Columbia Journalism Review
Columbia Journalism Review's mission is to encourage excellence in journalism in the service of a free society. Founded in 1961 under the auspices of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, CJR monitors and supports the press as it works across all platforms, and also tracks the ongoing evolution of the media business. The magazine, offering a mix of reporting, analysis, and commentary, is published six times a year; CJR.org weighs in daily, hosting a conversation that is open to all who share a commitment to high journalistic standards in the US and around the world.
Type of Content
Approved Story
1
Format
Region
News Item Format
Standard
FOR SEVERAL MONTHS, catastrophic fires have been raging in Australia. Collectively, they’ve torched some 38,000 square miles nationwide, killing at least 28 people and, according to the University of Sydney, more than a billion animals. In recent weeks, heart-rending stories of death and displacement have spread across the world’s media. Reports have scrutinized the regressive climate policy of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a man who once brought a lump of coal to Parliament as a prop and who vacationed in Hawai’i as his country burned. Apocalyptic imagery has adorned the front pages of newspapers, as if to show that the apocalypse is unfolding before our eyes. “For Australia, dangerous climate change is already here,” Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State who has been on sabbatical in Australia, wrote earlier this month in The Guardian. “It’s simply a matter of how much worse we’re willing to allow it to get.”