In a July 2 report for Nieman Reports, Suzannah Evans Comfort and Jill Hopke point to an alarming trend in quality reporting on climate change. While the planet is indicating deeper crisis daily, the news seems to looking away. One report cites a 38% reduction in climate coverage by the media world, with a 35% decrease in climate-related airtime on the major US broadcast channels.
Comfort and Hopke are professors of journalism at Indiana University and DePaul University respectively. They write:
“For decades, researchers have tracked media attention on climate issues using keywords like ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming.’ This unique longitudinal dataset provides the evidence to support recent reports of diminishing climate journalism.
But tracking keyword volume tells only one part of the story, and fails to demonstrate the real peril facing climate journalism. The bottom line is that climate is a profoundly underreported issue. According to newly released preprint data from an international team of researchers, climate journalism makes up just 0.55% of reporting from top news organizations in the United States, with minor variations over the last 40 years. Reports of increases or decreases over short time horizons miss this bigger picture, and don’t take into account the complexity of how journalists report climate-related stories today.
What matters more is who is doing the reporting. The health of climate journalism is not best measured by the volume of coverage; instead, it’s about the people. Recent layoffs of climate reporters and editors by major news organizations are a serious warning sign about the vitality of the beat…
Climate is a complex beat with political, cultural, economic, and policy dimensions. While ensuring that all journalists have some climate training can address newsroom needs to some degree, it’s not realistic to cover climate by tacking it onto other beats as an extra task for already-strapped reporters to handle. In fact, this flawed logic has been used by newsroom managers as justification for reducing climate positions…
A strong climate reporting corps is our best hope for thoughtful journalism that serves the public.”
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