Belle de Jong, environment editor at The European Correspondent [1], recently posted on social media:
Climate journalism is shrinking, this recent Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard piece 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’s 2025 year-end analysis showed a 38% reduction in global media’s climate coverage in 2025, since the high-water mark of 2021.
She then reverses the causality to state:
The decline in weekly climate news consumption was driven partly by reduced supply, rather than a lack of interest, the Reuters Institute’s 2025 report found. People are still interested in climate news, but newsrooms stopped supplying it.
de Jong then states what she wishes were true:
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.
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.
Conclusion?
That’s why, at The European Correspondent, we have dedicated editors and staff writers across environment, agriculture, energy, and health, because they’re all interconnected. We also have correspondents in the countries where the stories are actually happening, to make sure we don’t get stuck inside the Brussels bubble. Because climate journalism is what determines whether readers understand what’s happening to their world.
Correction: 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–in the US, at least.
The fix is in with the Nieman report authors, Suzannah Evans Comfort (associate professor of journalism, Indiana University) and Jill Hopke (associate professor of journalism, DePaul University, and board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists). Warning of “the real peril facing climate journalism,” they opine:
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 from top news organizations in the United States, with minor variations over the last 40 years.
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).
Comfort and Hopke mention the last bastion of climate alarm reporting:
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 and The New York Times, 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 “Heated” that independent climate journalist Emily Atkin launched in February with producer Tracy Wholf, who had been laid off by CBS News in 2025.
Grist? Emily Atkin at Heated? In “Psychedelics for Climate Action,” she confessed:
Personally, when I take mushrooms, the last thing I want to do is think about climate change. But that’s apparently what I should be doing, according to Psychedelics for Climate Action.
Comfort and Hopke conclude: “Audiences want and need climate news.” I guess NPR and the Washington Post, et al. do not know their audiences. Dumb them. Or maybe not.
[1] “I 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.”
The climate cult is sort of like poison ivy .
Vine , bush , tree ….and they all (b) itch .
😉
The climate cult is like a box of granola. When you’ve removed the fruits and the nuts all you have left are the flakes.
Not bad, not bad at all. I do so love a finally tuned snide comment. Kudos!
And a finely tuned one. 🙂
I can’t wait for the Weather Channel and their App to get the message.
And Yahoo, new WSJ, CBS deadenders, NBC deadenders, UN leaders, and all of Europe
Does Guardian go down with the ship?
The trouble with daily existential threat fear mongering is……it’s not sustainable.
The Daily Telegraph in the UK was recently taken over by the German company Springer.
It has sadly become a true Springer Spaniel in cravenly publishing all manner of climate scares.
It’s going to the dogs
Wow! Associate Professors of [climate] journalism complaining that others of their ilk have lost their jobs despite the clarity that “climate change” is killing us. Perhaps the reason is that it is not? Weather attribution “scientists” associate every raindrop or lack of raindrops and every other weather event to “climate change” because that is what they are paid to do despite actual data clearly establishing that there is no association at all. All of these people making their proclamations based on no data whatever! Of course they should all lose their jobs.
If you are not tying extreme weather events to climate change,
you are not qualified, Nieman continues.
______________________________________________________
Nieman is the Nieman Foundation at Harvard
They say
The 89th class of Nieman Fellows includes accomplished journalists based in 12 different countries who cover topics ranging from climate change, Blah … blah … blah …
Climate change is listed first. Pretty much all you need to know.
Perhaps Nick Shirley, who ‘scooped’ every ‘journalist’ in the mainstream media universe re. billions of dollars in Medicare fraud, should apply for a fellowship.
As long as he doesn’t get murdered in Ceuta.
Climate is defined as 30 years of weather in a given area. Therefore, the weather must change first and for 30 years before climate can change. Cause and effect. Repeatedly putting the cart before the horse is not journalism, its repeating a fallacy without even realizing what the definitions of the terms you are using are. Such are the methods of those with a propaganda agenda, not a journalism principle.
Underreported?!
“Climate change” is the most OVERREPORTED, sensationalized, propagandized pile of manure the “media” has ever gotten their hands on.
And present attempts to tie every “bad weather” occurrence of every type to a completely beneficial warming of the climate as compared with The Little Ice Age, which WAS a “disastrous” climate, is 180 degrees wrong, based on REALITY.
We are experiencing record harvests and deaths due to NATURAL disasters are at all-time lows. Fossil fuels have lifted billions of humans out of abject poverty and short, miserable, back-breaking lives.
The attempt to demonize human prosperity is being RIGHTFULLY rejected by anyone with a lick of common sense.
Don’t hold back. Tell us how you REALLY feel!
Oh noes! Without climate propagandists telling the sheeple what to believe, how will they know anything? It’s a travesty!
Is it not even remotely possible that those “sheeple” will look up from their device screens and look out the window?
Maybe pause to think?
“Without reporters who understand the science”
Belle de Jong’s plaint is perhaps the most inadvertently hilarious statement in the entire essay.
A strong runner-up is (Comfort and Hopke)’s, “a strong climate reporting corps is our best hope for thoughtful journalism“ (my emphasis, as though it were needed).
The mindless extolling the meritless.
I was going to comment on the “thoughtful journalism” thing, but you did it well, Pat. Bravo.
Many of us reacted to the same bushwah, Jeff. At the bottom their complaint seems to be a dirge about lost income and the evaporation of self-affirmation.
Perhaps the universities should take note and cut their climate staff by 74% too. Governments too.
The vast majority of universities are run by the educated woke. They’ll never change.
Neither will the universities until the public money is cut off. Which it should be.
I think it is the Mal-educated woke that run them.
When I last worked at Stanford the President was Marc Tessier-Lavigne who came as a high-ranking neuroscientist from UCSF Medical School. Persis Drell, the Provost, is a first-rank particle physicist.
Woke to the core. It’s psychological, not educational.
“The bottom line is that climate is a profoundly underreported issue.”
That line reads like a Babylon Bee headline…
“A strong climate reporting corps is our best hope for thoughtful journalism that serves the public.”
The best hope for journalism is if it stuck to reporting unbiased truth with accuracy.
HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW, they are trying to justify their climate change bullcrap as they are as smart as rain drops.
Honest reporting left long ago because they have an agenda to support and defend, which is why it is profoundly stupid and ignorant.
I am dealing with someone at a forum who thinks NO energy ever leaves the planet, ever….. gargle….
If no energy ever leaves Earth, it would not be visible from space. The “Blue Marble” photograph from Apollo 17 is, perhaps, the most famous.
And you wouldn’t have to wait several billion years for the sun to explode for the earth to burn to a crisp.
But some of the thermometer-readers claim that it is only the outgoing LWIR that counts!
Contention among journalistic stories is a good substitute for accuracy.
We don’t have that since the 1996 Telecommunications Act allowed big money to buy up all the media outlets in every market. Small media was swallowed up. Adversary opinions, outlooks, and investigations disappeared.
The 1996 Act should be legislatively nullified. Then use anti-trust law to break up the media empires.
Let arguments about facts and meaning reign among journalists once again. As they fight out their opposing views, we’ll all get the information needed to make a decision.
That is a very good observation showing that “free Speech” can be bought up then controlled by a special interest who is now very sensitive to “free speech” that doesn’t go them way.
Read the footnote about “My background” and weep!
Note that the authors (all three of the ones quoted) are either “journalists” or teach “journalism.” Proof profound that, as has been pronounced by a number of conservative commentators, “journalism” is dead. The “media” have become the “misledia.” “Journalists” have become “opinion writers” propounding propaganda as ‘facts,’ and the purveyors of that propaganda are contesting the loss of their privileges.
Unfortunately, while some may believe that Trump has gone too far in many of his policies, and in reaction elect a Democratic Socialist or Communist or Democrat President and Congress who then can easily retract all of his policies, restore regulations (including the CO2 Endangerment ruling), and regain the high ground of government overreach. So please don’t consider the fight against the climate hoaxters won, and relax. We will have to maintain vigilance or lose.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”
Future book idea: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Climate Empire.
The goal has been accomplished. It has been the consensus for decades that human emissions are controlling the climate. The public may not believe that or be concerned, it may not even be true, almost certainly isn’t true. Even so, when CBDC becomes a reality…programmable digital currency…individual carbon tracking will happen and controls will be imposed to save the planet. But carbon is only the start. During a pandemic, natural disaster, or state of emergency, emergency powers combined with programmable money would allow authorities to enforce public health policies, movement restrictions, and resource allocation directly through the financial ledger. And, Programmed Expiration, Negative interest Rates, Geofencing, Travel Restrictions, Behavior-Linked Access, Automated Asset Freezing…on and on. It was never about climate or CO2 or emissions. It’s about technocratic global governance…Power.
Over the past 20-plus years, several UN officials openly admitted that.
No, not in decline–they just got instructions to tone it down in the quiet period of the mid terms from Party leaders. Have you seen any No Kings protests lately or attacks on federal buildings? The coordinated “journalism” of Climate Crusades Inc. has direct orders to hush.
“Without reporters who understand the science”
That is the issue in toto. The reporters at those climate crisis desks never cared about science.
They know their mission, and it’s got nothing to do with science.
Just remember Greta “follow the science” Thunberg.
She needed those headlines to “follow the science.”
Sailed across the Atlantic in a high-tech carbon fiber sailboat to a climate conference (or something like that) as a major publicity stunt. Flew back home on a jet afterwards when no one was paying attention.
Fauci: “I am the science”.
Thunberg followed Fauci who followed Thunberg who followed Fauci, who followed Thunberg… ad infinitum into infamy. Long live the forever infamous, forever making conservatives correct and righteous in their beliefs.
“Belle de Jong, environment editor at The European Correspondent [1], recently posted on social media:”
What I hear her say: “Blah, blah, blah, … blah, blah, … blah”.
Hear this, I don’t care. All I know is that I want mankind to produce ever more CO2 to help feed the world.
“Emily Atkin at Heated? In “Psychedelics for Climate Action,” she confessed:
Reminds me a commercial for a coffee substitute made from ground mushrooms.
The commercial shows a sleepy lady walking into her kitchen and seeing a cute little mushroom stirring a cup of “coffee” for her.
If I was her, I’d wonder what kind of mushrooms the stuff was made from.
(I’d also switch back to the real thing.) 😎
PS No knock on the product itself. I’ve never tried it.
Journalism in general has been in steep decline for at least the last 60 to 70 years.
I find it fascinating how so many socialists can convince themselves that capitalists, who by some accounts would sell their own grandmothers if it meant extra profits, are so willing to forego profits by not providing something that, according to the socialist, the people are demanding.
The most telling part of the list of qualifications and experience that de Jong boasts of having, there is not one single mention of her having any education in science whatsoever.
How is it not obvious to her that she is an expert in manufacturing and spreading propaganda and describes her fellow climate experts similarly.
….. because she’s a useless cretin who can’t get a real job, like most/all of them ??
Like any employee of a company, journalists (so-called) are evaluated by their performances, and their pay/promotions/continued employment are decided accordingly. The evaluation is a mix of quantitative metrics and subjective editorial assessment.
Many are under pressure to turn out one or more articles or news pieces per day, including measures of word count, leaving little or no time to delve into a subject in any depth, verify sources, or examine real world data.Subjectively, they are judged by sensationalism (“if it bleeds it leads”), and impact, thus incentivizing them to create flashy or provocative stories.Increasingly in the digital age, they are quantitatively measured by reader engagement (deep reads), clicks, and ad revenue, driven by the “algorithms.”
Few journalists are degreed in basic or applied sciences or engineering. The vast majority have degrees in journalism, communications, or the liberal arts. Politically and socially, journalists as a whole lean far left of the general population, with a vanishingly small number who would consider themselves to be conservatives or Republicans. Aside from having a natural skill or talent with words, many entered the field because they want to idealistically “make a difference” and have editorial autonomy, and many have a history of some form of social activism (although this runs counter to the idea of unbiased reporting).
All of this creates a toxic environment in which fundamentally-flawed journalists must swim — the blind leading the blind. It is little wonder that we at WUWT have to play the daily game of whack-a-mole to refute the leftist garbage spewed by the media.
“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.”
Oh good. I still feel bad about those reporters losing jobs, they’ve got bills to pay too, but at least there was an upside.