You won’t read this climate story. Let’s talk about why

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.