The publication commits to covering the climate crisis for the week leading up to the UN Climate Action Summit on 23rd September.
In two weeks, the world’s eyes will be on New York for the UN Climate Action Summit. Run by the Columbia Journalism Review, over 170 outlets from across the world have pledged to reporting the climate emergency.
The Daily Mirror will be the first tabloid globally to support the initiative. In the UK, the i and The Guardian have also joined.
Editor Alison Phillips said: “It’s mind-boggling to me that some people still regard climate crisis as an issue for just a certain class of people. If anything, climate crisis will – in our lifetime – disproportionately affect some of the UK’s most hard up people. It is crucial that all of the press does the right thing in spreading this message and puts pressure on government to get its act together to protect British people.”
Nada Farhoud, Daily Mirror’s Environment Editor has already kickstarted a more dedicated approach to the paper’s climate coverage, having recently returned from a visit to Greenland to witness the impact of the climate crisis first-hand and overseeing a report from the Amazon. She has committed to covering the climate crisis prominently every day between September 15th-23rd, both online and in print. The Daily Mirror will also be sharing its content with other media owners and is open to using content sourced from other titles.
Farhoud said: “Fires are ravaging the Amazon, hundreds of species are going extinct every day and the Arctic is melting faster than scientists’ worst predictions. The effects of climate change cannot be told in just one story, neither is it the sole responsibility of broadsheets.
“Hopefully this will kickstart a conversation among other journalists on how we can all improve our coverage of the climate crisis.”
Mark Hertsgaard, author and environment correspondent for The Nation, has been coordinating the collaboration and said: “Covering Climate Now is a journalistic collaboration of more than 240 news outlets around the world with a combined audience of more than 1 billion people aimed at strengthening media coverage of the climate story, and we couldn’t be more pleased that the Daily Mirror is the first tabloid newspaper to join our effort.
“When the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation co-founded this initiative in April, our theory was that a critical mass of journalists and news outlets that wanted to do more climate coverage already existed, and that by highlighting that critical mass, we could also grow it. That’s exactly what’s happened, and we look forward to the fine coverage these outlets will run in the lead up to the UN Climate Action Summit in New York on 23rd September.”