But even though broadcast TV networks spent more time talking about climate change, they didn’t interview very many scientists, women, or people of color.
Protests, fires in the Amazon rainforest, elections, and the Green New Deal drove the rise in climate coverage last year.
Nightly and Sunday morning news shows spent 238 minutes reporting on climate change in 2019, compared to 142 minutes in 2018.
People are beginning to see and experience the dangers that climate change poses, Allison Fisher, a program director at Media Matters, tells The Verge, and that could be behind the bump in coverage.
She adds, however, that it’s a problem that climate experts and communities on the frontlines of climate change are still underrepresented in the media.
Some of the most influential activists stirring up the brouhahas around climate change are women and people of color, Fisher says.
CBS News was the only corporate broadcast television network to sign on, and last year, it dedicated twice as long to climate change as the other networks combined. »