The use of rhetoric when speaking on a topic such as climate change is very different based on the news channel you watch or the articles you read. Why is this? I believe that the extreme rivalry between the main two political parties, Republican and Democrat, has fueled people’s need to persuade the public, and the news uses rhetoric to do just that.
The main form of communication that the public uses to receive information is the news. News channels such as Fox News and CNN tend to have bold claims on issues worldwide, but especially in our country, that they stand by no matter what problems may arise.
The topic I am addressing is climate change. Scientists have been studying climate change since 1896, and the issues are worsening as they continue to be checked. Industrialization around the world and the use of fossil fuels during the late 1700s and the early 1800s have led to consequences we may not recover from. While it did allow for massive improvements in manufacturing, industrialization has been proven to have harmful causations on the modern world, such as wildlife extinction, severe weather, melting of the ice caps, and rising temperatures.
These effects are backed by science, but both sides of the media take extreme stances on the topic and use rhetoric to get the public on their side. This causes not only communication issues but also splits the country in two. The overuse of rhetoric as a means of coercion in the media is detrimental to the state of our country when discussing climate change, and similar topics. On one hand, right-wing news says that climate change does not exist; on the other, left-wing news seems to exaggerate the effects of climate change and global warming. If all news stations presented only the scientific facts, there would be no communication flaws and no need to persuade anyone.
Politics has made its way into most conversation topics, including this one. Persuasion has become the media’s primary goal, not simply relaying information to the public. There needs to be an influx of data and a deduction of opinions. The environment is most frequently discussed during political debates or significant climate events. I think the topic should be addressed using numbers when new research comes out.
This will give all citizens a better understanding of climate change and the actual effects occurring worldwide. The rhetoric used by the media and public should be taken out of the topic for the most part. It is not an issue of persuasion but rather an issue based on facts.