Andrew Revkin 'The Missing Climate Change As News'

Climate change is a subject that is relevant to all living beings on Earth, yet it is underrepresented and in some cases even ignored by the media and the public. In the article Climate Change as News, Andrew C. Revkin states that the general topic of climate change is very difficult for journalists and reporters to cover for its lack of calamity when compared to other disasters and “FrontPage worthy” titles, and for its complexity that makes understanding this topic difficult for regular people. In The Missing Climate Change Narrative, Segal expands on this idea of climate change being ineffectively communicated by explaining how a lack of emotional appeal and a good narrative are two of the main reasons for why people are not convinced of

Revkin talks from a journalist’s perspective about the complexity of reporting on climate because of it being time-consuming, having a strict deadline, and needing a ton of explanation with little available space. An article covering science must explain its fundamentals to the reader. “Science is one of the few realms where reporters have to presume the reader has no familiarity at all with the basics, particularly something as complicated as climate science.” (Revkin, 242) The basic science needs to be explained to the reader every time, which takes up more space than other topics do. This writing style leaves less room for the actual content, so it takes a lot of skill to cut the story and still represent it accurately, which does not happen very often. This is one way climate change is not accurately represented as researchers and scientists would prefer to keep many of the parts that journalists cut out in order to convey the caveats (Revkin, 243). Segal connects this topic to the reason many people are hesitant to act on climate change. He explains how public lack of information and understanding explains the lack of action and how more information is ultimately needed to push people to act (Segal, 125). The statement is a rational one because understanding provides incentive; it is rare for someone to act on something that does not tempt

This style of writing poorly represents climate change because it does not compel the average person to continue reading or exploring that topic. Segal heavily covers this topic of scientific narrative and explains its significance when it comes to reporting climate change. The scientific narrative teaches facts and mechanisms, shows us the boundary of rational and emotional self and situate us in our world as someone who is aware (Segal, 123). The combination of these enlightening details should make the facts of science seem like intuition, not unlike gravity and how we know that if we jump, we will come back down. Media does not portray climate science in this manner and as Kirk Johnson from the National Museum of National History puts it, “If you do not help people understand what those processes (climate change discoveries) are, [if] you just say ‘here is the answer’, now they can go onto the web and dial up an alternate answer…” (Segal, 124). So, the need to find a different source to clarify the information reduces the credibility of the report and shows the lack of interest from the writers’ side. Most media coverage of scientific discoveries reiterates naked facts with no explanation or narrative to appeal to their audience in a spiritual way. At some point, these facts become uncontested and even unsurprising (Segal, 125). This is why