Green criminology studies the activities contributing to animal and non-animal environmental harms. Beyond the study of harms, another area of interest concerns those activities which have the potential to actually make a positive impact to the environment but which are threatened by criminalization or other forms of repression –such as for instance resulting from underreporting, downplaying or other negative presentation by the media. Our analysis seeks to explore this phenomenon, focusing on the 20-week protest cycle mobilized by young people in Belgium and how this protest was represented in the (Dutch-)written press. A dataset of 382 news articles was included in this analysis. We found that the news reporting acknowledged the development of the protests in Belgium, and that the protesters were an important voice included in that reporting. Substantive climate-related issues were rarely featured, and although there were some attempts to understand the contribution or impact of the protests, the media representation was primarily centred on the protesters’ age and on their capacity or right to protest during school hours.