Parts of Spain and France resembled hellscapes this week as wildfires tore through regions, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
But while dramatic photos of the flames and onlookers dominated front pages, the reporting of the wildfires was inconsistent, found media and environment expert Doug Specht. He notes: “Europe’s fires were written up as a combination of holidays spoiled, energy policy rows, domestic civil protection issues and continental emergencies.”
What separates the different approaches is how far back each story begins, and how much attention is paid to the spectacular and immediate over the underlying and long-building climate factors. “The issue is how to avoid readers assuming that a fire is the whole story, when the event is, in fact, just the moment at which a long process becomes attention grabbing. When reporting stops there, it is accurate about the day but misleading about the decade,” writes Specht.
At The Conversation we strive to provide the deeper context. So throughout the week, we have published articles explaining how global warming has set the conditions and why the wildfires generate extreme weather elsewhere, as well as showcasing some ways to improve wildfire risk management.
Elsewhere, we have been taking a deeper peek into the U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal and pondering: How do we know what dinosaurs really looked like?
