Educate the journalist

Today, climate change and the rapid degradation of the environment that we live in have become important for the student journalist to learn, to report about effectively. There are no media schools in India that have a module planned with a focus only on climate change.

Since the role of the media in informing and communicating climate change is an important one, a module to teach budding journalists the intricacies of the problems facing our planet needs to be part of the curriculum.

It should otherwise be taught as a specialism for the student journalist who would like to focus his or her reportage on the environment.

In-depth coverage

Media coverage which is knowledgeable and in depth on the crisis has shaped discourse and action – in complex, dynamic and non-linear ways working at the interface levels of climate science and government policy.

Such media coverage gives us a base understanding of the methods being adopted, what we as inhabitants of the earth need to do and the relationship of international assistance and co-operation between nations.

Questions to ask

So, what role does the media play in influencing personal, national, and international action to address climate change? How much has the media covered climate change, and what is driving changes in that coverage? How do climate change stories come to be reported, and who gets cited as legitimate sources in those stories? What influence does the media play in forming public opinion? These are all questions that student journalists need to address.

Otherwise, the stories are just written as reports of what ever opinion the journalist has formed covering these negotiations and what the journalist as a person might have understood of the proceedings.

We are aware that there is something happening out there in our planet. We know glaciers are melting and tsunamis are happening and there is something terribly wrong going on with our planet. But the actual details of the whole concept is foreign to media students. That is when modules to educate a student journalist need to step in. This is a concept which all student journalists need to be aware of and so it could be introduced as part of the curriculum giving them a basic working knowledge of the issue.

Governments and negotiators who sit together to formulate inter-governmental decisions have over the sessions coined acronyms, decided on policies, have discussed foreign aid to help developing nations.

It’s a vast sea of knowledge out there and the journalist has to be aware of these terms; sensitised to the problems so when they go out on the field they can report keeping his or her country in mind.

As part of the module being taught in media colleges, the issue of rain water harvesting could be discussed to raise interest levels. Students could be exposed to a field trip where they could see for themselves what the concept is about. Or a visit to a bio-fuel plant, or a jathropha farm. Media colleges should sensitise their students about the effects of climate change on our world and how with their writing they could start a movement to reduce our carbon footprint or get self sufficient with harvesting rainwater.
Within the issue of climate change, two others terms students need to get familiarised with are climate change mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation of emissions is the reduction of greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere. Adaptation to climate change has been defined as an “adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial activities”.

Studies have found that the public learns a large amount about science through consuming mass media news. In what are conventionally regarded as ‘developed nations’, many polls have found that television and daily newspapers are the primary sources of information. For instance, a United States National Science Foundation survey of US residents found that television remains the leading source of news in most households (53%), followed by newspapers (29%).

Information provider?

The point could be argued that while journalists have consistently viewed their role as one of information dissemination rather than education, the distinction between these roles becomes blurred in practice. Therefore educating the journalist is the key.