Climate issues play a minor role in 2014

International TV coverage of climate change, 2002-2014

Rapperswil, November 27, 2014. The lack of media coverage on climate change has eroded the sense of urgency worldwide. After the publication of the Stern Report in 2006, that stirred a wide debate, media interest soon dropped below the awareness threshold again. A long-term analysis by the Swiss based research institute Media Tenor International, shows that the size of the perceived threat to human civilization has not been backed up by sustainable media coverage.

“Politicians will always be more occupied with those problems, that affect their chances to be re-elected. Climate change has not been among them over the last five years”, says Dr. Christian Kolmer, Head of Political Research at Media Tenor International. As people will only worry about an issue and put pressure on their political representatives when the subject grabs at least 1.5 % of the news over a sustained period, reporting about climate change has been shaped too far by some infrequent conference events. However, the warnings about an imminent global climate catastrophe have not been backed up by in-depth reporting about the scientific background and the implications for public policy. Thus, even in 2007 after the publication of the Stern report, climate change was only covered intensively by German and U.K. TV news, but two years later, in the year of the Copenhagen climate conference, awareness in Germany had already dropped below the awareness threshold.

As each measure to limit CO2 emissions is invariably open to criticism of not being adequate to the threat, media coverage of climate change promotes an image of helplessness. The nation states of the world — especially China and the U.S., are blamed for an unstoppable descent into the global heat catastrophe, while the calls for action from the UN and climate activists are met with sympathy, but fade away without real consequences. “In essence, journalists have already given up on climate protection”, concludes Dr. Kolmer.

For this report Media Tenor International has analyzed all 1,145,429 news stories from 14 main evening news programs in Germany, South Africa, the U.K. and the U.S. All stories have been examined by human coders. Inter-coder reliability averaged 88% in the 2nd quarter of 2014.

Contact: Dr. Christian Kolmer, 0049 – 176 – 19134512, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.