Abstract
Climate change reporting is not just about extreme weather events and disasters. It relates to issues across different fields, from everyday life, to politics, economy, society, culture, and sports. In-depth knowledge and access to diverse countries and communities, as well as the ability to conduct investigations across geographical boundaries and timelines, are essential to making the reporting equitable, proportionate, and comprehensive.
Such work cannot be undertaken by one special reporting team nor by one dedicated newsroom, let alone one expert reporter. This awareness has led to recent expansions of collaborations within and between newsrooms and among journalists, meteorologists, and scientists. Such collaborations could also help to make the reporting more relevant to a broader audience, raising their interest, deepening their knowledge, and gaining their trust.
This study looks at the activities and achievements of global collaborations and networks based in the United States and the United Kingdom; how they are trying to increase, improve, and expand the news coverage of the climate crisis by sharing their knowledge and experience.
The study also includes an interview with Mark Hertsgaard, environment correspondent of The Nation, and the co-founder of Covering Climate Now, one of the global media collaborations featured in this article. Hertsgaard says that journalists have the responsibility to highlight the climate crisis as a top priority—not“one of many problems”—and to convey that there is still time to act to prevent the earth from reaching its climate tipping point.
