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?
Nawaal Domingo from the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance said that business was interested in profit only, while the poor were more likely to be interested in preserving our natural resources.
Domingo also reported that there are lots of children dying from asthma in South Durban due to pollution, but that the media doesn't pay too much attention. We need our media to push forth with this issue so that pressure can be placed on government to take action, she contended.
Domingo...
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...
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...
