ABC News and Climate Emergency: A Public Forum
The climate emergency is here. Has ABC News been reporting like it?
For years, the country’s most-watched TV news outlet stayed mostly silent on climate change. And when it did break its silence, it ran lackluster, incomplete coverage.
However, ABC News recently created a dedicated climate unit and committed to tell a variety of climate stories this November as COP26 got underway. Has it been enough to undo the ignorance and confusion caused by its past silence? Is ABC News now treating the climate crisis like the biggest national and global emergency of our times?
Join our virtual public forum for a discussion on ABC News’ climate coverage. We will dive into what is needed from media organizations at the 11th hour of this climate emergency, and how we can push organizations to report on climate with more accountability, with our featured panelists:
- David Fenton, founder of Fenton: The Social Change Agency (one of the country’s leading progressive communications firms)
- Hanna E. Morris, PhD, researcher of media, culture, and the climate crisis and current postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
- Ben Franta, PhD, JD, researcher of climate accountability and current PhD student at Stanford
- Amy Westervelt, founder and executive producer of the Critical Frequency podcast network and the Drilled podcast, and co-host/co-author of the Hot Take podcast and newsletter
We have also invited executives and producers from ABC News and Disney (ABC News’ parent company) to our speaker line-up. We hope that they can join us and present their perspectives and plans on climate coverage.