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The Reuters Institute at the Paris climate science summit

10 Jul 2015

As part of the Paris summit on climate science called ‘Our Common Future’, RISJ’s director of the journalism fellowship programme, James Painter, chaired a heated debate on the rights and wrongs of advocacy journalism. The Guardian's environment editor, Damian Carrington, was on the panel explaining and defending his paper’s divestment campaign called ‘Keep it in the Ground’.  New York Times blogger Andy Revkin and Dagmar Dehmer, climate change correspondent at Der Tagesspiegel made up the panel, who between them fielded a large number of questions from the packed audience.  Listen to the panel debate via YouTube: The Guardian's divestment campaign - rights & wrongs of journalism as advocacy Should journalists campaign? We soon will know @guardian divestment session #CFCC15 with @dpcarrington @risj_oxford pic.twitter.com/fX3BicCPef — Wouter Poortinga (@wouterpoortinga) July 8, 2015 James also moderated a closed session with top climate scientists, academics and editors on how the media covers climate change. Under discussion was how to best communicate the complexities of climate science to the public through the media, why climate change remains largely confined to the science or environmental pages, and was risk a helpful way to talk about the challenges ahead.