Today marks the official launch of Covering Climate Now, a project co-sponsored by The Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation. Joined by The Guardian and others partners to be announced, Covering Climate Now will bring journalists and news outlets together to dramatically improve how the media as a whole covers the climate crisis and its solutions. ~ Bill Moyers, The Guardian
In the Guardian article headlined What if we covered the climate crisis like we did the start of the second world war?, Bill Moyers announces the beginning of serious truthful coverage of our climate catastrophe. Below is his speech to the conference of Covering Climate Now project of The Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation.
Bill Moyers brings back the memory and journalistic excellence of newsmen and newswomen as World War II begins with the invasion of Poland. Their very names are magic:
[Edward R.] Murrow of course, Eric Sevareid, William L Shirer, Larry LeSeuer, Charles Collingwood, Howard K Smith, William Randall Downs, Richard C. Hottelet, Winston Burdett, Cecil Brown, Thomas Grandin, and the one woman among them, Mary Marvin Breckinridge. You can read about them in The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism, a superb book by Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson.
Ordered by the CBS bosses to play entertaining dance music during the invasion, these real journalists rebelled:
“‘They say there’s so much bad news out of Europe, they want some good news,’ Murrow [in London] snapped to Shirer [in Berlin] over the phone. The show, scheduled to be broadcast just as Germany was about to rape Poland, would be called ‘Europe Dances’ … Finally, Murrow decreed, ‘The hell with those bastards in New York. It may cost us our jobs, but we’re just not going to do it’.”
And they didn’t. They defied the bosses—and gave CBS one of the biggest stories of the 20th century, the invasion of Poland.
Perhaps the shining exemplars of these courageous journalists who once dared to bring Americans the truth will once again come to our rescue.
Thank you, Bill Moyers! Thank you, Columbia Journalism Review! Thank you, The Nation!