Complexity, Objectivity, and Shifting Roles: Environmental Correspondents March to a Changing Beat

Abstract

Environmental journalists have been at the forefront of news industry changes. Over the past 30 years, they have had to deal with a range of challenges, including increased complexity, greater reliance on data, exposure to online negativity, and cooption into polarised political debates. At the same time, they have been among the most vulnerable to newsroom cutbacks. This exploratory study examines the extent to which environmental journalists can be considered emblematic of challenges facing beat journalism in general. Drawing on rare, onthe-record interviews with environmental reporters in the US, UK, and Ireland, the study finds that, based on environmental journalists' experiences, specialised environmental beats are becoming the preserve of larger media organisations with dedicated audiences, while at smaller news outlets, specialist reporters have taken on two or more beats, thereby diluting coverage of specific areas overall. Environmental journalists have also had to reconsider traditional roles, such as the conduit function, and long-standing norms, such as objectivity and impartiality. These trends may come to be replicated across other beats as journalists begin to report from a social justice standpoint, or rely more on science and data, as has happened during Covid-19 coverage.

Reporting on the 2019 European Heatwaves and Climate Change: Journalists’ Attitudes, Motivations and Role Perceptions

“…Faced with this hostile reporting environment, journalists in the UK, Ireland and the US have also reported that environmental issues are becoming more difficult to explain. As climate science becomes more complex, journalists often require help from academics and external sources (Robbins and Wheatley 2021).…”

“…The advocacy role was found to be particular present among online journalists and digital-born news media in the USA (Tandoc and Takahashi 2014). However, environmental journalists from the UK, Ireland and the US who were interviewed by Robbins and Wheatley (2021) took a strong stance against an advocacy role, arguing that "reporting evidence and scientific reality does not equate to advocacy" (12). Thus, considering the various manifestations of role perceptions among climate/environmental journalists, we were interested in how journalists perceive their role specifically with regard to extreme weather event reporting.…”

“…Due to declining revenues, the number of environmental and science reporters declined overall (and particularly in the USA: Boykoff and Yulsman 2013; Robbins and Wheatley 2021) and showed a trend towards more generalist than specialist reporters, more freelance reporters, and increased pressure on journalists to produce a greater volume of output in the same time, but for various platforms and media forms (Boykoff and Yulsman 2013;Friedman 2015;Gibson 2016). In contrast, a different trend can be observed at large media organizations or net-native outlets (Robbins and Wheatley 2021) and in the UK where public broadcasters such as the BBC have maintained a large team of science and environmental reporters (Painter 2013). Thus, the extent to which climate change, or heatwaves and EEA studies, gets covered can very much depend on the country, the national media context and distinct organizational and editorial priorities in each media outlet.…”

“…However, media coverage of EEA studies has received little scholarly research so far (with the exceptions of . In general, journalists who report about climate face a number of challenges such as lack of time and resources (Robbins and Wheatley 2021), as well as access to relevant sources (Maibach et al 2018), and these are amplified with regard to extreme weather reporting and EEA studies: the science is complicated, the sources for insights are limited, and training for reporting about climate science is often lacking, for example in India ). Hence, this study seeks to explore how journalists reported EEA analyses of the 2019 heatwaves in Europe, what journalistic practices (e.g., use of sources) they followed when writing about the heatwaves, how they perceive their role in covering extreme weather events more generally, as well as how they believe contextual and organizational factors influenced their reporting.…”

Transformative Journalisms: How the ecological crisis is transforming journalism

“…There is evidence (see above, e.g. (Brüggemann and Engesser 2017;Hiles and Hinnant 2014;Robbins and Wheatley 2021)), that over the years, climate journalism learnt to go beyond false balance and towards interpretive coverage when dealing with the denial of basic facts related to climate change. Yet, interpretive coverage would mean more, going beyond reporting events towards discussing issues in order to get a grip on the long-term process of environmental degradation.…”