The Risk in Journalism and how Students are Fighting Climate Change

By Jourdynn Cooper

In Bob Wyss’ book, Covering the Environment: How Journalists Work the Green Beat, he discusses the risk in journalism and how framing can affect an article. Two articles about students and climate change have been examined to put his ideas to work.

The article ‘Tackling the climate crisis must be a central focus of education’ by Tim Jones, focuses on climate change and how students are demanding to be taught more about the issue in classrooms. In the beginning half of the article, Jones seems to be holding back his own ideas about climate change. He frames the first half the article as the issue is as intense as one believes climate change is happening. Then he goes on to say the ‘the crisis would be harder to ignore if taught appropriately in school’, here we see Jones does believe in climate change, in the last two paragraphs he admits that if society is going to change, schools need to educate on this topic more.

            António Guterres’ article ‘The climate strikers should inspire us all to act at the next UN summit’, from the opening Guterres’ opinion is clear, climate change is an issue and we need to deal with it. He is in support of the young people trying to fight for change with our climate change problem. He is the secretary general of the UN, and he wants to implement more in the Paris Agreement. Guterres has credibility and uses it to his advantage in this article.

            Using Wyss’ risk management idea, scientists have identified and measured the effect of climate change and now it is society’s turn to manage the outcomes (Wyss, 41). Both articles discuss how students are trying to step up for the management of the problem.

            James Bruggers says ‘there is nothing wrong with scaring the public as long as there is reason too’ (Wyss, 48). Guterres’ uses fear in the beginning of the article to get the audience concerned about climate change. It is clear from both articles that climate change is a problem but they framed the problem in different ways. Guetteres uses fear while Jones builds trust in the beginning, since the issue is about teaching climate change in schools, and Jones is a teacher.

Jones nad Guterres’ articles were posted in March and April of this year, since then there has been the Climate Strike, in which people across the globe walked out in protest of nothing being done about climate change. In an article in USA Today by Ryan Miller, ‘Climate change activists ‘shut down D.C. and disrupt morning commutes at bust intersections’, the titles alone has been framed to downplay the cause. The article gives almost no information about why there were protests, only how the city was disrupted.