{"id":460591,"date":"2026-08-05T08:25:39","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T15:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=460591"},"modified":"2026-08-05T08:25:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T15:25:41","slug":"climate-journalism-in-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=460591","title":{"rendered":"Climate Journalism in Decline"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From Master Resource<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Robert Bradley Jr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belle de Jong<\/a>, environment editor at The European Correspondent [1]<\/strong>, recently posted<\/a> on social media:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Climate journalism is shrinking, this recent Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard piece<\/a> shows. CBS lost its entire climate desk, the Washington Post cut 74% of its climate team, and NPR laid off its climate desk editor. The Media and Climate Change Observatory\u2019s 2025 year-end analysis showed a 38% reduction in global media\u2019s climate coverage in 2025, since the high-water mark of 2021.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

She then reverses the causality to state:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The decline in weekly climate news consumption was driven partly by reduced supply, rather than a lack of interest, the Reuters Institute\u2019s 2025 report found. People are still interested in climate news, but newsrooms stopped supplying it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

de Jong then states what she wishes<\/em> were true:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

All while climate change is changing our daily lives, from fatal heatwaves and floods to food prices and public health. When newsrooms get rid of climate reporters, readers lose the people trained to connect drought to bread prices or a Brussels directive to the decisions of a farmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People understand the decisions their governments are making through journalism. Without reporters who understand the science and the stakes, those decisions are made with far less scrutiny, and readers are left to make sense of a warming world with even less to go on than they had a few years ago.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

That\u2019s why, at The European Correspondent<\/a>, we have dedicated editors and staff writers across environment, agriculture, energy, and health, because they\u2019re all interconnected. We also have correspondents in the countries where the stories are actually happening, to make sure we don\u2019t get stuck inside the Brussels bubble. Because climate journalism is what determines whether readers understand what\u2019s happening to their world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Correction<\/em>: The public is tired of climate alarmism, now in its fifth decade. Regular weather news can report (and exaggerate), but climate scolds do not have the commercial interest anymore\u2013in the US, at least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fix is in with the Nieman report authors, Suzannah <\/em>Evans Comfort<\/a> (associate professor of journalism, Indiana University) and Jill Hopke<\/a> (associate professor of journalism, DePaul University, and board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists). Warning of \u201cthe real peril facing climate journalism,\u201d they opine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

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<\/a> from top news organizations in the United States, with minor variations over the last 40 years.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If you are not tying extreme weather events to climate change, you are not qualified, Nieman continues. Environmental reporters know the connection, ipso facto, they cannot lose their jobs to beat reporters. But it is the beat reporters who are using common sense (like the general public) that advocacy needs to stand aside. It is not as if heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, and floods started in the 1980s (check the time-series data yourself).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comfort and Hopke mention the last bastion of climate alarm reporting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

A strong climate reporting corps is our best hope for thoughtful journalism that serves the public. In many ways we still have that, in dedicated teams like those at The Los Angeles Times<\/em> and The New York Times<\/em>, and in thriving specialist news organizations like Grist and Inside Climate News. It is also happening in the burgeoning creator journalist space, like the video podcast<\/a> \u201cHeated\u201d that independent climate journalist Emily Atkin launched in February with producer Tracy Wholf, who had been laid off<\/a> by CBS News in 2025.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Grist<\/em>? Emily Atkin at Heated<\/em>? In \u201cPsychedelics for Climate Action,\u201d<\/a> she confessed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Personally, when I take mushrooms, the last thing I want to do is think about climate change. But that\u2019s apparently what I should be doing, according to Psychedelics for Climate Action.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Comfort and Hopke conclude: \u201cAudiences want and need climate news.\u201d I guess NPR and the Washington Post<\/em>, et al. do not know their audiences. Dumb them. Or maybe not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/strong> \u201cI am the Environment Editor at The European Correspondent, where I write and edit stories on climate change, biodiversity, and environmental policy. I work closely with local correspondents and agriculture, health, and energy staff writers. My background spans social and environmental policy work at the European Parliament, political communications for the 2024 European elections in Malta, and cross-border investigative journalism, including a recent piece tracing EU biofuel supply chains to illegal deforestation in the Amazon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The public is tired of climate alarmism, now in its fifth decade. Regular weather news can report (and exaggerate), but climate scolds do not have the commercial interest anymore\u2013in the US, at least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":460593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The public is tired of climate alarmism, now in its fifth decade. 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