By Nils Lindahl Elliot

Please note: the following is the introductory section of an essay that you may download from the Centre for Media, Culture & Environmental Education.

Abstract

Do the news and current affairs media simply reflect the worlds they represent? Or do media producers engage in pedagogic dynamics that may affect how their audiences relate to those worlds? To the advocates of a realist discourse on the nature of news and current affairs, the answer is clear: at least professional journalists merely reflect the world that they represent. The following essay argues that this perspective overlooks the many ways in which news and current affairs have a certain capacity to transform whatever they represent. In so far as this is the case, the media have a far greater responsibility vis-a-vis climate change than is usually acknowledged.

Introduction

Imagine the following scenario: the producers of a global media institution make a radio series titled ‘Environment Today’. For one of the editions of the series, they make a programme that involves travelling across a part of the United States. The show is meant to provide an opportunity for the producers to gather some ‘vox pops’ (everyday views) about a forthcoming summit on climate change. To this end, the producers hire one of the largest SUVs (sports utility vehicles). The vehicle has very poor fuel efficiency, and one of the worst carbon footprints of any non-commercial vehicle in the U.S.

During the broadcast, the programme’s presenter identifies the vehicle, and comments on its disproportionate fuel consumption. He later appears to discount the overall significance of its carbon footprint. After the broadcast, several listeners contact the media institution to express their disappointment over the fact that the producers have used such a vehicle; in their view, the programme should ‘lead by example’. The programme is, after all, about environmental issues.

The producers respond that their programme does not seek to ‘lead by example’, and that it hasn’t been conceived as a way of engaging in anything like a pedagogy of environmentally friendly living. Instead, the programme’s goal is to reflect everyday relationships with the environment; if there are aspects of those relationships that upset the audience, then it is for them (the audience) to instigate change.

The scenario I have just described is based on a real programme that goes by another name. Listeners—indeed I myself—did query the use of the vehicle, and the producers replied almost exactly in the way I have just described. The producers’ response is based on an idea that still has much currency in the field of mass communications, and so in this essay I would like to focus on the idea, and not on the individuals.

In particular, I want to critique the notion that media producers in a programme such as I have just described merely reflect everyday social relations to the environment, and that in so doing they have no pedagogical aims with respect to the question of environmentally friendly living. This view is based on what might be described as a realist discourse on the nature of news and current affairs broadcasting. I use the term ‘realist’ to refer to the discourse’s apparent grounding in reality itself. Such a discourse is arguably still the one that is predominantly invoked by many if not most producers of factual programmes in the U.S., Britain and many other countries. In the following pages, I will offer two interrelated critiques: a critique of its claims to realism, and then a critique of its ostensibly ‘non-pedagogic’ character.

© 2010 Nils Lindahl Elliot All Rights Reserved