Daily Times

Media is considered the fourth pillar of a state. It helps the government shape its policies and brings into the notice of government the important issues. It keeps a check and balance on the performance of organisations and provides valuable feedback on important issues.

Climate change and environmental issues are gaining importance in Pakistani media due to increasing climate change disasters and challenges in Pakistan and, of course, due to its increasing scope. Media has played an active role in combating climate change disasters in the past. The role of media during the floods of 2010 and 2014 in highlighting most vulnerable areas and communities was remarkable. Highlighting economic, nutritional, health issues of migrants from flood-affected areas was a remarkable contribution from the environmental journalists. Similarly, the role of media in creating public awareness on heat waves issue in 2015 and smog in 2016-17 is also appreciable. The timely reported weather forecast by media helps the farmers in far-off areas to take precautionary measures.

Still, there are certain issues related to environment and climate change communications and journalism in our country. First of all, the traditional security threats are still more important news than the threats like climate change. This is possibly due to the role of society in understanding and paying more attention to anon-traditional security threat. An ordinary person in our society is unable to understand climate change as a security threat. He is concerned about his daily bread and butter but cannot comprehend the relationship between climate change and his bread and butter and unsustainable living patterns. He only desires to watch and read news stories that are directly linked to him. Hence, the media supplies the news which is demanded by our society.

In Pakistan, much of the news remainsfocused on personalities and not issues

The sensational and emotional news items cover more space in print and electronic media in competition for high ratings. The news items are mostly personality, not issue based. An event related to climate change gets the attention of majority media organisations only if it is attended by some high profile political personality. This withers away the true spirit of the issue to be highlighted by media. Similarly, a majority of the reporters do not possess a necessary qualification in the subject. It’s very rare that reporters, who are assigned the beat of climate change or environmental issues, are qualified in environmental subjects. So the majority is unable to understand the technical terms and deliver a complete story.

Many reporters are assigned three to four beats by the news organisations, which makes it difficult for them to collect every story and attend every event. There are very little incentives offered by these organisations to their reporters. The high profile media organisations are ready to sponsor trips of their anchors and senior editors to cover stories of international conferences and events, but little importance is given to regular beat reporters.

Media is also a business enterprise, so their focus is also profit maximisation. They give more attention to the news of those organisations that are regularly providing business to them in the form of advertisements. There are no financial benefits for the families of journalists reporting in disaster-prone areas. Some reporters also exploit the power of media to make organisations accountable and use it as a tool for their interests.

On the other hand, many government and non-government officials are afraid to interact with media persons. When the beat reporters are not properly attended to by the concerned officers, there porters find more negative news items. There is little focus on media training and workshops on climate change issues by the organisations working in this field.

The government organisations working on climate change do not utilise the opportunity to use 10 percent of free airtime available to the government organisations for public service on electronic media under Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority laws.

There area number of suggestions to improve climate change journalism in Pakistan. First of all, there is a need to change the attitude of whole society towards the issue. It’s important to make an ordinary man understand that climate change is related to their daily bread and butter. In this regard, more public inclusive activities should regularly be arranged.

The Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage must fix the minimum qualification of Bachelors with journalism for media organisations to hire beat reporters. Similarly, for particular fields like climate change and environment, preference should be given to reporters who are qualified in this subject. The Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage with the collaboration of government and non-government organisations working in climate change and environmental fields should arrange training for beat reporters of climate change and environment.

The Press Information Department (PID) must include in its guidelines that media organisations should not assign more than two beats to each reporter. Moreover, increased importance must be given to social media for highlighting climate change issues. Media handling requires proper skills so organisations working in the field of climate change must hire those people having proper qualification and training in this field.

The writer is based in Islamabad and works on environmental issues. She can be reached at zilehuma_1@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, February 1^st 2018.