New York Extinction Rebellion Activists pay visit to the New York Times

 
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At 9 am on Friday journalists and other New York Times employees were arriving for work at 229 West 43rd street. As they walked in, a small group of activists from Extinction Rebellion awaited them in the lobby with signs demanding that the Times start treating the Climate Crisis as the serious emergency it clearly now is.

Extinction Rebellion’s position is that the existential crisis currently facing humanity warrants coverage on a par with that given to World War 2. In 1944 the war was featured in either headlines or front-page coverage every single day. This is not the case with the climate emergency.

The group of activists walked into the building wearing pink sandwich boards, each with a distinct ‘demand’ for how the Times should address the emergency facing the human (and thousands of other) species, by first declaring a ‘climate emergency’.

The flyer cited Greta Thunberg’s address to the media over their failure of responsibility to properly inform the public.

The sandwich boards demanded:

  • That there be climate headlines daily;

  • That the climate crisis informs discussion of all areas of coverage (politics, business, world affairs, real estate etc), and to link extreme weather events clearly to climate breakdown;

  • That the Times move away from consumer-driven solutions to a more community-driven approach, and an acknowledgement of the necessity for systemic change;

  • That they use the language of emergency and treat the science as beyond further debate;

  • That they enact climate standards for political endorsements;

  • That they directly address financial conflicts of interest.

The activists stood inside the lobby and handed flyers to Time’s employees entering the building, until the police were called and insisted they leave the building.

The activists were heartened by the number of people who happily took the flyers and then headed upstairs, some reading them as they walked.