BIO
Silvia García (Murcia, 1966) has a career in television that stretches back 35 years, starting with public broadcaster TVE, where in 1994 she was part of the founding team of La 2 Noticias, charged with a task then without precedent in the Spanish TV landscape; to bring environmental coverage to a daily news program. In August 1998, she was hired as an environmental reporter at Antena 3 Noticias, and has worked since then to keep nature at the forefront of the news agenda. She receives the Award for Knowledge Dissemination and Communication in Biodiversity Conservation in Spanish for raising the television profile of environmental news, uniting quality and scientific solvency with an upbeat approach that appeals to a wide audience.
Her decades-long career as a committed environmental specialist on the news programs of different channels has leaned from the start towards “green journalism,” as the award jury remarked, a predilection inspired by her love for the countryside and the mountains. “Since I was a child I have felt the need to communicate with others through nature,” she recalls, reflecting on her early years in her chosen profession: “I didn’t decide to be an environmental journalist. Quite the contrary, it was the environment that pushed me into journalism.”
From her beginnings as a reporter, García was convinced that young people had an appetite for stories about nature, and that the subject deserved a space of its own in television news. “I thought it should have a dedicated section, like national, international, economic or sports news. The environment is an essential part of our lives, yet it would often be the first content dropped from the schedule. But am not one to back down, so now the viewers of Antena 3’s weekend bulletin knows that they will always find environmental coverage. It’s a pledge we have made.”
It is this tenacity that has ensured that the broadcaster’s commitment to environmental coverage has stood the test of time. “It’s easy to get environment stories into the news, because there is always some curiosity value attached,” says García. “What’s harder is to keep them there day after day, and that’s where you also want the support of a TV channel that believes citizens have a deep need for environmental content. This support has helped me get environmental news into Spanish households. People in the street stop and tell me what stuff they are interested in, what they care about, what worries them, what they like… and we’re there to give them the story and the image, the all-powerful image.”
García is clear that the environment deserves a place at the very top of the news agenda. Yet it frequently has to compete with other content, despite being ubiquitous in viewers’ lives: “The environment is the first thing we see when we wake up, it’s what we breathe, what we eat; it is all around us every day,” she reflects. “But for many it is not a dedicated page in a newspaper or a regular section in a news bulletin. We need to report on the environment as an everyday topic, just as we do for other kinds of news.”
In the course of her career, she has covered world climate summits – Kyoto, Copenhagen and Madrid – in the conviction that “climate change is a determining factor for biodiversity,” as well as what she describes as “human and environmental disasters”: Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua and Honduras, the earthquake in Haiti, and the tsunami that affected the Fukushima nuclear power plant. In Spain, she reported on the Prestige disaster and the 2006 wildfires, both in Galicia, and the Aznalcóllar mine spill in Andalusia.
But García is no fan of confining environmental news to its most tragic side: “That would be yellow journalism. As journalists we have to convey what is happening, but if you say whales are dying, you also have to say what can be done to prevent it and who is engaged in doing just that. We can’t not report on the problems, but we must also discuss solutions and how we can contribute to them individually and collectively.” In effect, she has little time for the catastrophist approach, preferring “rigor, credibility and journalism, the tool that allows us to reach citizens and tell them the truth.”
In a letter he wrote to support García’s candidature, journalist Matías Prats described her in these terms: “Silvia is passion for journalism, unstinting effort and, above all, a brilliant talent to communicate with and move citizens. talent and a readiness that are always at the service of the conservation of Spanish and global biodiversity. After decades giving the lead-in to her stories on the set of Antena 3 Noticias; her live reports from every kind of place and terrain, in disaster zones, talking to all kinds of people and communities, feel proud to have done so.
The awardee journalist points to the Kyoto Summit of 1997 as the turning point in environmental awareness. “It has been a long road, but that was the moment when we began to talk more generally about climate change and biodiversity. And we saw how the trickle of news reports we had been putting out for years turned into a stream at the dawn of the new century.”
García looks back with special fondness at the social impact of this reporting milestone, and of the Montreal Protocol signed in 1987 to protect the ozone layer: “I particularly treasure moments like that, when people sit down to decide things together. It is one of the things that has given me most personal satisfaction. Scientists warned about it, journalists brought it to the world’s attention, and by acting as one, through legislative and citizen initiatives, we can now say that humanity is managing to safeguard the ozone layer. This success shows that we can achieve change, however long it takes, if we sit down together and cooperate in the face of environmental challenges.”
The journalist also singles out the Prestige disaster as marking a before and after in her reporting career: “It was an environmental wake-up call and many people responded. You could see the change in Spanish homes and in the interest of the viewers.”
In addition to these headline stories, García has created in-depth reports on biodiversity and initiatives for its conservation, including a series on the Galapagos Islands and another on the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. Back in Spain, she has fronted stories on environmental successes like the captive breeding of the lynx or the recovery of the bearded and cinereous vultures. This mix of global and local issues is important to the reporter: “Major policy decisions at international forums will of course affect us all, but small everyday acts can also move the world. They may be things we do at home or in villages like, for instance, mushroom cultivation, boosting the economy and contributing to countryside development. Every step counts. We have to report on the big policy decisions but also on the tiniest actions.”
García has also specialized in energy news, with reports on underground nuclear waste cemeteries in Finland and Sweden, Mexico’s bet on solar power or the building of an offshore wind farm in the Baltic.
The awardee journalist defends a style of environmental reporting that is scientifically grounded, leaving the viewer to make their own judgment: “I’m not trying to influence people so they think the way I do,” she insists. “What I want is to give them sound data so that they can form their own opinions, so that they as citizens are informed enough to decide for themselves and push their political representatives to take steps to solve environmental problems.”
For thirty years her environmental commitment has remained unwavering: “I believe in what I say and that there are stories that need to be told. I like to think that something of what I have done will make the world a little better, and this award will redouble the enthusiasm I bring to my work every day.”