Wildfires best coverage and a look at how the media report on nuclear energy
Discover who reported beyond the breaking news as Canada experienced its worst wildfire season in recorded history.
July 24 2023
🔥🌲 This newsletter is 1,205 words long, a 9.3-minute read. 🔥🌲
In this edition of the newsletter, with the news of the past few weeks being flooded with stories about the worst wildfire season in Canada’s recorded history, we decided to include the ones that covered them the best. We also have a special interview with Canadian researchers examining the implications and discourses of nuclear energy in the country!
With the intensity of the wildfires news coverage, many conspiracies have emerged and misinformation is being spewed on social media. The Narwhal’s It isn't arson: untangling climate misinformation around Canada’s raging wildfires and Le Devoir’s Des feux de forêt qui alimentent les fausses nouvelles sur le Web are great reads which debunk some of the biggest Canadian forest fire myths.
As we continued to see many headlines about the fires, we found ourselves having a few questions: How are the media making the connexion with climate change? What are some solutions to combat wildfires? The articles Experts explain link between wildfires and climate change by CTV News, Le caribou épargné, la régénération des forêts menacée by La Presse, Des solutions pour diminuer les risques liés aux feux de forêt by Le Devoir, and Cree Nation evaluating wider impacts of wildfires by CBC News do an excellent job have most of the answers and beyond!
We also wish to highlight the troubling and powerful photographs by Québec photo journalist Renaud Philippe, published in The New York Times.
Continue on to read our interview with Janice Harvey, Susan O’Donnell and Harrison Dressler who share their research about nuclear energy and the news.
Brianna
Marketing of nuclear energy: A delay tactic for climate action?
“If all you hear about nuclear energy is that it’s cheap, wonderful, you can deploy it quickly and that nuclear waste is covered, which is the industry’s promotion material, then, of course, you want it.” — Susan O’Donnell, adjunct research professor, University of St. Thomas
By Brianna Losinger-Ross and Mélanie Lussier
Interest in nuclear power plants is growing in New Brunswick, with promises of revolutionizing the province’s energy landscape and reshaping the economy. All the while, small modular reactors (SMR, or mini nuclear power plants, if you will) have been mostly depicted by the media as a magic bullet that could replace coal in our race towards net zero, researchers say. On top of it, very little space is given to Indigenous voices in this debate.
Susan O’Donnell and Janice Harvey, researchers at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B., have begun the preliminary work for a new research project which examines the discourses around various types of energy in the media, focusing on nuclear and other alternative pathways.
They presented their work at this year’s Canadian Communication Association (CCA) Conference hosted in June at York University, Toronto, where we met with them. We also interviewed Harrison Dressler, a graduate student at Queen’s University, whose research explores the media coverage of small modular reactors (SMRs) in New Brunswick.
Susan O’Donnell and Janice Harvey at the 2023 CCA Conference at York University in Toronto. Photo by Brianna Losinger-Ross
According to the 2018 Nuclear Energy in Canada Energy Market Assessment, nuclear energy accounts for 15 per cent of Canada’s power generation.
Is nuclear energy truly “greener” and better for the environment? Or are nuclear energy corporations and other industry players pushing the same narratives that were once used by fossil fuel companies?
“There is a capitalist nature to this nuclear pathway,” Janice Harvey says. “There’s a sort of large-scale corporate control, with capital intensive and high-impact technology that keeps the profits flowing.”
O’Donnell and Harvey say that not only are there many direct environmental hazards impacting mining communities, which are often also Indigenous communities, there is also the fact that nuclear energy produces nuclear waste, which will need to be “managed for eternity.”
Critically examining how nuclear technologies are being discussed is very important to them as they believe that not understanding the energy source in its entirety may lead to consequences, like climate inaction.
“The nuclear technologies are still speculative,” O’Donnell says. She sees in their marketing a “delay tactic”: keeping the status quo, and delaying real climate action.
Indigenous Voices Ignored
While their research is still in its early stages, other researchers have also been examining media coverage of nuclear energy.
Harrison Dressler’s research explores the dominant narratives surrounding SMRs and is focused on the analysis of English-language print media in the province. He perused through 205 different articles pulled from the three anglophone dailies available in New Brunswick: the Telegraph-Journal (Saint John), the Times & Transcript (Moncton), and the Daily Gleaner (Fredericton).
Harrison Dressler presented his research at the 2023 CCA Conference at York University in Toronto. Photo by Mélanie Lussier.
He noted a clear inclination towards pro-nuclear frames, but was mostly taken aback by the lack of Indigenous perspectives in the discussion around small modular reactors. Among the 379 sources included in the articles that he analyzed, there were only five (1.3 per cent) that came from Indigenous communities. “That was a little bit shocking,” Dressler says.
“I expected Indigenous perspectives to be included in some capacity, at least to showcase the market benefits of SMRs,” he says. “Because the way in which SMR technology [is supposed to] lift everyone up was definitely a talking point.”
And he can only stress the importance of Indigenous insights in the public deliberation and decision-making processes related to small modular reactors.
“The Peskotomuhkati and the Wolastoqey have both advocated for an intergenerational approach—so not just the next 5 years but the next 100, 200 years,” he says. Their conceptions of land and of how human beings should interact with the natural environment differ from liberal, pro-capitalist perspectives, which see land as something to either overcome or exploit,” he adds,
Aside from that, the researcher was surprised to find that the public was very much divided, almost split down the middle, when it comes to the SMR debate.
“I expected there to be a stronger either pro or anti sentiment, but I think that this shows how the wider discourse and public interpretations surrounding this issue differ dramatically from what is being [put forward by] industry and government actors,” he says.
But how does Dressler explain that the media coverage of SMRs by New Brunswick’s English-language print media tends to favour pro-nuclear perspectives drawn from actors in industry and government?
He identifies media ownership and centralization as his most plausible hypothesis.
“In 2021, 80% of daily news [in New Brunswick] were owned by a single company,” Dressler says, referencing the 2021 Snapshot of Canada’s Newspaper Industry. “They no longer provide statistics on that information; however, I imagine that it is now either the same or worse.”
He also points out that the access to financial resources from the industry, and the government’s access to media could also play a role in all this.
With his research, Dressler says he hopes to change people’s awareness of what climate action means, and what prompts significant climate action.
“I do think there is a lot of, not just misinformation and lying, but a misunderstanding on the comprehensive approach that environmental action needs and the holistic causes of [climate change],” he says.
According to Dressler, climate change is much more than about reducing emissions.
“Any climate solution that does not take into consideration a conversation on decolonization, Indigenous perspectives and lifeways, and the production and consumption of materials won’t be effective long-term,” he concludes.
The Climate and the Media in Canada newsletter is brought to you by Concordia Journalism assistant professor Amélie Daoust-Boisvert and her team. It’s made possible because of support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Questions, feedback? Reach out at cmrconcordia@gmail.com
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This month, the newsletter is signed by Brianna Losinger-Ross and Mélanie Lussier. Editor-in-chief and editor Amélie Daoust-Boisvert.