only a few newspapers, like The Guardian, devoting attention permanent and qualified environment. For our country, however, the marginal environmental news is a double opportunity lost, both because it obscures an issue of global responsibility from which we can not escape, and because the battle against climate change includes measures of economic conversion can return competitiveness of our companies and suggest a way out of the crisis in Italy is deeper than elsewhere.
We therefore want to appeal to the conductors of the talk shows, network managers, to newspapers that one day they get so many contacts in many of our heads, together, achieve in a year: Rio +20 opened with a new way of treating environmental news. Exit the rhetoric of emergency, go over the peaks of attention from the news or dictated the agenda of politicians and stimulated public debate around innovation processes affecting businesses, public administrations virtuous families. Be wary of those who have no skills or knowledge on environmental issues and expresses personal opinions rather than facts proven by experience. Affiancateci mission to explain that the challenge of climate is in the interest of all, that the good practices of the green economy represent a target for industrialized countries and emerging markets.
For this reason we ask you to accept this appeal by opening with the network of Italian newspapers environmental information, which is a unique heritage of its kind in Europe, a work table and discussion in order to adapt to the needs of the Italian journalists of our time. We also ask you a concrete support on a permanent basis by publishing a window on the process of conversion to sustainability that are happening in our country, a "green box" in which to raise, at your discretion, links, abstracts and references to the content they publish magazines ecologists in order to report them to your numerous readers. We can build a network within the information system in our country between large and small publishers, heads of all political persuasions, various kinds of media to support the objectives of the green new deal Italian.
We know that the attention of the Italian media to these issues has increased, including through publishing operations expressly focused on environmental issues, there are within the mainstream media journalists sensitive and competent working for some time on these issues. But we believe that is not enough, that we should review the criteria for newsworthiness around the facts about the planet to usher in a new season in environmental journalism and make a plot of useful research to innovate the overall information system.