Pacific Magazine: Media To Help "Elevate" Work On Climate Change In The Region

The Pacific region has taken a new approach towards climate change by partnering with media organisations from in the Pacific to help them report on the issue as comprehensively as possible.

MEDIA: Time for a Global Glasnost, Says Gorbachev

VENICE, Oct 14 (IPS) - Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev has warned against the danger of letting the global financial crisis and other emergencies overshadow media attention on climate change.
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"Some business industries are ready to pay to silence the truth, that is why it's time for a global Glasnost," he said. Glasnost (openness), a mantra of Gorbachev's perestroika (restructuring), was intended to educate people about social and political responsibility.

According to Gorbachev, without good information there is "no social awareness, and it is too hard to find solutions to the threatening global crisis." The issue was on the table at a two-day international meeting organised by the World Political Forum -- the global intellectual group founded by Gorbachev to monitor the key processes of globalisation -- in cooperation with the Italian province of Venice. Leading experts and media professionals from around the world discussed the role of the media in informing public opinion on these issues.

The meeting held in Venice Oct. 10-11 called on international media to improve public understanding of the impact of climate change.

"Time is running out," Gorbachev said. "The most efficient way to tackle the urgent environmental problems our planet is facing is transparency, and the media have a vital role to play."

The function of journalism in the debate over climate change is to "distil the essential facts of climate change, and explain them to their audiences," experts agreed in a final statement from the meeting.

The debate pointed to the central responsibility of the media in reclaiming the truth about climate change. "Through investigative reporting, news organisations should be active participants in the debate over global warming, rather than simple spectators, and push politicians and scientists to inform the public of the facts as they are known," the final statement says.