RTÉ Refuses To Address Climate Coverage Failings
The world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than any other year on record, putting us on a path to irreversible climate destruction that will lead to the deaths of millions and the displacement of billions of people in our lifetime – not to mention the loss of one third of all plant and animal species by 2070.
Yet, if you looked at the Irish press on a daily basis you would see that almost every outlet is still acting as if it is business-as-usual – hell, they still illustrate stories about irreversible climate destruction with photos of melting ice creams and smiling women in bikinis.
Nowhere is the failure of the Irish media to address the severity and urgency of the Climate Crisis more apparent than the publicly-funded RTÉ. Amidst promises of “doubling-down” on climate coverage, the broadcaster and news agency has cut Eco Eye from its schedule and continues to fail to connect the majority of its climate-related stories with the Climate Crisis.
You may recall our previous article assessing whether RTÉ had lived up to previous promises to improve its Climate Crisis coverage (it hasn’t).
Since that was written, RTÉ has appointed a new Managing Director of News & Current Affairs – Deirdre McCarthy – who we approached to discuss her plans to address the broadcaster’s shortfall in climate coverage. RTÉ’s response tells you everything you about how deprioritised the Climate Emergency is for them.
RTÉ in Context
RTÉ is clearly under the misconception that climate coverage is a separate, isolated topic.
They’re happy to write about ‘how to shop online sustainably’, ‘seven day planetary diets’ and ‘water saving tips’ – all well-intentioned, but often the content under their climate header doesn’t relate to the Climate Crisis at all, or at least somewhat overlooks the sheer scale of the Climate Emergency that we already face, let alone what is to come.
However, it is in their wider news reporting that they are consistently failing the Irish public. This is particularly apparent in the business articles, where news stories read more like press releases than critical, insightful and educational journalism – with their reporting on the aviation industry showing just how deprioritised coverage of the Climate Crisis really is.
60% of RTÉ’s stories about Ryanair in 2022 promoted increased use and expanded services, but just 7% of its articles included any mention of ‘emissions’ or ‘climate’ - and those that did promoted unscientific greenwashing. Credit: RTÉ
The aviation industry has the same emissions as the 6th largest emitting country in the world, and Ryanair is Ireland’s single biggest greenhouse gas emitter in Ireland. Yet of the 43 articles that RTÉ published about Ryanair in 2022, only 3 mentioned the word ‘emissions’ or ‘climate’ – all of which promoted the idea of ‘sustainable’ aviation fuel that has been repeatedly identified as a greenwashing tactic.
As such 93% of RTÉ’s articles about Ireland’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter failed to even mention the direct link between aviation and the Climate Crisis.
This comes at the same time that 60% of RTÉ’s articles about Ryanair promoted a positive story about expansion or increased use of the airline, such as ‘Biggest ever flight schedule’. With references to ‘emissions’ or ‘climate’ left out of every single one.
This headline is predicated on a single email. But apparently that is ample excuse for RTÉ to promote an anti-Climate Action stance. Credit: RTÉ
Another great example of RTÉ’s failure to accurately report on the breadth and scale of the Climate Crisis can be seen in an article entitled ‘Forests now cover 11.6% of Irish land, new figures show’.
This article entirely neglects to mention that this is non-native forest (semi-natural forest only accounts for 1.5%) which offers no biodiversity benefits and is planted purely for the trees to be cut down for commercial gain
Eoghan Daltun, writer of An Irish Atlantic Rainforest, stated in a thread on Twitter: “The Irish public is currently being subjected to a barrage of disinformation about our ‘forests’, clearly intended to soften us up for even MORE monocultures. There’s so much of it in this @RTÉ piece, for eg, it’s hard to know where to even start…”
His post garnered 157 Retweets and 535 Likes – demonstrating the level of public frustration that the Irish media so regularly platforms misinformation and greenwashing, while purporting to cover the Climate Crisis.
A quick glance at RTÉ’s political coverage tells the same story.
On 12th February, while we were waiting for a response from RTÉ for this article, their Political Correspondent Mícheál Lehane published an article titled ‘Public to Varadkar: Stand up to Greens, don’t be smug’.
The title of the article, which suggests an anti-Climate Action stance, is predicated on a single email that was sent to the Taoiseach's office. A whole article, which is based on nothing but a random and selective collection of opinion, from Ireland’s national broadcaster is used to diminish the threat of the Climate Crisis.
Yes, other opinions were selected to be shared by the journalist - such as “Leo, I see you have returned. What happened to Martin?” – but RTÉ chose to have an anti-Climate Action agenda for the headline.
Again, members of the Irish public on Twitter were quick to point out the obvious bias and harm posed by the selective headline, as well as the lack of value in a national media outlet publishing letters.
Which is why we wanted to ask RTÉ’s leadership about these issues. What came next was, sadly, wholly unsurprising but concerning nonetheless…
No Answer, No Accountability
We approached new Managing Director of News & Current Affairs, Deirdre McCarthy, with a number of questions about RTÉ’s previous promises to improve its reporting on the Climate Crisis.
These included:
How she planned to change reporting on the Climate Crisis under her leadership
If it acknowledged the failure to include the Climate Emergency in its business coverage – particularly in its aviation reporting
[Click to expand] The above is the entirely self-promotional response that we received from RTÉ’s Communications Manager. In this instance RTÉ chose to entirely ignore the relevant questions that we posed and instead elected to use this as an opportunity to promote the small and broad initiatives they have undertaken, which are wholly undermined by their overall approach to ignoring the Climate Crisis outside climate-specific content. Credit: IrishEVs
Whether it would consider following the lead of other publications by using ‘Climate Crisis’ instead of ‘Climate Change’ to reflect the urgency and severity of the Climate Emergency that we already face
Whether RTÉ would increase the public transparency of where it met its promises to ‘double-down’ on climate reporting, and where it can improve
It is with great disappointment that we never received any form of reply from Deirdre McCarthy, and instead only received correspondence from RTÉ’s Communications Manager.
We have included a screenshot of the self-serving response from RTÉ’s PR representative, which fails to address a single one of the legitimate questions that we posed to Deirdre McCarthy.
When we informed RTÉ that we are not in the practice of blindly running promotional PR lines that don’t relate to the specific questions that we posed and that we would state that RTÉ had refused to comment on them, we were accused of not providing a fair right of reply – despite us approaching RTÉ in the first place to address this.
Instead, we were sent a patronising email from their Communications Manager stating “We appreciate your interest in the topic and can assure you that RTÉ takes the matter of climate coverage seriously”.
We are rapidly running out of time to reduce emissions and stave off the worst outcomes of the Climate Crisis. This requires mass education and action, but the Irish media is still treating it as business-as-usual. Credit: Our World In Data
As we have made clear before, our ‘interest in the topic’ stems from the fact that we are facing the sixth mass extinction on Earth, which will lead to irreversible changes in the planet’s climate and threaten all life.
The consistent failure of our media, including RTÉ, is making this considerably more likely.
It is clear from both our previous correspondence with RTÉ and this latest engagement, where the Managing Director of News & Current Affairs hid behind a PR team who deliberately chose not to address a single one of our questions that they neither take reporting on the Climate Crisis seriously, nor do they believe they should be held publicly accountable – despite being publicly funded.
This comes at a time when the effects of the Climate Crisis are being felt more than ever before, when climate famines are causing mass starvation and millions of people were displaced by climate events in 2022 alone.
Without proper media coverage of this Crisis we cannot hope to educate the public about what we will face in the years to come or cut emissions before we pass the tipping point, and RTÉ knows this. It just doesn’t care.
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