Media Coverage of Climate Change

Impacts, Policies and Politics Pallab Ghosh

President, World Federation of Science Journalists Science Correspondent, BBC News

2009 AAAS Annual meeting

February 13

WFSJ’s Goals

• Improve the quality of science reporting

• Training and networking for science journalists

SjCOOP = Peer-to-Peer Mentoring

Christophe Mvondo, Newspaper La Nouvelle Expression, Cameroon Become responsible of the

“environment” pages (2 pages every 2 weeks) of his newspaper La Nouvelle Expression

In 2007 and 2008, Christophe published several articles on lake Nyos. What followed was a big political debate. It now looks like the government has acted; they confirmed in 2007 that they will spend the money in November 2008.

•Hellish Vision•Melting Ice Doomsday•Will Kill Billions•Most Life Would be Exterminated

There is actually very little scientific agreement about whether any of these extreme weather events can be blamed

on anything other than normal and natural variation

The Great Climate Conspiracy

Amundsen15 science journalists from around the world won a trip to report on climat change onboard the Amundsen, a Canadian Icebreaker

Tatiana Pichugina"Before the trip I privately thought "climate change" concerns were a kind of imperialist conspiracy to use science to promote the world market, but the Amundsen changed my attitude …

WCSJ2009 – key facts • 30th June – 2nd July 2009

• Central Hall, Westminster

• www.wcsj2009.org

WCSJ2009 – goals• More than 600 journalists / communicators

• Gearing Up for Copenhagen: Sir David King

• Science, Policy and Politics: Cris Russell

• Raise quality & impact of Climate Coverage

Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News website

She is why I am here…Pallab Ghosh

pghosh@wfsj.org