Fifty-six newspapers written in 20 different languages agreed to publish an editorial yesterday that asks world leaders gathering at the Copenhagen summit on climate change to take action to fight rising temperatures worldwide.
Hey, nobody loves a grand gesture more than I do, and I've got nothing against the effort to fight global warming, but this idea just strikes me as useless. The editorial urges the world to "combine to take decisive action" against climate change. "Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone." Um...OK! Let's get on that.
After covering untold numbers of press conferences and summits at the U.N. where someone urged someone else to take action against something, I began to feel that there was no news to report if the words "urge" and "take action" were used anywhere near each other. There has been a great deal of hubbub around Copenhagen but I pity the poor journalists who will have to cover the darn thing _ 14 tedious days of long-winded, well-meaning and vague speeches will be followed by the ridiculous dance of diplomats quibbling over every word of a final statement that will not be binding to any of them anyhow.
I don't see what would compel world leaders to base their actions on an editorial, even one that appeared in 56 newspapers. World leaders urge us to take action on things all the time, and we ignore them. We urge world leaders to take action on things, and they ignore us too. This thing has as much of a chance of changing the minds of world leaders as do the thousands of protesters who will smash windows and do silly things to "raise awareness" outside the summit hall.
Even worse, the newspapers seem terribly smug about the whole thing _ writing this news story, for example, to trumpet their heroic effort. Just once I would like to see a newspaper quote someone skeptical when reporting on one of its own grand initiatives. From the story:
"Peter Cole, head of the journalism department at the University of Sheffield, praised the unprecedented collaboration between newspapers."
Surprise surprise! So much for objective news reporting.
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