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?
There is a lack of analysis of the broader political economy, globalization and global economic policies that our governments have adopted with respect to reporting on climate change, argued SACSIS columnist, Michelle Pressend.
For example, there is a lot of talk about how farmers have to change their planting seasons, seeds, and so on - but somehow the whole aspect about trade and international subsidies, or how food security and food sovereignty is affected by global corporations, is left...
Glenn Ashton, SACSIS columnist, argued that the nature of the media is really the polarized nature of the media. It doesn't seem to matter much, for example, that the debate over climate denialism is over, it still seems to crop up in newspapers.
Ashton also added that the business media had not picked up on the issue of climate adaptation and how it can be used to kick start local economies.
The debate on power generation always focuses on big things such as nuclear energy and big...
Mohamed Motala, executive director of the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE) asked, "what is it that civil society has to do to make journalists uncomfortable enough to report on an issue - including climate change?"
Motala was concerned that the media does not pay enough attention to cross cutting issues such as poverty, class, race, gender and inequality.
Motala made these remarks at a roundtable discussion, which sought to ascertain how the South African media is...
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...
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...
