Marcia Annenberg

Hush my Kush

66” x 66” — mixed media. The newspapers used in this piece highlight the under-reporting of the Hindu Kush Himalayan Assessment.

Because we have been raised to think that our press is the envy of the free world, we believe it to be so. On closer examination though, one must conclude, that this is no longer true. In fact, the 2019 World Press Freedom Index places America at #48 in press freedom. What does this mean for the American people? In documenting instances of the suppression of climate news, my artwork highlights this dark reality.

According to agenda setting theory outlined by McCombs and Shaw in 1968, if a news item is covered frequently, then the American people will regard it as important. The absence of climate related news, documented in Public Citizen’s 2018 report, Storms of Silence, states that because so little climate news is reported, we are at a loss to understand the gravity of global warming.

Welcome to the brave new world of inverse propaganda! News that is unreported can hurt us. Freedom of the press has come to mean that the press is free not to report the news. The irony is that the press is not the enemy of the people because of news that is reported – it’s the enemy of the people because of news that is withheld.