Journalism and Environment (6023)
di Elia Ruggieri e Mattia Porcu
On the last 13th of April we were invited to participate at the “ijF” because we sent a video to the “Giornalisti nell’erba”contest . So we attended a workshop about “Journalism and Environment” conducted by Marco Gisotti. He had been working as a journalist for twenty years and, for thirteen years, he had been directing the monthly science magazine “Modus Vivendi”.
After a short introduction about his backgrounds he started the workshop talking about the environmental problems.
Ecology is a matter that has been affecting people for years. For example in 1273 Edward I of England had banished coal burning – major smog cause – in London and in 1661 John Evelyn suggested to add more green areas.
Nowadays we deal with other problems: in 1956 the population of Jafau was reduced to half; in 1986 the Chernobyl accident occurred, in 1984 we had a big explosion in Bhopal and recently all the world remained speechless opposite the Fukushima disaster.
In Italy there are many industries at risk. Floods and landslides are very frequent.
The U.S.A. president Barack Obama used for the first time the expressions “Green Economy” and “Green Jobs” to improve the way to live helping the planet.
While he was talking he showed us some images related to the theme and three sketches derived from two Matt Groening’s masterpieces: the first from “Futurama”, concerning the global warming and the others from “The Simpson” about the renewable energies, the pollution and the environmental care.
He showed some strips from the Carl Bark’s “Paperino nella terra dei pigmei” too where the author underlines how people’s greed had ruined environment.
At the end Gisotti closed the workshop explaning how to be a journalist.
The first step for example is to control the sources: internet is a huge source but it’s not straight to the horse’s mouth.
Moreover the journalist has to be understandable.
Then we watched another video that was involved in the contest and a small part of ours.
The workshop was very interesting even if they could have focused more about the contest and the different projects and could have made a shorter introduction.
With entire cities poisoned by smog, nuclear disasters, avalanches and tips which provoke cancers, we think we should all together build up a path of reflection, even if with ironic moments, which make us understand how much our planet can be a friend and how we stupidly choose to make him our enemy.
Marco Gisoni dealt with some themes that usually, especially for young and inexperienced people, become boring and not useful.
On the contrary he made an excellent job showing the themes of ecology, with facts and anecdotes starting from Edward I of England’s environment laws arriving to the recent event of Fukushima passing by curiosities such as the false legend about spaghetti imported from Asia by Marco Polo and the one about green Groenland, stories that trough several researches were discovered to be not true.
We were surprised by the unusual use of some Medias like comics and cartoons that are closer to us and often they express with more incisiveness and a different sensibility important themes such as the environment is.
After all we were present to something that was prepared from a person who likes his job and he wanted to pass on the passion.
Elia Ruggieri e Mattia Porcu
3 B Liceo Scientifico A. Volta di Spoleto
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