Journalism and the environment

Marco Gisotti, editor of Modus Vivendi magazine taught a workshop that linked journalism with enviroment in which he did a journey trough the developement of the ambience in hand with the most important events of this topic in the world.
He entered and closed his appeareance with an image of “The Follout” from the american magazine The economist, in which a red ball been pushed up hill by several workers of the atomic industries can be seen, as a methaphor of the current situation, both economic and enviromental in this Asian country.
This journey followed dates and significant events in the world such as the disaster in Japan in 1956, Waangari Maathai’s Nobel Prize, Bhempal India and Chernoby`s disater in 1984 and 1986 respectfully. This were, in his very own words the “sinking titanics of our era”.
The movie The Day After Tomorrow, documentaries like Al Gore’s Incovinient Truth, and several books and publications have had an important role in this century in the awakening process the international comunnity in giving a front page role to the enviromental news, as he said.
“What’s the reason for doing so?”, he asked the audience; because just in Italy, there have been 1500 extreme events in the past 800 years, specifically 2 500 floods, 350 000 displaced persons and 13 000 persons in risk for having dangerous jobs. On global contexts the European Union climate change program and the Obama’s “green jobs, green economy” strategy came to Gisotti’s speech as the evidence of how enviroment is these days is on top of the news and is even related to politics and economics.
The journey ended with recommendantions and several suggestions to the studentes present there. He argued that scientifc facts must always be confirmed, that journalists should watch out themselves from fallacies, those untrue histories that have been accepted into society despite of they are wrong, and finally he claims to be very critic during the journalism excercise and coverings.

by Daniela Araya