It is the most important news humanity has ever received: the general collapse of life on Earth. So it’s hardly surprising that it appeared on the front pages of only two of our newspapers (the Guardian and the Independent). The vast international assessment of the state of nature, whose results, released on Monday, reveal that the living planet is in a death spiral, didn’t make even the sidebar on the front of any other paper. Of all the varieties of media bias, the deepest is the bias against relevance. The more important the issue, the less it is discussed.
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| Industrial fishing - a key issue in the collapse of life on Earth. |
There’s a reason for this. Were we to become fully aware of our predicament, we would demand systemic change. Systemic change is highly threatening to those who own the media. So they distract us with such baubles as a royal baby and a vicious dispute between neighbours about a patio. I am often told we get the media we deserve. We do not. We get the media its billionaire owners demand.
This means that the first duty of a journalist is to cover neglected issues. So I want to direct you to the 70% of the planet that was sidelined even in the sparse coverage of the new report: the seas. Here, life is collapsing even faster than on land. The main cause, the report makes clear, is not plastic. It is not pollution, not climate breakdown, not even the acidification of the ocean. It is fishing. Because commercial fishing is the most important factor, this is the one we talk about least. The BBC’s recent Blue Planet Live series, carefully avoiding any collision with powerful interests, epitomised this reticence.
Read the story by Guardian columnist George Monbiot - “Net Curtains.”
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