Singapore media company Mediacorp has appointed editor-in-chief Walter Fernandez as its first chief sustainability officer.
Fernandez will lead sustainability initiatives for the company behind TODAY newspaper and Channel NewsAsia (CNA) as well as perform his role running editorial operations in a twin role, effective 1 May.
Fernandez has overseen Mediacorp’s news and current affairs operations since 2013, and also manages the company’s AI strategy and solutions for the newsrooms and broadcast engineering.
He will now oversee the company’s sustainability initiatives, which have included changing the colour of its logos to green to show support for environmental causes.
In a press statement, Mediacorp’s chief executive Tham Loke Kheng, said that Fernandez is well placed to lead the company’s sustainability efforts given his “deep understanding of the issues.”
Mediacorp highlighted that CNA has produced more than 30 hours of environment-related documentaries and news features as well as 30 episodes of the Climate Conversations podcasts to raise awareness and drive conversations on climate change and sustainability since August last year.
Fernandez commented: “As a newsroom, we have done well with our significant and sustained coverage of climate change and sustainability issues across all of CNA’s platforms. As a company, we must also walk the talk. The next step will be to adapt our business practices to be more sustainable and to persuade our staff to make sustainability part of our corporate DNA and hopefully their daily lives.”
