Censored in 2019: Minimizing Omnicide

Following the lead of Project Censored, I like to do an annual column on what was (in my view) the most censored story of the previous  year. Censored 2020 (Seven Stories Press) names the "Justice Department's Secret FISA Rules For Targeting Journalists" as the most censored story of 2019. 

Founded in 1976 by Dr. Carl Jensen of Sonoma State University, Project Censored remains a vital advocate for media literacy, rigorous journalism, and speaking truth to power

What I've always appreciated about Project Censored is that it frames censorship not merely as an effort by governments to silence citizens, but more importantly as a failure of the so-called free press to create a sense of urgency for stories that often carry life and death consequences.Project Censored writers understand that underreporting, ignoring, and/or misrepresenting critical stories is much worse than formal state censorship in the sense that the latter is relatively rare while underreporting and other "soft" methods of censorship are the norm.  

The horrific fires still raging in Australia (27 million acres burned and at least 1.25 BILLION animals killed) are the most unfortunate example of the consequences of what happens when a life-and-death story is inadequately reported for many years. University of Sydney Ecologist Chris Dickman states what should be--but tragically is not--obvious to most people by this point in history: 

"What we're seeing is the effects of climate change. Sometimes, it's said too that Australia is the canary in the coal mine with the effects of climate change being seen here most severely and earliest, as well. We're probably looking at what climate change may look like for other parts of the world in the first stages in Australia at the moment."

Perhaps the most powerful response to the Australian travesty so far is from University of Sydney Sociologist Danielle Celermajer. She argues that as of yet there has not existed an agreed upon term to describe the true nature of modern environmental devastation. "Ecocide," the killing of ecosystems, for Celermajer does not go far enough. She suggests "omnicide"--the killing of everything--as a term that should strike ethical human beings to action in the same way that "genocide" does when we become aware of its existence. (Celermajor is not the first scholar to employ the term omnicide. In 1990 Lisl Marburg Goodman and Lee Ann Hoff released a book that used omnicide to describe the consequences of nuclear annihilation.). 

Professor Danielle Celermajer argues that the term "omnicide"--the death of everything--should be used to describe the extent of environmental devastation occurring in the world today. She asserts that media industries aid and abet omnicide in a variety of ways. 

Celermajor acknowledges that the responsibility for omnicide is "various and layered" and as such not a simple case of pointing to one bad actor. Significantly and accurately, she identifies media as one of the primary bad actors aiding and abetting the crime of omnicide:

"We can identify the media owners who sponsor mass denial of the scientific evidence of the effects of a fossil fuel addicted economy on the climate. The same media owners who deploy the tools of mass manipulation to stoke fear, seed confusion, breed ignorance and create and then fuel hostile divisions within communities."

The mass denial of scientific evidence has been in place for a long time. For the sake of argument, let's stipulate that Dr. James Hansen's June 23, 1988 testimony before the US Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee was the first clarion call necessary to provoke action on global warming. Did the mainstream media at that point treat the issue as an emergency worthy of nonstop coverage until global leaders could be compelled to take meaningful action? 

No. Global warming instead has been underreported, ignored, and (especially in the United States) misrepresented. In Europe, the United States and Australia there emerged a "climate denial industry" with extensive reach in mainstream media. In Australia, the Rupert Murdoch press has played an active role in downplaying any link between bushfires and climate change. 

Last year the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation started a "Covering Climate Now" initiative designed to get journalists to remember their "Paul Revere responsibilities--to awaken, inform, and rouse the people to action." 

Given the standard climate censorship of 2019 and the thirty-plus years of mostly pitiful coverage of the environment, it's not clear that any journalistic initiative is enough to get us caught up to where we need to be to confront the gravity of the omnicide facing us. But I guess we have to start somewhere.