Media in the Climate Crisis

In the film "Don't Look Up", an asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, scientists are trying to warn politicians and the public about it, but hardly anyone takes it seriously. Hardly anyone seems to understand how acute the situation is, how urgently action is needed when one can agree on the common goal of keeping the earth habitable.

This is not only the responsibility of politicians, but also of journalists who do not treat the threat according to its urgency. Many climate scientists reported on Twitter, among other things, that they could hardly laugh about the film because they recognized themselves too much in it. There is a difference between a rough understanding of the mechanism of global warming and acknowledging its threat in principle. Or whether we are aware of what it means concretely for our own lives and how little time there is to prevent dramatic changes that cannot be reversed.

When a tipping point is reached, it triggers irreparable and unstoppable changes that affect the global climate system and further contribute to global warming.

The fact that climate change has grown into a life-threatening and all-encompassing crisis in the decades of doing nothing does not seem to have been realized yet by everyone – not even by all media professionals. After more than 60,000 people died due to heat in Europe in the summer of 2022, according to a study, the media are still illustrating the current heat wave with footage from an outdoor pool or ice cream parlor.

In the vast majority of cases, the media still report on topics such as the decision to have children, buy a house, or provide for retirement, as if our world would not change fundamentally in the next 10, 30 or 50 years.

It is not as if nothing is happening in climate reporting. With the rise of the climate movement in 2019, climate as a topic has also become larger in many editorial offices, with many media outlets not only increasing their reporting at the time, but also creating specialized formats and new offerings such as climate newsletters and podcasts. With the Corona crisis and the Russian war in Ukraine, attention to the climate waned again, while hardly any media company has developed a sustainable strategy on how to adequately depict the climate crisis in the long term.

It is not only politicians who are responsible, but also journalists who do not treat the threat according to its urgency.

After all, the climate crisis is an acute threat to our livelihoods – and thus to our civilization. It is therefore not an issue like others we cannot simply treat it on the media stage like others from foreign policy, business, sports, or culture. The climate crisis threatens the stage itself and has a double relationship to all areas of life and business. Journalists – and indeed all other professional groups – must therefore ask themselves:

What impact does my topic have on the climate crisis?

And what influence does the climate crisis have on my topic?

Climate is a dimension of any issue; a cross-cutting issue, the connections of which must be considered everywhere and, if necessary, made transparent in reporting.

Practices of Political Journalism

Journalism repeatedly depicts these social negotiation processes, but hardly puts them into context adequately. After all, journalist deal with climate policy as they do with politics. This assumes that there are many different legitimate opinions on a topic and that it is "balanced" or "neutral" to reflect all these opinions and keep them side by side on an equal footing. So far so good, so what's the problem?

In terms of democracy, it is quite valuable to assume that the other person could also be right. However, in the case of a scientifically measurable and assessable problem, the principles of (supposedly) balanced political reporting lead to a false balance. Because who is right to what extent can often be classified in a differentiated way, but it is precisely this classification that is omitted in many cases. Or the reporting follows a pattern that is difficult for many to understand.

The classic climate policy article is structured as follows: It starts with the question that is currently being argued and it then explains what parties A, B, C, and D have to say about it. At the end, there is often, but not always, a paragraph along the lines of: "Scientists/activists/environmental associations say that's not enough." Two things are problematic about this: First, it can seem to the addressees as if the scientific assessment is simply another opinion. Secondly, it is often not clear how big the gap is between what is offered politically and what is necessary from a scientific point of view.

It is often not even clear how big the gap is between what is offered politically and what is necessary from a scientific point of view.

Actually, it would make sense to turn the whole pattern upside down and ask oneself: What offers do the different parties make to achieve this goal? And how well are the proposed measures to do just that?

Information and its understanding are not sufficient conditions for appropriate political and social action – but they are necessary. The media must offer essential guidelines for public debates, and as the fourth estate, they are supposed to control political decisions and actions in democracies. In the climate crisis, journalism does not do justice to this task. It primarily depicts political discourses instead of consistently classifying them on the basis of climate science findings. This delays the debate and thus also the action.

Fossil Lobby Delaying Narratives

We regularly report on the fossil fuels lobby and its delaying narratives – and at the same time reproduce their message again and again. In political reporting, they are presented as equal, legitimate arguments; in talk shows, they remain unclassified as one opinion among many.

European Pioneers

The British daily newspaper "The Guardian" has been intensifying its climate reporting for years, making it an international pioneer. Among other things, it is one of the few media outlets that no longer accepts advertising from fossil fuel companies.

The Irish public broadcaster RTÉ had already announced in 2021 that it would train its entire workforce in order to better reflect the crisis; Radio France followed suit in the summer of 2022 and published its own charter declaring its determination to take the side of science. A few weeks later, many of France's quality media outlets joined a similar initiative by journalists. After an extremely hot and dry summer it became clear to many newsrooms that the crisis had not been sufficiently on their radar.

Climate journalism networks have been established in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and the Oxford Climate Journalism Institute offers programmes for journalists worldwide to further their education. At the beginning of the year, the European Broadcast Union published a detailed report entitled "Climate Journalism That Works". The Arena for Journalism in Europe has founded a climate offshoot and has just organised the second Europe-wide conference on the topic, which will take place in Vienna in November.

Even if this is far from enough, these developments are encouraging. Journalism is struggling to be part of the solution because of its mediating role in public discourse. But journalism should at least stop being part of the problem as soon as possible.