On November 30, 2020, ‘CCNow’ partner CBS, 〈Times of India〉 and 〈El Pais〉 interviewed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres together. ⓒCCNow At the general meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in October 2018, 195 member countries unanimously adopted the ‘Global Warming 1.5℃ Special Report’. The agreement is to limit the global average temperature from rising by more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level. Mark Hertzgaard, an environmental reporter for The Nation, was also covering the 1.5°C report that year. Scientists said an unprecedented transformation is needed in each sector, including energy, finance, construction, transportation and agriculture, to keep the temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius. At that time, no scientist was referring to the ‘media’. It was then that the Hertzgard reporter’s mind flashed. “If the media doesn’t change, it’s hard to make a breakthrough.” Only when citizens’ perceptions change can pressure the government or corporations to lead change in other areas. And the media can do that. That’s how the ‘Covering Climate Now (CCNow)’ initiative, in which more than 500 media companies around the world participate, began. On October 14, we met with CCNow co-founder Mark Hertzgaard at his personal office in San Francisco, USA. When he rang the doorbell, he went down the stairs to meet the reporters and handed him an ‘elbow greeting’. The elbows of the knitwear worn by the Hertz Guard reporter exposed the shirt underneath him. He laughed, saying he wears his old clothes instead of throwing them away. “We founded CCNow to break the ‘climate silence’” Climate silence indicates that many media outlets around the world have not paid much attention to the climate crisis and have reacted lukewarmly. “Especially compared to Europe, the US report on the climate crisis is about 10 years behind. The major American media did not cover the climate crisis well.” CCNow, established in April 2019, shares materials, guides, and ideas for reporting climate crisis with partners. Periodically, we share the challenges of reporting the climate crisis with climate experts and fellow journalists, and find out what we can do to make good coverage. It also collaborates with partners to report. “My fellow journalists know how to tell a story,” Hertzgaard said. What they don’t know is how to report the climate crisis. CCNow helps with that in a number of ways.” Currently, there are about 500 media outlets around the world with CCNow. Unless you are a ‘climate crisis denier’ who claims that there is no climate crisis, the threshold to become a partner of CCNow is not high. There is no subscription fee and there are no compulsory articles to write. In Korea, ‘Newstree’, ‘Dong-A Science’, ‘Chosun Biz’ and TBS are participating as partners (as of October 2022). CCNow estimates the total number of subscribers that each partner’s reports reach is 2 billion. For Korean journalists who are accustomed to ‘independent competition’, collaboration between media companies is unfamiliar. According to a survey of 310 Korean journalists by the Korea Press Foundation in 2020, 88.4% answered that collaboration with other companies is ‘not active’. There were opinions that a sense of competition among media companies (40.6%) and conflicts of interest between media companies (31.3%) prevent collaboration. “I know I have no choice but to compete realistically,” Hertzgaard said. We are not trying to stop competition. Rather, they look for ways to use competition to collaborate.” CCNow partners interviewed Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, Alokh Sharma, Chair of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26), and U.S. Congressman Jamie Raskin. Three media companies collaborated on Thunberg interview Greta Thunberg’s interview was collaborated with
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Press, compete, but collaborate.
