Telling the Truth Isn’t Partisan

In October, when former top aides to Donald Trump went on the record calling the former president “fascist to the core” and a Hitler admirer, mainstream US news coverage of the 2024 election seemed to turn a page.?Suddenly, a reality that reporters and editors had recognized privately — that Trump, if reelected, would govern like a dictator —was being reported openly by leading newspapers and TV networks.

We applaud this surge of truth-telling, even as it remains woefully incomplete.

Much elections coverage has pretended that voters aren’t choosing between authoritarianism and democracy, or between a burning planet and an effort to save it. It’s as if identifying threats to the common good, naming falsehoods, and pointing out nonsense are somehow acts of partisanship.

They are not. They are journalism.

At Covering Climate Now, we’ve seen news organizations’ fear of being called partisan weaken the coverage of climate change in particular. The public urgently needs accurate reporting on the climate crisis and its solutions, including perhaps the most powerful solution of all: voting candidates into, or out of, office. But how, a top journalist at a marquee US news outlet asked us, could he plainly describe Trump’s climate record without sounding like the story was taking sides?

The answer is to recognize that politicians are the ones who bear responsibility for the positions they take.?It’s not journalists’ job to make politicians sound more (or less) reasonable than they are. It’s our job to state the facts dispassionately and in context, invite the politician to explain him or herself, and let the public decide.

Instead, much of the coverage has avoided stating the obvious about Trump’s policy on climate change, which is, bluntly, to make it worse. The few stories that have addressed the issue often note that Trump calls climate change “a hoax” and wants to “drill, baby, drill.”?But they present those extreme remarks as a mere policy difference, instead of comparing them with what climate science says and drawing the unavoidable conclusion:?If Trump and the administration he’d bring in get their way, our dangerously overheated planet will get even hotter and more dangerous. (For a welcome exception to the trend, see Lisa Friedman ’s story yesterday in The New York Times .)

It’s time for journalists to reconsider what it means to take sides. The point is not to be anti-Trump. Or anti-Harris, for that matter. But there is nothing wrong with being on the side of a livable planet. That requires standing up for truth, no matter how much that stance offends people who would prefer a more docile approach.

So, here’s a plea to our fellow journalists in the final days of this fateful election (and beyond, because this problem isn’t going away no matter who wins): Let’s remember that although we’re paid by our employers, we work for the public. Let’s tell the public the plainspoken truth about this election’s stakes — for democracy and for the Earth. Yes, avoid partisanship on behalf of?any one party or candidate. But let’s be partisan as hell on behalf of the truth.

This has been adapted from a piece by CCNow co-founders Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope that published in the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation .

From Us

The candidates’ climate records. Check out recordings and recaps of two CCNow webinars digging into the climate records of US presidential candidates Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump .

Elections reporting help. For tips on covering the US elections in the final days before November 5, check out CCNow’s guide, “Reporting on Climate and the 2024 US Elections .” And see recordings and recaps of our “Climate on the Ballot” event series , including an interview with headline guest, White House senior climate advisor John Podesta.

CCNow Basics. Watch a recording of our first-ever CCNow Basics training webinar, “The Three Pillars ,” in which we and fellow journalists brushed up on how to humanize the climate story for audiences and how to frame climate change through the lenses of justice and solutions. We plan to hold trainings like this quarterly, so keep an eye out for another CCNow Basics training early next year.

Noteworthy Stories

‘A Pivotal Choice.’ As described above, Harris’s and Trump’s climate visions could not be more different, and the stakes could not be higher. Climate reporter Lisa Friedman places voters’ decision in sharp, plainspoken context, writing: “The window is closing for nations to reduce enough of the pollution that is heating the planet to avoid the most dangerous levels of climate change, according to scientists across the world. And the outcome of next week’s presidential election could determine whether the United States and other countries meet that challenge.” For The New York Times…

Beyond the Beltway. It’s not only the US presidential election that matters for humanity’s climate future. Capital & Main has rounded up eight races across the country with critical climate implications, including the North Carolina gubernatorial race, ballot initiatives in Washington and California, and state regulatory positions in Arizona and Montana. By Marcus Baram for Capital & Main…

Climate spending in our communities. Two years after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which represents the largest investment in climate action in history, billions of dollars have streamed into states across the country. No Republicans voted for it, and many have repeatedly agitated for the repeal of its clean energy provisions — yet analysis shows that, so far, three times more money has gone to states that tend to vote Republican, with $165 billion going to those states compared to $45 billion to states that tend to vote Democratic. By Niko Kommenda , Shannon Osaka , and John Muyskens for The Washington Post…

Extreme weather study. On the tenth anniversary of its founding, World Weather Attribution has published a study showing that the world’s 10 deadliest extreme weather events between 2004 and 2023 were made “more intense and more likely” due to climate change. Researchers concluded that many of the 576,042 deaths from the events were “avoidable,” calling for countries to transition away from fossil fuels and implement adaptation strategies to avoid further deaths. By Manuel Planelles for El País…

Georgia voters on Milton & Helene. Polling by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution , conducted with the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs, finds that two-thirds of likely voters in the state believe climate change played a role in worsening the impacts of recent storms, including recent hurricanes Milton and Helene. Younger voters were especially likely to blame climate change for storms’ increasing intensity and destructiveness. By Drew Kann for AJC…

Misinfo superstorm. The glut of misinformation in the wakes of hurricanes Milton and Helene left TV meteorologists in the region fielding violent threats and spending more time batting down conspiracy theories online than forecasting the weather. “In just about 10 to 14 days, we went from not ever getting it right to controlling the weather,” one South Carolina meteorologist said. By Josh Archote for The Post & Courier…

Indigenous Voices at COP16. Progress has been reportedly slow at the UN’s biodiversity summit in Cali, Columbia, but Indigenous groups have nevertheless made waves, calling for greater representation in decision making about how to protect nature and for direct protection funding to reach their communities. “Indigenous people take care of more forests, more territories, and we are the ones who receive the least,” said one Indigenous leader from the Ecuadorian Amazon. By Santiago Andrés Torrado Villamizar for El País…

‘A quantum leap.’ Worldwide, climate progress and ambition have “plateaued,” putting the world on track for 2.9 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100, according to an annual UN report that tracks the gap between current emissions and promised targets. To avert disaster, the report states, countries “must deliver a quantum leap in ambition in tandem with accelerated mitigation action in this decade.” By Zeke Hausfather for Carbon Brief…

Events & Resources

On Monday, November 4, Carbon Brief journalists will host webinars, in English and Spanish, sharing their top takeaways from the UN’s COP16 biodiversity summit, which will have just concluded in Cali, Colombia. The English-language webinar is set for 3pm GMT, and the Spanish-language webinar will be at 7pm GMT.

The Solutions Project has launched a new resource for journalists to spur coverage of community-led climate solutions. Called Storybank , it features stories of grassroots organizations working at the intersection of climate justice and other social challenges. Each entry includes a video, written summary, and more. The Solutions Project says they hope the resource “will help journalists better find and elevate stories from the frontlines of the climate crisis where communities are already experiencing devastating impacts.”

Jobs, Etc.

Jobs. Inside Climate News is hiring a Texas-based Clean Energy Reporter . CNN is hiring an Extreme Weather Editor in Hong Kong. 纽约时报 is seeking a Climate Writer for its Climate Forward newsletter. The Environmental Reporting Collective is recruiting a Managing Editor . The UK’s Prospect Magazine is hiring a regular columnist “to guide readers through the climate crisis.” Investigative Project on Race and Equity is hiring an Investigations Editor and Audience Engagement Specialist.

Fellowship. The Metcalf Institute at the University of Rhode Island is accepting applications from newsrooms in southern New England for its Climate and Environment Science Fellowship for Local Journalism , “a new initiative designed to support local newsrooms in their efforts to report on the science of climate and environmental change.”