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The final IPCC report confirms the media’s role in how we perceive and address the climate crisis.
Global media coverage of climate change has been steadily increasing since the 1980s. In a study across 59 countries, researchers found that coverage had risen from 47,000 stories in 2016-17 to about 87,000 in 2020-21.
With this increasing reach and by effectively communicating the science, injustice, and hope behind climate change and solutions, the media can help further climate action. Many argue, however, that the climate crisis is still not sufficiently covered, leaving untapped potential when it comes to the media shaping the discourse around climate mitigation.
But this can go both ways. On occasion, according to the IPCC, the spread of misinformation by organised counter-movements has fuelled polarisation and had negative impacts on climate policy.
In other words, increasing media coverage does not necessarily lead to greater accuracy.
In the US, for example, accurate communication of climate science has been significantly undermined by counter-movements. In many countries, the rise of suspicions of ‘fake news’ and the resulting distrust in the media have continued to fuel the partisan divides on climate change, threatening ambitious climate policy.
Even with the increasing consensus among journalists on the basic science behind climate change, there remains a lot of room to make decisions on which considerations to emphasise and which to downplay.
Being such a complex and global issue that involves everything from science, economics, trade-offs and more gives journalists, parties, and interest groups the opportunity to frame the issue to serve their interests and beliefs, one study says.
