Why I’m climate striking against Fox News on Friday | Alexandria Villaseñor

The news media is society's alarm clock - it needs to wake us up

This past Saturday, I was among hundreds of activists with the group Extinction Rebellion NYC who protested outside the New York Times headquarters in midtown Manhattan to demand better coverage of the climate crisis. Protesters lay down on Eighth Avenue, staging a "die-in" to block traffic. We draped a banner the length of the Times building that declared, "Climate Emergency = Mass Murder". Sixty-seven of us got arrested.

Somewhat to our surprise, our protest received a good deal of news coverage. CBS, CNN, the Guardian, and the Associated Press ran stories. The Times even published one, a Reuters dispatch that quoted a Times spokesperson defending the newspaper's coverage. "There is no national news organization that devotes more time, staff or resources to producing deeply reported coverage to help readers understand climate change than the New York Times," the spokesperson said.