The CBC Climate Emergency Campaign: A Review of CBC's Climate Reporting
In the face of the ever-expanding climate crisis, Canadians desperately need their public broadcaster to inform them of its causes, its solutions and the actions they can take to confront it.
Recent News: Watch or Read our Latest Updates
“As all good journalists can agree, words matter.
The ubiquity of climate news and the language employed should align with the gravity of what we confront.”
- Seth Klein, National Observer
Quiet Alarm: A Review of CBC's Climate Reporting is a community-engaged research project conducted by Community-Engaged Research Initiative at Simon Fraser University in collaboration with the Climate Emergency Unit aimed at improving the climate reporting of the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.
About this Report
The project coordinated 30 volunteers from across Canada to track the climate reporting on flagship CBC news programs over a two week period. The goal of the research project is to provide the Climate Emergency Unit with evidence and data of the strengths and weaknesses of the CBC/Radio-Canada’s climate reporting in order to make the case for reforms related to:
committing more resources and daily reporting to the causes of, solutions to, and urgency of, the climate crisis,
connecting the dots between extreme weather events and fossil fuel combustion,
and being more critical of false solutions that delay climate mitigation.
Climate Emergency Broadcast samples
One of the key recommendations found in Quiet Alarm: A Review of CBC’s Climate Reporting is for the CBC to develop a daily climate emergency broadcast to bring Canadians stories from the frontlines of the climate crisis, honestly informing them and inspiring them to action. In the interests of building the case for such a daily report, the CEU and SFU’s CERi teamed up to produce three sample broadcasts. These recordings, hosted by science journalist Ziya Tong, demonstrate what such a broadcast could sound like.
Please note that these demos have not been endorsed by the CBC.
Audio production and editing support provided by SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement.