The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation isn’t answering questions about a request from five eminent former journalists that it introduce a daily climate emergency report, akin to the daily weather forecast that Canadians from coast to coast to coast rely on every day, to boost public understanding of the climate emergency and its impacts.
The five self-declared “members of the CBC family”—David Suzuki, Peter Mansbridge, former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, Paul Kennedy, and Linden MacIntyre— say the national broadcaster has stepped up its climate reporting over the last few years. But they still urge the CBC to go farther still on a story that “will define every aspect of our lives and those of generations to come,” as Editor in Chief Brodie Fenlon wrote in October, 2021.
“We are pleased to see the CBC expanding and deepening its climate coverage. But more is needed,” the five alumni wrote in a May 1, 2023 letter to Fenlon [pdf], released this week by the Climate Emergency Unit.
“We believe that our national public broadcaster has a unique responsibility and ability to cover the climate crisis,” they added. “With a mission to serve communities across Canada via TV, radio, and digital, the CBC is ideally positioned to play a special role as our climate emergency broadcaster, pushing against the rising tide of mis- and disinformation as a trusted source for accurate and urgent reporting.”
The letter listed six steps the CBC could take to bolster its climate reporting, beginning with a daily climate emergency report for all local morning radio shows and national programs like The World at Six and The National.
“It is not sufficient to produce stand-alone shows and podcasts on climate that viewers/listeners must seek out,” the five former journalists wrote. “We need a daily climate emergency report that is embedded in our flagship shows, a report that lets Canadians know how this battle for our lives is unfolding at home and aboard on a regular basis, honestly informing them and inspiring them to action.”
In its release October 4, the Climate Emergency Unit says the letter received a “respectful response”, but CBC brass declined to meet with the group.
“Now, after two more summers of extreme weather events, the five former CBC journalists have decided to make their letter public, in hopes that it will spark conversations within the public broadcaster about what covering emergencies such as this requires.”
“The CBC’s climate reporting continues to improve, ” Suzuki, a veteran environmental and climate campaigner and longtime host of The Nature of Things, said in the release. “Over the past two summers, I think we’ve seen the CBC get better about connecting these extreme unnatural weather events to climate change. However, the CBC has not done nearly enough to make the next connection—between climate change and our continued reliance on fossil fuels. And consequently, the public’s understanding of that connection remains very weak.”
“It has been good to see the CBC produce special climate programming, to see climate highlighted on the CBC news website banner, to see a team of reporters specializing on this file, and to see CBC providing its journalists with internal professional development training on this topic,” added Kennedy, a longtime host of CBC Ideas.
“But overall, as the world continues to break temperature records, the prominence of this reporting remains incongruous with the severity of the crisis.”
Suzuki and Kennedy were referring to shifts in CBC programming and practices that Fenlon described in a September, 2024 blog post, about 16 months after he would have received the original letter. Those measures included:
• A dedicated space for climate content on the CBC website and news app;
• A national climate content unit to report on the climate emergency and put breaking news in context;
• A climate dashboard that tracks weather forecasts across the country and compares them with historical trends;
• A full-day course on climate reporting essentials for reporters who don’t cover the beat every day, along with a climate glossary that is also available to the public;
• A series of specific reporting projects and platforms, including the award-winning What on Earth? climate newsletter that just marked its sixth anniversary.
While some of those items respond to the broadcasters’ request, CBC has still not joined Covering Climate Now, the 500-member global news collaborative that co-hosted last year’s Climate Changes Everything conference at Columbia Journalism School in New York. [Energy Mix Productions is a proud member of CCNow.] And it hasn’t introduced a daily climate emergency report, a proposal Climate Emergency Unit Team Lead Seth Klein first introduced in his September, 2020 book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency.
Asked twice to comment on that idea, CBC Head of Public Affairs Chuck Thompson said only that “we redoubled our focus on climate journalism,” in a brief email that linked to Fenlon’s two blog posts.
