The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
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Mark Allix who is a correspondent at Business Day and also a SACSIS trustee recognized the high levels of pollution that the Medupi and Kusile power plants would emit, as well as the fact that South Africa, per capita, is one of the biggest polluters in the world with SASOL and Eskom being largely to blame, but wondered how to reconcile the contradictions between economic dynamism and pollution as a journalist in the media, especially one writing for a business newspaper.
Allix made these...
Brendan Boyle, editor of the East London-based Daily Dispatch newspaper argued that we need to make the story of climate change about "me" in order to make it newsworthy for newspapers to pick up on.
Boyle contended that climate change is the next global catastrophe.
He compared current coverage of climate change to early coverage of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa when aids denialism predominated.
Boyle argued that from a media perspective, he would not want...
Sue Blaine, Environment and Development Editor at the Business Day, South Africa's premier business newspaper, argued that climate change as an issue has arrived at a time when fundamental global changes are taking place. The Western way of looking at things has been the dominant one for a long time, but that's changing, she argued, and climate change fits into this evolving discourse.
Similar to Brendan Boyle, editor of the Daily Dispatch, who believed that the media should not take...
Prof. Herman Wasserman, Deputy Head of Rhodes University's School of Journalism and Media Studies argued that the South African media's coverage of climate change is not quite commensurate with the scale and impact of the crisis.
He highlighted three weaknesses in the media's reporting on climate change:
1) The frequency of the coverage.
2) The prominence of the coverage.
3) The tone of the coverage.
Prof. Wasserman highlighted these issues at a roundtable discussion,...
Critically acclaimed novelist and chairperson of the South African Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS), William Gumede told delegates at a roundtable discussion on "The Media and Climate Change" that climate change is about bread and butter issues.
Gumede chaired the roundtable discussion co-hosted by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung South Africa Office and SACSIS. The discussion sought to ascertain how the South African media is reporting on climate change in the run up to...
In his opening remarks at a roundtable discussion on "The Media and Climate Change," Olivier Serrao of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) South Africa Office, talked about the work of the foundation in the country.
FES is a private cultural, non-profit political institution committed to the ideas and basic values of a social democracy and the labour movement.
The foundation's mission internationally is to promote democracy and social justice through capacity building, policy...
