Climate news is feeling harder and harder to engage with. As a journalist who focuses on climate and environmental issues, pitching these stories in newsrooms has always felt like pushing water uphill — and yet, in recent years, that struggle seems to be intensifying. Despite more than 70% of Australians saying that they are concerned about climate change and its impacts, these stories are rarely clicked on. The same audiences who say they care deeply about climate science and politics aren’t often reading about it and, in turn, newsrooms are losing their motivation to report on it at all.
This is hardly surprising. Even as a journalist who writes these articles, I have to admit to often rapidly scrolling past climate stories during my morning browse of news websites. The reporting of record-breaking heat, species threats, ice sheet deterioration and the hastened death of the Great Barrier Reef can feel too disturbing to manage every day. Instead, I have been forced to package the horror of keeping up with climate change into discrete time slots in my week, bookmarking these stories for when I feel I have the energy and motivation to bear them.
Avoiding climate news can be seen as part of a growing trend of news avoidance among Australians. Audiences, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that they’re being hit with and the emotional distress that news can cause, are checking in less with news sources. According to a report on media consumption published by the University of Canberra last year, around 69% of Australians report scrolling past news stories on social media, changing the channel on their TVs when it comes on, or prioritising activities that minimise the risk of being confronted with any news whatsoever.
Not all news is avoided equally. Climate news, alongside social justice news and any reports about war, are the most avoided, while topics like local news, education, or lifestyle are less concerning and seem to be easier for audiences to engage with. Professor Sora Park, an author of the report, says that we can probably attribute news avoidance to the seriousness of what the world has endured in recent years, from the pandemic to multiple global conflicts. It should also be noted that news avoidance may become much easier once Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) ends its deal to pay for Australian news content.
Park doesn’t necessarily believe that news avoidance in itself is a highly disturbing issue, as it represents audiences’ tendency to manage their own information flow and emotional regulation from reading the news. However, she says that she is concerned about the subset of Australians (approximately 10%) who switch off from news entirely. The amount of people who systematically exclude themselves from reading the news altogether has been steadily growing in recent years.
“I think that’s a real problem because then people won’t be informed and they’ll fill that space with something else. If they don’t consume news, they’ll consume something else and oftentimes that won’t be high quality journalism, it could be very low quality information or misinformation,” Park says.
The question now for journalists is how to reengage audiences broadly in climate stories. The coming years of this decade are crucial for the survival of the planet as we know it, with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stating that greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 (yes, next year 2025) at the latest and then decline 43% by 2030 to keep global warming within a threshold that will limit the effects of climate change on the systems that we need to survive.
Dr Linden Ashcroft, a climatologist and climate communications expert, says that the answer for climate reporters and newsrooms will be in striking the right balance between illustrating problems and solutions. “There always has to be a balance between imparting a sense of urgency and showing that something big and bad and scary is happening – but then also equipping people or empowering people with the tools to act on that information,” she says.
Ashcroft also notes that it may simply be the case that we know so much already that clicking on articles that repeat statistics and miserable facts about the climate may be too exhausting. She says that journalists have an opportunity now to expand on and change climate reporting — by focusing on local issues, informing people on how to make change within their own communities, and bringing climate journalism back to a level where tackling the problem feels achievable.
“It comes back to the power of stories. We know that humans listen to stories, we remember stories. We remember journeys or struggles that heroes are undertaking and there are lots of great climate science pieces or climate news articles that have those.”
When I think back to the climate stories that I have found most impactful, they’ve hardly been updates on IPCC reports or statistics about ocean temperatures. Instead, they’ve been focused on personal reflections or strong narrative storytelling — the kind of journalism that draws audiences in, rather than immobilising them with dread. While it is distressing to see audiences turning away from news about climate, it also forces us to think more honestly and creatively about how we ourselves like to consume news. After all, climate change is one of — if not the — defining issues of our time and it’s our responsibility to find the pathway forward when it comes to talking about it.
How could the media do a better job of reporting on climate change? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
For all that 70% of Australians are concerned about Climate Change we have a government, an opposition and a massive industry lobby who would rather we just forgot about it and let them get on with fostering and developing gas and coal.
If we had a government that was prepared to put Climate Change front and center and spell out clearly what we’re up against we would get rapid change. Instead we’ve got a spineless government and organizations like CSIRO and the BOM preventing their experts from speaking out while we hear nothing of consequence from out “leaders”.
Remember Kevin’s plan? [Yes, yes The Greens blah blah]. When he first floated the idea it had wide public support but neither Kevin nor any member of his party got out there, argued the case or fought for it. Instead, the public debate was swamped by Tony A. and Labor, as is typical of them, cowered in the shadows.
The large number of Australians who want climate action should be a fertile field for votes in any election but the huge weight of power and propaganda opposed to climate action is over-riding any possibility that we might actually get our teeth into this problem and develop some sort of positive momentum and the satisfaction of taking real action.
“Kevin’s Plan”
That’s because what the West put to the Un and Undeveloped Nations at Copenhagen was so unpalatable that had asked for “one in all in” or massive relief so they got some break from Climate Change.
When the West said “no” then the U/N Nations said they didn’t want any part of it. And so the Conference stalled and ended. And the West departed with its tail between its legs.
This was well reported in reputable Media at the time. Just not so much in Australia where the Media having seen their “poster boy and his team” so recently and inceremoniously trounced and seeing the new Labor Government so successfully and seamlessly navigate the GFC, cracked the shits and went all out on Rudd.
Polling shows that the vast majority of Australians want action on climate change, AND that the vast majority of Australians want to pay nothing (or cost them nothing) for that action to happen.
The problem with climate reporting is that it focuses on the negatives and costs. However there are so many opportunities, new jobs and industries from the transition that this should be front and centre of the story.
I’d like to see a few more protest in front of LNP and regional council offices calling for more solar panel and wind farm jobs, rather than letting the protest movement always calling for the cancellation of projects.
Very good points. The predominant messages we get, not surprisingly, are of the catastrophe we face and the failures to address it. Such stories, while necessary journalism, are, on their own, demoralising to many. Most don’t doubt the science, but many do doubt their own capacity and that of the political system to do anything effective. For those that don’t, for various reasons, accept the science, the fact based stories don’t convert them, rather make them more obstinate and resentful. Making this rump even better fodder for the shock jocks. Therefore, as you say Bizzy, there should be far more deployment of good stories in terms of achievements, possibilities, plans and rewards. These will get clicks and create hope. While you can still convey plenty of hard (and hard to stomach) data in these stories, along with the positives.
But we should never forget that at least half the aim of the denialists is not to convince deniers but rather to demoralise those who would oppose them. It’s very much about convincing people to give up and not act. For a fossil fuel profiteer that is a win.
And this is not balanced by any talk of the costs of NOT doing anything. 20 years ago I heard an executive from the German equivalent of Lloyds of London warning that with unabated climate change, the cost of increasing natural disasters alone would bankrupt the world economy within a few short generations.
A few years ago I read of a reliable estimate of a trillion dollars a year damage to Europe from sea level rise.
Australians may talk up climate change, but it’s overtaken by RW MSM and word of mouth messaging to induce inertia, apathy and denigrate all things climate science, renewables, solar panels, batteries etc. vs. talking up nuclear, immigration/population growth & ‘degrowth’ etc. (the latter is overpopulated by too many former ALP types, great success for RW fossil fuels)
Worse than the lies or half truths propagated by RW MSM, influencers and word of mouth, is the censorship by omission of local and offshore success stories on faster take up of renewables with growth.
A local exception is Renew Economy (Nov ’23) ‘Renewables hit record high in Australia, as green energy transition rolls on’, but news like this is avoided by the MSM?
Just a small detail J Lavarack, I think that we need to be clear about the difference between the “Government” and our “leaders”. Our leaders, this is, those who really run the country and who are found in plentiful supply in the boardrooms of Pitt Street or Collins Street, etc. Most of those in Canberra, especially from the two major parties are only there to serve the interests of their masters in those boardrooms.
Well, I read it. Scientists, organisations, institutions, teachers, instructors, park rangers, farmers, etc etc I have read about, visited and talked to: rarely pose the problem without the solutions. Trouble is there are well funded attacks on the solutions also amplified by some media outlets.
They have solutions? To what?
If you are referring to climate change, remember that’s a global phenomenon.
Is there anything in your list of solutions, that will measurably reverse or even reduce the impact of global climate change on Australia – even within the next hundred years?
However, we could do something to mitigate the effects of climate change on Australia, but politics gets in the way. For example, we could stop immigration, stop urban sprawl, switch to regenerative agriculture, restore lost forests. All this will be labour intensive – forever. And it might need conscription to a Conservation Corps. It certainly would cost a lot – probably the equivalent of the AUKUS subs.
So the only way to enact anything even halfway resembling a solution is via recognising that we’ll only be able to get anything done if we employ a different system for organising ourselves. Or rather, even just considering TRYING to organise ourselves in the face of this stubborn ad-hocery that calls itself democracy but becomes ever more neofeudal by the year.
Overthrowing the ruling class is the only possible way we can even try to pull out of this nosedive, but it just sounds like a joke to people; our only chance doesn’t even make it onto the table… Probably because people think failure when they think political revolution. I feel like the only person saying here’s how you destroy the death star; it’s a snowflake’s chance, but it’s all we’ve got.
The reason I’m sick of reading climate change stories is because nowhere near enough people take the problem of organising ourselves seriously enough.
Our pitifully small army could not possibly overcome an uprising by even a small percentage of the population, even if none of the soldiers joined the uprising. Half a million vehicles descending on Canberra should be enough. Everyone just rock up, and stay. Make demands, with intent.
But that’s leaving the same people in charge and the existing system in place. I’ve spent a very long time considering this, and it’s occurred to me that the way you make a revolution work is to develop the replacement system beforehand.
Imagine a game on your phone that’s about figuring out the optimum rules for society, based on the principle that nobody gets to be more important than anyone else, except by the kudos afforded by one’s record of contributions. Everyone is entitled to having their needs met, and is expected to contribute to meeting the needs of others.
Over time it morphs from a Sims-type thing where everybody is designing the rules as they play, to an actual tax dodge like LETS, where goods and services are sort of bartered on a pay it forward sort of basis. As it attracts more people of means, it develops the ability to insulate its most vulnerable members from the ravages of poverty, freeing up their potential to contribute.
After it’s developed along these lines long enough, it’s not a game, it’s the new civilisation. The billionaires and governments can all go fck themselves because their money can’t buy people and their laws can’t be enforced, because half of us have seceded.
We could possibly avoid being shut down by asking, where is the program looking for a better way? We have research into all sorts of minutiae, but nobody seems to be researching a superior alternative to capitalism and ‘representative’ ‘democracy’.
Isn’t it obvious, that there’s no way out of drowning in our own sht via the current system? Isn’t that ABSOLUTELY obvious? So, how can any authority summon the moral authority to do anything other than endorse and support such an effort?
Who is even saying this?
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Thanks for the heads up that Climate Change is a global phenomena.
Great article, however, I cringe when I read “The amount of people……, when of course it should be ‘the number of people”! Can everyone writing for Crikey remember this? Its good grammar and part of good journalism.
There is little point expecting good journalism from writers here – ‘grammar’ was never on offer.
Ah the old countable/uncountable nouns problem. Less/fewer and amount/number – the number of people who use each properly is in steep decline. These four words cause more shouting at the tv than the rest of the language put together.
Also damaging to the grammatic structure of language – and subsequently thought – is the use of 3rd person instead of 1st or 2nd.
EG “Us aliens are just waiting for you to self destruct.”
My hackles rise, too, John. The companion error is to write “less” when the writer means “fewer”.
Ah yes. My nickname is “grammar police”.
This aside, the only stories I am interested in are those which tell me about individuals and small groups who are actually doing something positive toward having a negative impact on the planet. Every other article is bypassed, with some remorse, because all I read about is proposals, rediculous time frames, financial growth impact etc. Nothing actually achieved – and don’t get me started on local government.
Anyway…………got the gist of it journalists?
Surely we have bigger problems.
I get stuck on folks saying, ‘people that’ instead of ‘people who’ because it subtly enables dehumanisation, but I recognise that we have far bigger fish to fry than all the other linguistic atrocities.
Readers like their news to be news, not stuff they already know – so if there’s a new story about climate change people will probably read it. But if it’s just another report on what people feel they already know, then why read it?
Yes I avoid most articles on climate change, as I won’t learn anything I don’t already know. If it seems like new info I’ll read it.
I tend not to read articles about global heating, because it’s happening. I’m much more likely to read an article with solutions.