Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
I came across a great report on the media and climate change that was published by Covering Climate Now in April of this year. Covering Climate Now (CCN) supports, convenes, and trains journalists to produce rigorous climate coverage that engages audiences. The Organization was founded in 2019 by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation magazine in association with the Guardian and WNYC.
The report in question is A Burning House, A Quiet Media, A Silenced Majority. It examines how mainstream media companies around the world covers climate change.
The report found that climate coverage declined globally in 2025 by 14%. In the US, organizations like The Washington Post and CBS News and NBC news cut back significantly on climate change stories. These three broadcast networks reduced the airtime devoted to climate change by 35% according to the group Media Matters.
Some international organizations bucked this trend however. The report shows that outlets including The Guardian, The New York Times, the Associated Press, TIME, Bloomberg Green, CNN, Telemundo, France Télévisions, and The Hindustan Times have continued to devote plenty of time to climate change. One example of positive media action was found in Japan, where every television station has agreed to run public service commercials noting that 89% of Japanese people support climate action.
Below are the high-level findings of the report:
The amount and prominence of climate coverage is indeed down across the news media, but with important exceptions
The trend is more evident in the US than internationally
One reason for the decline has been a relentless firehose of news on other topics that audiences understandably wanted to know about (e.g., the Iran war); news outlets can produce only so many stories a day, and audiences have only so much time to read or watch the news
Another reason: newsroom staff cuts, due to fewer consumers paying for news and corporate owners prioritizing profits over the public’s right to know
Another reason: news coverage often mirrors what political leaders talk about, and US president Donald Trump in particular talks little about climate change except to deny it’s happening. That denial has emboldened others — in business, in politics, and in media — to downplay the climate threat
Despite the backsliding, internal audience data at newsrooms indicate that the public remains interested in the climate story and that audiences respond when journalists tell the story well
Many journalists do understand that the world faces a climate emergency, and they’re committed to telling the story. Some of them labor for news organizations that may or may not be doing justice to the climate story; others have struck out on their own to say what needs to be said.
The report recommends a number of steps to advance more coverage of climate in the media.
Reject climate hushing. - Push back on attempts to downplay climate denial and climate hushing.
Listen to your audience. People know there is a climate change problem, but want to know what they can do. People also don’t know that 89 percent of people around the world want climate action. Climate is often framed as a “on the one hand - on the other hand argument”. That false equivalency hinders the action people want.
Recognize that different circumstances call for different approaches. Climate impacts will vary across the world, as will understanding of the issue and available actions that can be taken. CCN has organized a one-year pilot project to provide 21 Global South newsrooms with free access to the climate news feeds.
Take initiative inside your news organization. CCN urges journalists to push the climate change story, so that it can’t be ignored and to work with colleagues on different beats to get climate reporting into places it might not normally be seen.
I recommend you read the CCN report if you are at all interested in the topic. It is very brief, coming in at about 16 pages, and puts more meat on the bones of the argument than I summarized above.
However, there is something that is missing from the report in my opinion. I would like to see CCN address the incentive structures that likely play a role when media organizations downplay the threat of climate change.
All major media organizations around the world are ensconced in a capitalist economic paradigm that values and makes a virtue of economic growth. I’m not throwing shade on these media organizations. They are just large media organizations who exist in a system that promotes economic growth. The story these organizations tell has neoclassical economics as the default setting in almost every story they tell. That switch is never toggled to something else.
Most large media organizations are for profit enterprises. Many of these have shareholders to answer to - shareholders who expect year on year growth. Even media companies without shareholders sell advertising of some sort to help pay the bills. That advertising is nearly always going to be for companies with a growth imperative.
People at the top of these media organizations are smart people. If they have done any research on climate change, they will have come to the conclusion that it will take more than slightly tilting energy use from oil and gas to renewables. They likely understand that there is a causal correlation between increased production and consumption and climate change. They may not have done the math, but they can see that a culture that always needs to consume more is going to need more fuel and materials, which will need to come at the expense of fighting climate change.
Take a look at the list of major media groups around the world that are publicly traded companies. The executives and lawyers at these companies will know that they have a fiduciary duty to deliver for shareholders - even if that means refusing to talk about climate change.
Large markets and the publicly listed media companies therein:
United States – Many major U.S. media groups (e.g., Disney, Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery) are owned by publicly listed corporations.
United Kingdom – Companies like ITV plc and BSkyB are listed, and some media groups are owned by listed conglomerates.
France – Media groups such as TF1 Group and Lagardère are listed or owned by listed entities.
Germany – RTL Group and ProSiebenSat.1 are listed, and some media assets are held by listed conglomerates.
Italy – Mediaset and other media groups are listed or owned by listed companies.
Canada, Australia, Japan, and others – Media companies in these OECD countries are often owned by listed conglomerates or holding companies.
Now take a look at the media organizations that CCN singled out as examples of organizations doing a good job when it comes to reporting on climate change.
The Guardian – The Scott Trust Limited is the sole shareholder of GMG, a structure designed to protect the newspaper from commercial pressures and maintain its editorial independence.
The New York Times - A publicly traded company, but the Ochs - Sulzerger family retains control through a special class of shares.
The Associated Press - A not-for-profit news agency that operates as a cooperative.
TIME - Since 2018, Time has been owned by Salesforce founder Marc Benioff.
Bloomberg Green - Run by Michael Bloomberg who is a vocal supporter of climate action.
CNN - Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery
Telemundo - Owned by NBC Universal
France Télévisions - A state owned public service broadcaster
The Hindustan Times - A daily newspaper owned by HT Media Limited, which is entirely controlled by the Birla family.
Two of these news sources are part of larger publicly traded companies with no controlling shareholder (like the NY Times). Good for CNN and Telemundo for fighting the good fight on climate, though both companies are but a small piece of media conglomerates that can tolerate “climate activism” from their news companies. Revenue from both CNN and Telemundo make up a small portion of the returns shareholders demand. For example, CNN is on pace to bring in about $1.8B in revenue in 2026. In 2025, Warner Bros. Discover reported total revenue of $37.30 billion. I’ll bet if CNN were its own publicly traded entity, or made up a bigger portion of its parent company revenues, it would be under more pressure to softpeddle any climate reporting.
The freedom of media organizations to talk about climate is directly proportional to their ability to speak the truth about climate change - namely that addressing it will mean confronting our growth obsessed culture. To their credit, a few of these organizations, such as the Guardian, the New York Times and CNN have written positively - although sparingly - about degrowth in recent years. I haven’t seen anything from the others, but I may have missed something.
I invite Covering Climate Now to take the next step and examine if the media companies around the world take the next step in the climate change conversation and address the “growth bias” in most media companies.
To their credit, at the end of the report, Covering Climate Now includes the following invitation:
If this white paper sparked comments, concerns, ideas, please reach out. We’d love to chat, to learn from you, and to see how we can support your work. Write us at editors@coveringclimatenow.org
I’ll be sending them an e-mail today.
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