Executive Director, Earth Journalism Network
Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) and Deakin University have released a report that documents the urgent challenges confronting climate and environmental journalists across the world, showing that 39% experience threats as a result of their work, and almost two-thirds feel obliged to use climate skeptics as sources for “balance.”
Titled: “Covering the Planet: Assessing the State of Climate and Environmental Journalism Globally,” the report traces the global landscape of climate and environmental reporting in detail and brings to light some of the challenges and needs of journalists doing the crucial work of ‘covering the planet’.
Based on a survey of 744 journalists and editors in 108 countries and in-depth interviews with 74 journalists in 31 countries, the study examined how journalists conduct their climate and environmental reporting – and what they require to do it better, as the deadlines for international treaty commitments fast approach.
The study provides a novel, truly global benchmark of the current state of climate and environmental journalism. It finds a varied landscape in which journalists strive to bring to public attention the environmental issues and problems that matter most, as well as solutions that are being enacted in regions around the world.
It highlights positive trends as well as challenges, each manifested with local nuance. Journalists interviewed reported that the volume of coverage of climate change and the environment is increasing in most places, against a backdrop of shrinking newsrooms, reductions to media freedom in some jurisdictions, and an expansion of misinformation and disinformation.
A Key challenge that was identified as facing journalists who report on climate change and environment today is inadequate resources to verify, amplify, and diversify their work. The study demonstrates that journalists’ safety is a cause for concern. Findings show that environmental reporting puts journalists in some parts of the world in real danger, as such many of them feel the need to self-censor to stay safe. It also noted a concerning trend among journalists in some countries still seeking to ‘balance’ their climate change reporting by including contrarian sources, that is, those who deny that climate change is happening, or that it is being caused by humans.
Journalists also overwhelmingly agreed that support from external funding organizations was essential to enabling their climate and environment reporting but they are however, concerned with maintaining journalistic independence: they neither want to be perceived as serving funders’ requirements or newsroom dictates, and motivated above all by the needs of their audiences.
It made a number of recommendations for funding organisations, newsrooms, and journalists to help address issues identified in the report.
The report recommended that funders should make more support available for journalists covering climate change and the environment; work with journalists and newsrooms for a focused approach and longevity of funding; consider journalists’ diverse training needs in different country contexts; and enable journalists to cover the stories they deem most locally relevant, among others.
It says newsrooms should encourage some journalists to specialize in reporting on climate change and the environment; publish and broadcast more climate and environment stories, as well as make them more prominent; encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing between journalists; and consider collaborating with climate and environment news specialist organizations.
For the journalists themselves, the report recommended that they must focus on making global environmental issues locally relevant; cover solutions as well as problems; highlight climate justice perspectives in climate change reporting; and consider their own, and their media outlet’s position on the spectrum between ‘objectivity’ and ‘advocacy’.
The full report is available and can be downloaded from here.
