I was quite excited on Friday morning as I waited patiently for the clock to tick over to 9:00am. Why? I was purchasing tickets to Live Earth, a concert being held in July to promote awareness about global warming. Tickets to the day even cover the cost of public transport to the event. After buying my tickets, I soon saw interviews popping up everywhere, from radio news bullitins to JTV and Video Hits on Saturday morning.
“Live Earth will be a legendary music event – 9 concerts, over 100 headlining music acts, 24 hours of music across all 7 continents broadcast to over 2 billion people.” (http://www.liveearth.org)
So I was wondering if the mainstream media have warmed to the idea, or if they just dismissed it like they did with Earth Hour a few months back – with only SMH (Earth Hour’s official sponser) backing it up. The first article I found was from Sunday Mail, which said,
“ROCK legend Roger Daltrey has blasted the July 7 Live Earth concerts, saying burning more oil would do more to solve climate change.
The Who’s singer questioned the value of the event, saying a better idea would be to “burn all the oil” to force world leaders to act. He told London’s The Sun newspaper: “We have problems with global warming but the questions and the answers are so huge I don’t know what a rock concert’s ever going to do to help.” ” (Sunday Mail: Climate Gig Gets Blasted, 20 May 2007)
(The Who: Roger Daltrey far left)
I thought this was interesting, because the paper (based in Adelaide) has recognised the value of prominence – that is, the value of Roger Daltrey – and has stirred in a twang of conflict. It’s almost a cross-breed between a celebrity gossip column, and hard news. Roger Daltrey Vs The World.
I found similar vibes of dissent from The Sunday Age:
“FIRST, we rocked to feed the world. Then we rocked to raise money to rebuild after the tsunami. Two years ago, the pop stars massed to rock against debt recovery in the Third World. At least, I think that’s what Live 8 aimed to do. Not that it made any difference.
And now we’re asked to put our hands in the air like we really care about the environment at Live Earth, a multinational phantasmagoric series of stadium concerts on July 7, with the grand aim of “raising awareness of global warming”… That’s not only a waste of time but a gross indulgence. It’s just a green rubber bracelet to string on your arm next to the white rubber band that will magically make poverty history, and the yellow one that cures cancer… It strikes me that the amount of goodwill, money, political nous and energy being funnelled into these concerts could be put to better use lobbying some of the sponsors – and participants – to rein in their own consumption.” (The Sunday Age: Live Earth: useful as a green bracelet, 20 May 2007)
Donal Lynch from Ireland’s The Sunday Independant held similar views of cynicism, this time directed at Bob Geldof:
“How maddening for Bob Geldof. Summer is here and a big pop jamboree is going to take place in London and he’s not a part of it. This time it’s Al Gore’s big climate-change concert, which is being dubbed Live Earth, that’s making the headlines and Bob is not happy, claiming that the name is so similar to Live Aid that his office is getting loads of calls wondering if he’s involved. But of course he’s taking it with his usual good humour, ranting that Gore’s concert is pointless and claiming “we’re all fucking conscious of global warming”.
There, there diddums; nobody’s ignoring you. We haven’t forgotten that you’re public do-gooder number one. I’m sure when Madonna and Coldplay and the others realise what a terrible mistake they’ve made in supporting this “good cause” they’ll come crawling back.”" (The Sunday Independent: Sir Bob and the Live Ego saga, 20 May 2007)
So it seems that yet again, there is little support for the event, other than that coming from the official sponsers. Most of the articles focus on conflict (Bob Geldof Vs Al Gore), and through their sarcasm write-off the seriousness of the effort against global warming in a style similar to that of human-interest stories. The concert is still a month and a half away, no doubt there will be more hype as it draws nearer.
So I found one of the main news values with the Live Earth issue was prominence – who said what about whom. Also, as the concert is held worldwide, its an issue of the reach of the issue, rather than the impact (i.e breadth rather than depth).
