Twenty five years in the telling: climate change and energy on BBC News

Speaker: Roger Harrabin, BBC Environment Analyst

The BBC was the first global news organisation consistently to give in-depth coverage to climate change and its implications in the 1990s, and Roger Harrabin has been one of BBC News’ most prominent specialist journalists telling the story across this period. In this public lecture Roger will, for the first time, reflect on his twenty five year experience of:

• the challenges to news editors and journalists presented by climate change
• the way the craft and culture of news can impede but on occasion enable public engagement
• the achievements and failures of news coverage at the climate-energy join

Roger has recorded a dozen extensive interviews with a range of key players in energy debates for documentaries he is preparing for Radio 4. The full interviews contribute to the AHRC funded Stories of Change project. This initiative is supporting fresh approaches to thinking about the past, present and future of energy. Roger will draw on some of these interviews and his other preparations for the forthcoming UN climate conference to reflect on where the energy and climate story might go next, and how he and his colleagues might best tell it.

Roger’s lecture is part of the large scale Stories of Change project.

To register for attendance, please email StoriesofChange@open.ac.uk or call Jan Smith at the Open University on 01908 654456.