"Since he left India to attend journalism school in Canada 13 years ago, Inayat Singh has been working nonstop. He has held roles as a data journalist, investigative reporter, multimedia journalist, and journalism instructor. In recent years, he has channeled his energy into climate reporting for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This year, he is finally taking a breather.
Singh is one of 10 journalists who were selected to spend the 2023-24 academic year at MIT as Knight Science Journalism Fellows. In Cambridge, he and the other fellows have had the chance to dive into new subjects without the familiar pressures of tight deadlines and demanding workloads.
Singh has been using that time to learn more about remote sensing — the process of gathering information about a location from a distance, typically via satellite or aircraft. Remote sensing is used by scientists to track changes in glacier melt, land use, coastlines, carbon emissions, and other terrestrial features. Singh is interested in finding ways to use the resulting flood of data to enhance climate reporting. Last fall, he spoke with me about remote sensing, data journalism, and writing about climate change. The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Lily Stewart: You are interested in using remote sensing methods for climate change reporting. What makes remote sensing so interesting?
Inayat Singh: There’s a certain newness to it. Remote sensing methods have become more cost-effective and can be used by a wider range of people.
An example is satellite-mounted LiDAR, which is a form of radar. It can be used to monitor changes on the earth’s surface much more efficiently than field measurements or flying planes over forests or farms. A lot of the data from these satellites is now being made available to the public. Researchers are using the data, but the private sector, NGOs, banks, and insurance are also interested. I want to explore whether journalism is one of those potential customers as well. And, if so, how can we use the data? I see a lot of potential for it in climate reporting because it can add context. It can help us visualize changes to the earth over time. It can maybe even be a tool for accountability and verifying claims about conservation.
LS: You’ve mentioned previously that you’re interested in the social aspects of data. In your work so far, how do you see social systems having an effect on data?
IS: I got into this a bit during the Black Lives Matter movement, which we had in Canada as well. There was a debate over collecting more race-based data, which is a big gap in Canada. In the U.S., you have a lot of race-based data around things like policing, and we don’t have that in Canada. A few police services have started collecting and making that data public, but it can be a double-edged sword. When I looked into it, there were advocates who were nervous about this race-based data being collected and weaponized against them.
A simple example is looking at crime statistics. Crime statistics that have race data attached to them have been misused in Canada to portray certain communities as more violent, which, of course, is not true. That data can also fuel discrimination in sectors like healthcare and insurance. You have to analyze the data responsibly, transpose it with other markers of socioeconomic status, an include community perspectives to ferret out the real reasons behind what’s going on.
I think a lot of analyses have been missing that context, especially when they aren’t done by academics. Data journalists do a form of social science research, but it’s without the same kind of experience as academics have. The question is how we can tell stories that can also stand up to the test of fairness and academic rigor.
LS: How does data add nuance to climate stories specifically?
IS: In small stories, a lot of journalists find that all they can fit is that climate change is bad and getting worse, but if you’re smart about your scripting, you can change that up a bit.
I think data can add a bit of uniqueness to the story, right? In journalism, the news has to be new, and it’s even better when it’s exclusive to you. Remote sensing is a way to break away from the mold, I think. I hope.
LS: Remote sensing can be used to study many different topics. Does any topic seem to be especially promising for climate reporting?
IS: Conservation issues, mostly. Canada has many debates over resource extraction development because it has very important terrestrial ecosystems, like the boreal forests, wetlands, peatlands, and a big chunk of the world’s fresh water. This kind of traditional conflict is going to come up more and more in the climate change era, and remote sensing can provide a level of transparency and context.
I’m also interested in using it for anything related to methane emissions, which is a big cause of global warming. Methane is a colorless, odorless gas, and we still have a lot to learn about where it comes from and how much of it is being emitted, so I think remote sensing can help with that.
LS: What do you see as your next steps for the fellowship and figuring out how to use remote sensing methods in your climate reporting?
IS: The fellowship is set up to encourage vibing. It encourages being active in the community and finding what you want to do through that. The vibes turn into unexpected meetings. Serendipity. So I’m deliberately seeking the vibes.
But covering climate change in general is really difficult. Not just from a technical, practical standpoint but from an emotional standpoint. It takes a lot out of you. It’s an existential threat, and being immersed in it has made my mental health around it worse. It’s tough to see the reports. They’re very stark at this point. The science is becoming clearer and clearer about what a miserable future we’re going to have.
And the solutions are not simple. What we need is a massive bulldozer to the whole system. I’m here at MIT to find out what those big ideas are. I want to move away from the small ideas in my day-to-day stories and start thinking about the big picture.
Lily Stewart is a student in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing.