Op-ed: The Media’s Climate Coverage Is Too Sparse and Narrow. We Need to Rethink Our Workflow

This op-ed was published in Information on February 3, 2025.

Climate change is urgent and intangible, making it difficult to fit into news coverage. Because of this, the media approaches coverage in various and often poorly thought-out ways. Findings from my dissertation on Danish climate journalism point to different strategies for structuring climate coverage.

At a time when climate scientists struggle to explain rapidly rising temperatures and the Danish Climate Council’s recent report states that “the world may be on the brink of a climate disaster,” the media plays a crucial role in informing the public about the seriousness of the situation. The majority of the population gets its knowledge about climate change through the media. However, it is not that straightforward.

As early as 1983, Sharon Friedman described environmental journalism as ‘Problem child of the Media’ She argued that several factors made environmental coverage difficult for journalists, including scientific uncertainty and the fact that it touches on various topics such as science, economics, and politics.

Over the last 41 years, much has changed: Environmental journalism’s focus has shifted from local environmental issues to global climate change. Climate change is becoming increasingly evident, and in Denmark, it has been high on the political, public, and media agenda since the climate election in 2019 and the subsequent Climate Act.

Yet, my Ph.D. dissertation shows that climate change remains the problem child of the media. This is because climate change challenges the shared rules and ideals of news media in several areas, including news beats, news criteria, and storytelling techniques such as simplification and visualization.

Climate Coverage Is Complicated and Expensive

My investigation of seven newspapers’ coverage (Jyllands-Posten, Politiken, Berlingske, Information, BT, Børsen, and Ekstra Bladet) between 2018 and 2021 shows that their short time horizon of typically 24 hours means that climate change is largely covered as isolated events, while long-term changes are overlooked.

Examples of long-term changes could include the drought in the Horn of Africa or the rising groundwater levels in Denmark, while events are often political or business-related. For example an agricultural agreement following the Climate Act or stories about green investments in a company.

The focus of climate journalism is therefore predominantly on the green transition and thus more on transforming the market than shifting mindsets. Climate change is therefore also largely defined as a problem by business leaders and politicians.  

At the same time, it is challenging to reconcile something that happens far away in time and place with news criteria like timeliness and identification. This is particularly true for TV, where images play a significant role. How do you visualize something that has not happened yet?

An informant in my interview study with Danish climate journalists explained how farmers are often the focus of stories about agriculture’s lack of CO2 reductions because the victim is hard to see: Is it young people? Future generations? Or someone living in Bangladesh?

The consequence may be that climate change is prioritized lower than current issues that require less time to cover and, therefore, less money. As one climate journalist explained, it is cheaper to send a journalist to The Danish Parliament Christiansborg to write an article about two politicians disagreeing than writing an article about the problem with natural gas.

A Danish study also shows that climate change receives less coverage than the budget laws and crime stories. In other words, the scale and seriousness of the climate problem is far from being reflected in the amount of journalism.

Climate Journalism Should Be Part of the Curriculum

Finally, the interdisciplinary nature of climate change means that journalists must familiarize themselves with many scientific and political areas, which do not fit well with journalism’s traditional division into news beats.

Additionally, the complexity means that many non-specialist journalists are not sufficiently equipped to ask critical questions and detect false information from sources.

My examination of newspaper coverage particularly finds many uncritical articles about collaborations within the business world. An example is a story about a new alliance of companies within biotech promoting green transition, with sources exclusively from the alliance itself.

An obvious place to try to address the challenges of climate change’s complexity is journalism education. This is something I have investigated in collaboration with Nordic colleagues, and the study shows that climate change rarely appears in course descriptions at journalism schools in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.

We argue that the integration of climate change in education is linked to how it is perceived: If climate change is seen as a news beat or a topic like politics or economics, then it is not necessarily the school’s responsibility to teach it but rather something one can specialize in at a future workplace.

If, instead, climate change is seen as a discipline requiring specific skills and knowledge, one could argue that it should be part of the curriculum.
If climate change is seen as a dimension spanning all topics, it should be part of all courses while also requiring foundational knowledge. And finally, if climate change is seen as a science, it can be taught through more generic courses in methodology and theory.

Hence, there are many ways to incorporate climate issues into education. A potential that remains untapped.

A More Intense and Broader Climate Coverage?

The various understandings of climate change are also reflected in how news media structure their climate coverage and thus affect it in different ways. News beats are one way to systematize news coverage. They ensure specialized journalists who follow up on stories.

The establishment of the environment as a beat in American newspapers back in 1972 thus ensured a separate space for the topic beyond science coverage. However, treating climate change as a beat can result in it not being addressed in other areas, so business, economics, and weather are covered without considering the climate aspect.

This has been criticized by the Danish journalistic community #rydfkadenfirklimaet (Clear the Airwaves For Climate), which aims to “inspire much broader, better, and more intense climate coverage.”

Treating climate change as a dimension and thus part of all news beats can promote broader coverage. This is The Danish public service broadcaster TV2’s ambition with a climate strategy that is intended to ensure that climate change is integrated across the network’s news department.

However, the risk is that there may be a lack of specialized journalists who follow up on stories and have sufficient knowledge to ask critical questions.
Another approach could be to send specialized journalists to individual editorial teams. A study of environmental journalists shows that those who were reassigned to other beats when the environment was discontinued as a news beat managed to carry environmental coverage with them.

I cannot say which solution is the most appropriate. However, I encourage news media to discuss their views on climate change so they can consider the consequences of their approach to covering it.