Don’t shoot the messenger

In the organizer's words:

A conversation with ZDF weather presenter Özden Terli and Arctic experts Erin Devlin and Hanna Thulé about the hatred of climate journalists.

Whether in the ZDF weather report or during research in the Arctic: journalists who make the climate crisis a topic are increasingly hostile.

ZDF meteorologist Özden Terli doesn't just describe floods or heatwaves. He explains what an extreme weather event has to do with the climate crisis. However, some do not see this as responsible reporting, instead accusing Terli of "activism", "green propaganda" or even "misuse" of his TV reach.

As a result, Terli and his colleagues are increasingly experiencing insults, hatred and even blatant threats. One BBC meteorologist recently even resigned from her post.

Climate journalists are also facing attacks in the region where the climate crisis is escalating particularly quickly: the Arctic. Colleagues at the Arctida research portal, for example, are investigating the consequences of global warming in the Russian Arctic regions. They are being persecuted by the Kremlin as a result, had to leave Russia and now work from exile in Georgia.

The research project Decoding the Disinformation Playbook of Populism by taz, the International Press Institute in Vienna and the fact-checking NGO Faktograf has spent the past few months investigating the hatred towards climate journalists.

Journalists Erin Rizzato Devlin and Hanna Thulé, who specialize in the Arctic regions, have received a research grant lasting several months to shed light on the "hybrid war", as they call it, that the Russian state is waging against Arctida.

The taz reporters Christian Jakob and Jean-Phillip Baeck have researched where the anger at journalists who make the climate crisis a topic in the weather report comes from - and what consequences the attacks have for the colleagues affected and for climate reporting as a whole.

On April 24, the investigation will be published in the taz, on this evening the two will talk with Özden Terli, Erin Devlin and Hanna Thulé about the attacks on climate journalists and strategies against disinformation and in defense of press freedom.

Welcome: Barbara Junge, taz editor-in-chief

A taz Talk with:

🐾 Özden Terli, meteorologist and weather presenter at ZDF

🐾 Erin Devlin, philosopher and freelance journalist in Glasgow and Gothenburg, founder of Equitable Energy Research

🐾 Hanna Thulé, journalist, Barent's Observer, Helsinki, among others

🐾 Christian Jakob and Jean-Philipp Baeck from the reporting department of taz will moderate this talk.

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Advance registration required.