Newspapers daily need to point to the cover of the news that “is going to extinction because of global warming”

The elegant simplicity of his university office with a small circular table with ordinary chairs and a laptop contracted with his reputation as one of the world's best intellectuals. Now 90-year-old Noahm Chomsky keeps writing, and he's co-operating in a course on global and political crises at Arizona University, translates Periscope.

Outside his pre-creative work in linguistics, Chomsky has been a strong critic of American foreign policies and their links to a host of human rights violations and military aggression around the world. With his colleague, Ed Hermanin, Chomsky has developed a <x0 propaganda model” of corporate mass media to help explain the ability of political and economic elites to maintain ideological legitimacy. A series of filmworks, corporate ownership, advertising addiction, practices derived from estabilism, rage from right critics, and ideological anti-communism make the media function as a propaganda system that reinforces elites.

In recent years, Chomsky has turned his extraordinary mind towards the existential threat of global warming, a <x0 threat to the continuation of human organized life,” along with nuclear war. Now, in an exclusive interview for National Observer [NO] translated by Periscope, Chomsky addresses the specific relationship between media and climate crisis.

NO:

In recent years, you've been talking about how serious the climate crisis was and you've been offering many examples of how corporate media are inconsiderate to it. How would you assess the overall role of corporate media in dealing with that crisis? Do filters identified in the propaganda model prepared by you and Ed Herman help explain corporate media shortcomings for global warming, or do other factors make global warming a particularly difficult topic for journalism?

Chomsky:

Get a standard story. There are reports of what happens. So if you look at the New York Times today, for example, there are good articles on the new discoveries in the melting of polar ice that happen to be, as usual, even more drastic than we thought; this has become typical for a long time. And this discusses the potential impact on rising sea level, though conservatively, showing how dramatic it has been. Thus, there are regular articles that feature ʹ and that global warming is not ignored as the subject. On the other hand, if you look at a standard article in oil exploration, the New York Times may have an article on how the United States is walking towards what they call “energy independence”, moving to the production of fuels and Saudi Arabia and Russia, opening new areas, Wyoming, Midestin, for digging. They make a long article, maybe a thousand words I have in mind one that mentions environmental consequences, indicating that it will harm water resources for local farmers, but literally not a single word for the effects on global warming. And that happens after the article everywhere, the Financial Times, New York Time, and all the big newspapers. So it's like on one side, there's a kind of vision of the tunnel science reports that are constantly saying, “look, this is a disaster, this is” but then regularly some kind of media coverage that ignores it, and says, “po, isn't it wonderful, we don't have to import oil, we're going to be stronger,” and so on.

NO:

So they don't make the meaningful reporting connection?

Chomsky:

It's like some kind of schizophrenic, all over society. Take the big banks, JP Morgan Chase, for example. They're the biggest bank and its executive director, Jamie Dimon, is a wise man. I'm sure he knows the basic facts about the threat of global warming, but at the same time, they make investments in the extraction of fuels, because that's the business model. They should get the profit tomorrow.

NO:

So the general role of media has been to fail the connection between points?

Chomsky:

Of course, I'm talking about liberal media. If you tell me, Fox News is much different: global warming is just not happening. And in fact, it appears in public opinion. Nearly half of the Republicans simply deny that global warming is happening. And, the other half, it's not safe if man has anything to do with it.

NO:

Is there any alternative to journalism? How else would it be operated to address global warming?

Chomsky:

Every single newspaper must have a report on its forehead every day that says we are heading towards total disaster. In some generations to come, organized human society may not survive. This idea must be kept in mind constantly. After all, there was no such thing in all human history. The current generation must make the decision whether organized human society will survive several more generations, and this must be done immediately because there is no time. And withdrawing from the Paris climate deal that Trump made should be considered one of the most cruel crimes in history.

Translated with cuts from Nationalobserver.