Complexity, Objectivity, and Shifting Roles: Environmental Correspondents March to a Changing Beat

ABSTRACT

Environmental journalists have been at the forefront of news industry changes. Over the past 30 years, they have had to deal with a range of challenges, including increased complexity, greater reliance on data, exposure to online negativity, and co-option into polarised political debates. At the same time, they have been among the most vulnerable to newsroom cutbacks. This exploratory study examines the extent to which environmental journalists can be considered emblematic of challenges facing beat journalism in general. Drawing on rare, on-the-record interviews with environmental reporters in the US, UK, and Ireland, the study finds that, based on environmental journalists’ experiences, specialised environmental beats are becoming the preserve of larger media organisations with dedicated audiences, while at smaller news outlets, specialist reporters have taken on two or more beats, thereby diluting coverage of specific areas overall. Environmental journalists have also had to reconsider traditional roles, such as the conduit function, and long-standing norms, such as objectivity and impartiality. These trends may come to be replicated across other beats as journalists begin to report from a social justice standpoint, or rely more on science and data, as has happened during Covid-19 coverage.

KEYWORDS:

• Beat journalism
• objectivity
• journalistic norms
• newsroom expertise
• environmental journalism
• polarisation

Introduction

It has been argued that environmental correspondents have been dealing for many years with professional challenges that are only now beginning to affect other specialist reporters. They have had to contend with increasing complexity, disinformation, political partisanship, and the de-legitimisation of expertise, and re-imagine approaches to journalistic norms of fairness, balance, and objectivity (Fahy 2018). Many have re-positioned their roles, moving from reporting to curating and interpreting information, or convening and addressing different publics (Fahy and Nisbet 2011). Environmental journalists operate in an industry facing unprecedented financial challenges, with newsrooms dispensing with specialist reporters in favour of precariously employed generalists (Nikunen 2013). Environmental reporters “work at the bleeding edge of a restructuring news industry”, yet their role in reporting climate change specifically is crucial. They “serve as a sort of ‘indicator species’ with regard to the fate of other beat writers” (Gibson, Craig, and Harper 2015).

This article examines the notion that the experiences of environmental journalists can provide insights into the challenges facing specialist journalism generally. Using semi-structured interviews with environmental reporters in three countries, e examine the extent to which reporters covering the environmental beat encounter, and deal with, the challenges mentioned above. Building on other interview-based studies into roles and perceptions of science and environmental journalists (for example, Smith 2005; Boykoff 2007; Fahy and Nisbet 2011; Gibson, Craig, and Harper 2015), we explore the ways in which modern environmental journalists’ experiences can act as a guide for other specialists for whom these challenges have lately become apparent. The article begins with an overview of the environment beat before focusing on how journalists have reconceptualised certain norms and roles, and how they differ from other specialisations. The use of semi-structured interviews is detailed before the study’s findings and conclusions are provided, based on five key themes.

History and Vulnerability of the Environmental Beat

While science journalism broadly dates back to the 1900s, environment did not become a recognised news beat in Western newsrooms until the late 1950s/early 1960s (Fahy 2017); prior to this, environmental issues appeared as nature writing, country sports coverage, and “hook-and-bullet” journalism (Neuzil 2008). Heightened newsroom attention was prompted by socio-political events such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), the Santa Barbara oil spill (1969), the first Earth Day (1970), and 1972s “blue marble” Earth photograph (Neuzil 2008, 2020); later, new cohorts of specialist reporters would cover 1980s environmental disasters like Exxon Valdez and Chernobyl. Yet the environment beat is not as stable as the politics or crime beats may be: it “[rides] a cycle of ups and downs like an elevator. These cycles, and consequent increases or decreases in numbers of environmental reporters and their space or air time, appear to be driven by public interest and events, as well as economic conditions” (Friedman 2004, 177). Key events like Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 CO2 emission speech (Whitlock 2020) are examples of how public – and newsroom—interest fluctuates amid the “issue attention cycle” as the environment is crowded out due to issue fatigue and issue competition (Djerf-Pierre 2012). Although often scientific in nature, environment/climate also becomes a political, business and international story, requiring multiple specialists’ attention. However, despite this broad relevance, without ownership, it can fall through the cracks (McFarling 2006), thus reinforcing the importance of newsroom beat structures which elevate or overlook certain topics.

Meanwhile, the economic challenges facing newsrooms over recent decades exposes an inherent vulnerability for specialist journalists, with environment correspondents not immune to cutbacks, as remaining reporters are also pressurised to produce more coverage to tighter deadlines, and across multiple platforms (Brainard 2015; Hansen 2020; Sachsman and Valenti 2015). US statistics demonstrate the loss of secure environment roles, reflecting drops in full-time staff positions but, crucially, a maintained interest in publishing environment stories, often through news wires or freelancers (Schleifstein 2020). Similarly, as the environment becomes more mainstream and a “must-cover” for UK outlets, the specialism has developed heightened complexity, and pressure increased on journalists to “do more with less” (Whitlock 2020). Elsewhere, Nordic countries saw the number of environmental journalists increase in the 1980/1990s, but an early-2000s decline followed, amid a trend of hiring general reporters to cover a range of issues in digital formats (Lyytimäki 2020). Environmental issues have been increasingly covered by political reporters, op-ed writers, editorial writers, or columnists, but such politically-informed coverage typically focuses on elected officials’ and interest groups’ strategies, rather than the issue’s substance (Nisbet and Fahy 2015). This concern is particularly pertinent when we see how, in response to cutbacks, newsrooms may sacrifice other areas to protect or intensify political coverage which is cheap, accessible and fulfils consumer demand (Skovsgaard and Van Dalen 2013).

A decline in beat-orientated knowledge has been documented empirically as newsrooms decrease specialisation opportunities (Nikunen 2013) but, arguing conceptually, Reich and Godler highlight how this reorientation towards generalisation among reporters is among the core shifting dialectics in contemporary newsrooms. Furthermore, they describe how core knowledge is shifting outside the newsroom in what they describe as “a pendulum movement towards greater dependence on external expertise” (2016, 68). Echoing these concerns, Menezes (2018) describes how cutbacks since the 2000s led to “a much reduced breadth of expertise” which, she argues, is particularly challenging for environmental issues in which coverage must be “simultaneously accurate, contextualized, and compelling”.

Reinterpreting Objectivity and Changing Roles

Climate stories can be complex to report, not fitting into recognised journalistic patterns and timescales: climate stories do not break, they “ooze” (Ward 2008). Concerns around the merits and achievability of the “strategic ritual” of objectivity (Tuchman 1972, 660) are not unique to the environment, of course, as many argue the concept—which receives much attention, especially in the US (Schudson 2001)—has been misconstrued and has clouded editorial practices (Kovach and Rosenstiel 2014). In recent years, there have been calls for journalists to pivot towards transparency (Karlsson 2010), or for stronger editorial decision-making, for example, regarding “phoney balance” during the Brexit referendum (Gaber 2016).

Yet while this debate gains broader ground, Fahy (2018) suggests environmental journalists were “pioneers” in reconceptualising objectivity, acting many years before other beats were engaged. As the environment became mainstream in the late-1980s, the subject posed conceptual and ethical problems for reporters. Initially, they “mirrored the scientific consensus” (Fahy 2017); however, there followed a “lost decade” (Boykoff 2011, 129) as journalists were influenced by fossil fuel companies, conservative thinkers, politicians and think-tanks to present climate change as an unresolved scientific issue. Ultimately, professional instincts actually led to “balance as bias” (Boykoff and Boykoff 2004) and coverage that failed to reflect the scientific consensus that climate change is caused predominantly by humans. Furthermore, objectivity has proven particularly problematic for environmental journalists, as many sympathised with the environmental movement and promoted its aims through their reporting, sometimes branded “Greens with press passes” (Ward 2002). Some find it difficult to categorise their work as objective or advocacy as “many of them are sympathetic to environmental values even as they strive to be rigorously professional in their reporting” (Fahy 2017). Yet although many express support for objectivity and fairness, some believed the specialism has been too supportive of environmental groups’ agendas (Sachsman, Simon, and Valenti 2010).

By 2000, environmental reporters were realising that their professional norms of balance and objectivity were unhelpful; in the US, many felt “duped” by the fossil fuel’s campaign to present climate change as a controversy (Hiles and Hinnant 2014, 448). Journalism commentators sought a move from perceptions of traditional objectivity—which often manifested in a “he says/she says” practice of including contesting sources in an attempt to achieve balance—towards “weight of evidence” reporting (Dunwoody 2005, 90), whereby journalists use their expertise to “sort through competing claims and make judgments” about what audiences need to know (Cunningham 2003). Ultimately, Fahy (2018) argues that environmental reporters have replaced traditional notions of objectivity with “trained judgement”, reconceptualised balance by seeking areas of consensus rather than reporting ideologically extreme views, and mobilised a radical transparency (regarding their own newsgathering process and their sources’ motivations). These practices emerged as a means of reporting polarising issues like climate change, thus suggesting environment reporters are acting as “pioneers for contemporary ‘post-truth’ journalism” (Fahy 2018) having been immersed in contested settings for many years. This re-examination of objectivity is not confined to environmental journalism, even though environmental reporters have been among the first to undertake it; for example, recent coverage of race-related protests in the US have prompted calls to replace outdated notions of “objectivity” with a journalism of “moral clarity” (Gessen 2020; Lowery 2020).

Such reporting approaches have renewed relevance as misinformation, disinformation and strategic mendacity in the contemporary communications ecosystem pose distinct challenges for environmental reporters. One study identified environmental issues as “trigger subjects” that generate threats for journalists, along with immigration, racism, religion, and gender equality (Hiltunen 2017). Pulitzer Prize-winning Mark Schleifstein finds environmental reporters today work “in a maelstrom of accusations and threats” from those either “intent on discounting their reporting” or who simply don’t understand reporting (Schleifstein 2020). Vested interest groups have also used disinformation tactics, including establishing Facebook pages “proving” climate change is fake news, using SEO to drive climate-denier content, and establishing Twitter accounts to push agendas (Gillam 2020).

Are Environment Reporters Different?

Just as journalistic practices can vary across beats (Reich 2012), role perceptions may also differ (Skovsgaard and Van Dalen 2013) and, in navigating this changing and sometimes-hostile post-truth landscape, environmental journalists have found themselves performing new roles. Fahy and Nisbet (2011) identify a move towards weight-of-evidence reporting, and a shift away from the conduit role, whereby journalists merely convey information to audiences, towards a more interpretative function. They argue that environmental journalists, dealing with a media industry in economic difficulties, a challengingly complex and politically polarised topic to cover (within fast-moving digital environments), have had to reimagine their roles, becoming convenors, curators, civic educators, and public intellectuals, while the traditional gatekeeper role has all but disappeared. In a later work, they propose a move away from traditional, conduit-style reporting, to a “knowledge-based” journalism (after Donsbach 2014; and Patterson 2013) through which reporters use their expertise to evaluate and contextualise competing claims for their audience, a call not exclusive to science or environment. Science and environmental reporters would then assume various information-related roles, of knowledge broker, policy broker, and dialogue broker (Nisbet and Fahy 2015). Ultimately, these new roles suggest a potential shift regarding journalistic functions, seemingly originating within the environment field, and evolving out of the critical advocacy role within 1960s science journalism (Lewenstein 1992; Fahy and Nisbet 2011).

This critical advocacy stance can be a point of variance; because environmental journalism has different origins—in the 1960s, an era of questioning the status quo, ecology, social movements—its relationship to traditional professional values and norms diverges from other beats. Furthermore, given the objectivity issues highlighted, the question arises of whether environment reporters are different from other specialist journalists. As suggested, there is a difference regarding the stance of the journalist: environmental journalists tend to adopt a critical or advocacy stance, and there is evidence of editorial sympathy towards environmental advocacy groups (Bruggemann and Engesser 2014), while the environmental beat still exhibits the familiar authority bias (Hansen 2020). Elsewhere, researchers find environmental journalists and other specialists are more likely to have a science or other university degree (Sachsman, Simon, and Valenti 2010; Bruggemann and Engesser 2014); they often have more contact with peers from competitor media organisations than with newsroom colleagues (Dunwoody 1980); they remain on their beat longer than those elsewhere, and are afforded greater autonomy (Hansen 1994; Sachsman, Simon, and Valenti 2006). Environment journalists may also be exposed to more harm through both natural risks and socio-political targeting (Warren 2016; Freedman 2020). Yet one area seemingly overlooked in research thus far is whether some of these distinguishing traits may end up eventually being replicated among journalists on other beats, leading to the study’s main research question: To what extent can environment reporters be considered emblematic of wider changes within the newsroom beat structure? This will be explored using environment reporters’ own assessment of their work, with particular attention granted to newsroom dynamics, internal journalistic professionalism and motivations, and external demands.

Methodology

The extent to which environmental correspondents can be conceived of as a kind of “bellweather” for specialist journalism in general was explored through semi-structured interviews with reporters from the US, UK, and Ireland. These three territories are part of the North Atlantic/Liberal media system (Hallin and Mancini 2004) and journalists’ relative autonomy and professionalism indicate a recognition of reporters’ and editors’ norms and roles; for example, Worlds of Journalism (2016) data shows similar strong responses to roles such as “detached observer”. Yet variation is of course apparent: for example, Irish audiences are much less polarised than Americans, with UK audiences falling between Ireland and the US (Fletcher, Cornia, and Nielsen 2020). Crucially, the countries have varying levels of environmental concern: 71% in Ireland believe climate change is a serious issue, compared with 65% (UK), and 56% (US) (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism 2020). These three territories, therefore, illustrate three different stages in the development of media discourses concerning the environment and climate change: one high concern/low polarisation (Ireland); one medium concern/medium polarisation (UK); and one lower concern/higher polarisation (US). Of course, the three countries are not equal in terms of media influence: major US and UK brands have global reach. However, to paint as full a picture as possible of contemporary environmental journalism, we believe the inclusion of journalists in Ireland (population 4.9 million) strengthens the study by bringing perspectives from outlets with smaller staffing and scarcer resources.

Both authors conducted the 13 on-the-record interviews via video conferencing technology or phone, lasting an average of one hour. Our interviews were purposefully sampled to comprise reporters at different career stages who could speak to their experiences working mostly with large, legacy news organisations (Table 1). We sampled journalists from both elite and popular media, from general newswire services and the highly specialised service offered by Bloomberg, all of which is valuable given perspective from the tabloid press and wire services are often neglected in academic work. We interviewed veteran reporters and new entrants, permitting perspectives over decades of environmental coverage, while also capturing the views of a younger, more digitally aware generation. We would have preferred to include more US voices, but data gathering coincided with a pressing period for American journalists, including the Californian wildfires and the US election campaigns. Nonetheless, our sample represents a strong set of interviewees, which is diverse in terms of outlet, career level, and gender across three countries, and aligns with sample sizes in similar studies (Fahy and Nisbet 2011; Gibson, Craig, and Harper 2015).

Table 1. List of interview subjects.

Name	Organisation	Title	Base country	Career-stage
Akshat Rathi	Bloomberg Green	Climate and energy reporter	UK	Early
Alister Doyle	Reuters (former)	Environment correspondent (2004–2019)	UK^a	Late
Annie Snider	Politico	Environment reporter	US	Early
Ben Jackson	The Sun (former)	Environment editor 2009–2015	UK	Late
Caroline O’Doherty	Irish Independent	Environment correspondent	Ireland	Mid
Daniel Murray	Business Post	Reporter (with focus on environment)	Ireland	Early
Emily Holden	Guardian	Environment correspondent	US	Early
Fiona Harvey	Guardian	Environment correspondent	UK	Mid
Kevin O’Sullivan	Irish Times	Environment and science editor	Ireland	Mid
Matt McGrath	BBC	Environment correspondent	UK	Mid
Mike Swain	Daily Mirror (former)	Science and environment editor (2006–2012)	UK	Late
Padraig Hoare	Irish Examiner	Environment correspondent	Ireland	Mid
Valerie Flynn	Sunday Times	Reporter (with focus on environment)	Ireland	Early

Interviewees were categorised as “early-career” if working 10 years or less in this area, and “late” if they had finished their careers with the outlets.

^a Alister Doyle covered the environment from a global perspective for Reuters. Given the agency’s origins, it is classified here as UK.

Interviews are well suited to in-depth explorations of attitudes, beliefs and motives (Smith 1975) and are an established methodology in environmental communication (for example, Boykoff 2007; Boykoff and Mansfield 2008; Fahy and Nisbet 2011). Our examination of the literature identified several areas in which environmental reporters have experienced changes and challenges which may eventually also be experienced on other beats. These provided the basis of the semi-structured interviews, and include newsroom resources (constrained resources resulting in fewer full-time correspondents, assigning beat stories to general reporters, and loss of newsroom expertise); journalistic objectivity (re-conceptualising journalistic norms of balance, fairness, and objectivity); increased complexity of the beat; increased politicisation and polarisation of beat topics; increased exposure to online negativity; and expansion of the specialist role (to include convenor, synthesiser, curator, and other roles as well as the traditional conduit role). In semi-structured interviews, a general list of open questions is compiled, yet some latitude is allowed for other questions and topics to emerge (Srivastava and Thomson 2009). Our questions were also tailored depending on the interviewee’s career stage, outlet, and country base.

The interviews were recorded, transcribed and imported into a qualitative coding software package and coded by topic/theme (see Table 2). A coding system combining inductive and deductive approaches (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane 2006) included themes already identified from the literature, while allowing new themes emerge from interviewees’ responses. In the following sections, we focus on several key thematic areas from the interviews: the increased complexity of the environmental beat and the need for expertise/experience; the influence of resource constraints, and potential de-specialisation; the potential reimagination of concepts of fairness, balance, and objectivity amid polarised political debates, and the critical advocacy stance of environmental journalists, and their exposure to online negativity.

Table 2. Theme and topic codes for thematic analysis.

	Internal aspects	External aspects	Conceptual
Topics coded	Changes to role of environment journalist	Public engagement	Objectivity
	Demand for the environment beat	Politicisation/polarisation of environment	Advocacy/activism
	Changes to beat	Online negativity and trolling	Indicator species?
	Resources	Impact of Covid
	Comparison with other beats
	Importance/loss of expertise
	Challenges

Findings and Discussion

In this paper, we present an argument that environmental journalists are reimagining their roles and professional norms in ways that resonate with changes to specialist journalism in general. This research aims to build on, and add detail and nuance to, previous studies of environmental reporters. In multiple areas, environmental reporters have been at the forefront of news industry changes. These can be conceptualised as internal changes (to job security, work practises, roles, approaches to journalistic norms, and access to resources), and external changes (increased complexity of the beat, greater politicisation and polarisation, and online negativity). The interviewees are frequently reluctant to indulge in special pleading for their beat, nor do they want to be seen to minimise the difficulties facing their newsroom colleagues. However, many pointed to challenges faced by environmental journalists yet to be experienced to the same extent by peers in other specialisms.

Complexity and Expertise

The increased complexity of environmental issues, especially climate change, was a point of agreement among environmental journalists. The technicalities of climate science, carbon markets and trading, new energy technology, climate policies, and environmental regulations mean environmental journalists must make sense of complicated information in short timeframes. Assimilating new scientific research—and dealing with scientists—was also mentioned as a challenge particular to the environmental beat. In a development that holds portents for other specialisms, our interview subjects cited a substantial increase in the number of claims-makers in the environmental area. Think-tanks, corporations, research institutes, government agencies, and supra-national entities such as the IPCC and the UN, all publish environment-related reports and studies, and journalists face challenges in discerning good information, reliable data, in evaluating research design, and uncovering hidden agendas. Journalists need ready access to academics to help them navigate such contested topics, several interviewees reported, reinforcing the reliance on external knowledge (Reich and Godler 2016). The sentiment expressed by several interviewed is well represented here by Emily Holden (Guardian US):

It’s a totally different skillset, right? They [other specialist reporters] can do things that I can’t do. But also, we have to be experts on so many scientific issues. I can write a story on sea-level rise one day, and on endangered birds the next, and then a particular method of oil and gas extraction the next day, and then an air pollutant the following day. These are all totally different fields. It’s not one environment field, right? And I’m still at a point where, you know, I’ve been doing this for eight years. Like I said, I know a lot about the electricity sector, I know a lot about climate impacts and causes. I know a lot about air pollution, but then I’m expected to be also an expert on drinking water, storm waste water, cyclones … 

This complexity faced by environmental journalists is not only technical and interpretive, but also conceptual: journalists mentioned the challenges communicating ideas like “just transition” and “climate justice” to mass audiences. However, one suggested that, even as their own reporting complexifies, so the baseline level of knowledge among audiences has increased, meaning that aspects of climate science or emissions-reduction policy no longer had to be explained from first principles. The increased complexity of the environmental beat can be seen as part of a larger “quantitative turn” in journalism more widely (Coddington 2015), and suggests the challenges experienced by environmental journalists in dealing with environmental and climate data await correspondents in other fields. One reporter (BJ, ex-Sun), described how the intricate science which journalists covering Covid-19 briefings now face, courtesy of chief medical officers and other experts, is reminiscent of what he dealt with from the Royal Institution or Met Office a decade ago. He later added that this turn towards data and corroborating evidence, visible well beyond the environment beat, “is where journalism is becoming less art, more science”.

The newsroom trend of employing general reporters at the expense of specialists was confirmed by many interviewees, attesting to the work involved in building expertise in a range of knowledge areas, and the time taken to establish networks of trusted sources to help interpret complex information. Some journalists were concerned about the inexperience of some general reporters assigned to environmental stories. Others felt discommoded when, at large UN climate conferences, for example, their newsdesks or agencies would assign large teams to provide coverage, but such new arrivals did not possess the same in-depth contextual knowledge.

The rise in prominence of environmental topics has highlighted a tension within the beat. Specialists welcome the fact that the environment has joined the group of always-newsworthy topics (“the perennials” as Fiona Harvey, Guardian UK, calls them), and is often among the “most read” on the BBC website (MMG, BBC). Yet they often feel relegated to carrying out day-to-day coverage (the “grind”, as Matt McGrath of the BBC put it), while political reporters move in to cover more dramatic events such as climate conferences. Furthermore, the elevated levels of coverage are not always supplied by specialists, as there has been an increase in the use of freelance journalists, general reporters, and a greater reliance on PR or branded content for environmental news (Schäfer and Painter 2020). Nonetheless, the rise in prominence of environmental topics may have halted or slowed the “de-specialisation” of the environmental beat, suggesting that the trend of newsrooms hiring more general reporters and fewer specialists is beat dependent and may fluctuate in line with perceived public interest.

Resource Constraints

The hollowing out of local journalism, and the difficulty in arriving at a sustainable business model for many larger outlets, is well established. Yet our interviewees presented a more complex picture, with some reporters attesting to increased resources (for example, budgets and additional reporters), while others have encountered constraints on their ability to cover the beat. For reporters working for net-native outlets (Annie Snider, Politico), or large media organisations who place major emphasis on environmental coverage (Fiona Harvey, Guardian UK), financial constraints are less of a concern. Others note the loss of specialist correspondents at major outlets. “If you look across at what’s happened on other newspapers, you see quite a mixed picture, because some newspapers have sacked their environment reporters, and some have kept them, and some have added to them”, stated Harvey. Harvey’s US colleague Emily Holden notes a trend towards philanthropic sponsorship of environmental coverage in some outlets which may come with risks regarding detachment and objectivity, discussed again later in this article.

Resource pressure on newsrooms has also meant that environmental journalists must also often cover other beats. Some interviewees see this as a kind of interdisciplinarity, and as a positive in spreading expertise throughout the newsroom, resonating with the notion of it “weaving” into other topics (Gibson, Craig, and Harper 2015); others see it as placing impossible demands on reporters:

Every environment reporter I know at a local outlet, except the LA Times, they have to do six other things, right? Like environment is never your only focus. Increasingly you’re pulled on to city council or education there, or anything else. Even in places like Flint [Michigan], there is no environment reporter. (EH, Guardian US)

Some interviewees have been assigned the science or health beats recently, in addition to their environmental role as newsrooms devote more resources to covering Covid-19. Others have seen their coverage plans disrupted; Caroline O’Doherty (Irish Independent) had to cancel a series of articles on “slow-travel” across Europe, while some were already co-opted to cover the pandemic, forcing them to neglect the environmental beat. The ability of urgent, more discrete events, such as armed conflict and financial crashes, have “crowded out” environmental news (Djerf-Pierre 2012); several interviewees feared coronavirus would crowd out climate and environmental coverage also, citing the tendency to focus on 72-hour news cycles, and the pandemic’s immediacy: “People care about 2050, but they care about tomorrow more” (BJ, ex-Sun).

However, several interviewees believed that the environment stood a better chance of maintaining its place on the news agenda. One noted that, while pandemic coverage had occupied space in print, he was still publishing extensive coverage online (KO’S, Irish Times). Another believed that system changes already in place had created a momentum that would sustain coverage:

But I do think this is different … even if we are in the teeth of a desperate recession, the changes in the fundamental production of energy, how we treat food, how we treat the planet, how we protect nature—that those changes now will really give us a fighting chance going forward, even if we have this terrible recession and actually we get to continue to report on it [the environment] as well. (MMG, BBC)

A further impact of constrained resources is that reporters are being asked to file more often for online platforms. One Sunday newspaper correspondent resisted, arguing it prevented more in-depth reporting (DM, Business Post). Another noted he might file four stories a day for publication online (KO’S, Irish Times), but added that immediate, superficial reporting suited the way readers consumed news. Elsewhere, one tabloid reporter stated that his editors became reluctant to allow him to leave the newsroom to interview sources in person or travel abroad (MS, ex-Mirror). This dilution of the specialism, increase in output demands, and lack of opportunity for “boots-on-the-ground” reporting may lie in store for other correspondents.

Rethinking Objectivity in Polarised Contexts

Given the “lost decade” of environmental coverage during the 1990/2000s (Boykoff 2011) and the influence of industry and conservative thinkers, it is no surprise that many environment journalists have developed deep understandings around objectivity. There was consensus that outlets have evolved beyond any expectation to include climate-sceptic voices, reinforcing previously identified shifts (Gibson, Craig, and Harper 2015), often guided by supportive superiors. Alister Doyle (ex-Reuters) described advice he received: “An editor told me: ‘No, there is no he-said-she-said in this argument: it is ‘scientists say’,” while others highlighted the reporters’ obligation to verify information, rather than simply repeat inaccurate contributor claims, thus rejecting a simple “conduit” role (Fahy and Nisbet 2011). Referencing “the science” was a constant touchpoint for interviewees, and some described how they repeatedly included IPCC or UK Met Office evidence in their reports to illustrate the reality of the environmental situation. Many also expressed optimism in the audience’s ability to make up their own mind and evaluate contributors’ agendas, once the evidence was presented.

Scrutinising all stakeholders was another method through which journalists operationalise objectivity, accountability, and the watchdog role. Referencing “universal scepticism”, Ben Jackson (ex-Sun) said this was essential even though “you feel like these guys should be the good guys because they’re advocating change”, but he believes that their claims are often not scientifically grounded, while another identified increasing hard-left “misinformation” (AR, Bloomberg). Fiona Harvey reinforced this need to put all sources to the same test, including “the people who think of themselves as the angels: the NGOs, and activists. You subject them to the same scrutiny that you would Exxon Mobil, BP”. The journalists were all conscious of the need for this widespread scrutiny even if they may broadly support the need for climate action in some form, thus suggesting they are far more than simply “Greens with press passes” (Ward 2002), instead continually drawing on trained judgement and professionalism (Fahy 2018).

Elsewhere, evaluating business and political stakeholders is crucial: writing through a political lens for Politico, a platform where contesting partisan perspectives are inherent, Annie Snider articulated the need to actively fact-check as you “lay out what each side is saying” rather than simply granting stakeholders unquestioned access to a media platform, while the need to include right-of-replies—regardless of ideology—remains essential for others (VF, Sunday Times). Emily Holden (Guardian US) identified a shift in her own reporting and elsewhere, not just in source inclusion, “but how we frame the issue and how much credibility we give to the industries that caused this problem”. It was also noted that the tactic from certain stakeholders has moved from outright denialism, instead of focusing on delaying action (FH, Guardian UK).

These contributions suggest the objectivity and balance issues with which environment journalists now grapple do not hinge around climate-action advocates versus sceptics; reporters instead navigate more insular antagonism within a socio-political sphere which broadly accepts the science of anthropogenic climate change. Employing sophisticated understandings of “both sides” and identifying genuine points of contention is something at which environment reporters are now highly proficient, and this informed, trained logic may diffuse as other editors and reporters explore beyond rigid objectivity notions. Although keen not to credit environment reporters, Matt McGrath (BBC) suggested such an approach is now evident in questions around identity, diversity and gender, in which there is an acceptance of a “different starting point” than previous decades, citing coverage of Black Lives Matter or a famous 2018 rape trial involving rugby players in Northern Ireland. Emily Holden pointed to how, in the Guardian, “increasingly the story that we’re telling” is how certain demographics are “way more likely to get the bad end”, thus resonating with the calls for journalists to demonstrate “moral clarity” when reporting certain issues like structural racism (Gessen 2020).

Despite contemporary acceptance within newsrooms that climate-sceptic voices need no elevation, it was not always so, and environment journalists have long faced politically motivated hostility. Reflecting on the UK, Mike Swain pointed to a stereotypical English “anti-expert” mentality facilitating scepticism around the early 2010s, and described his frustration in the (typically left-leaning) Daily Mirror: “I was disappointed in the way that people—some senior editors—were sympathetic to denialism”. Elsewhere, the direct influence of News Corp’s James Murdoch (the comparatively pro-environmental son of Rupert Murdoch) in The Sun’s ramped-up environment coverage in 2012 was “a step change in reporting for the centre-right, because suddenly we had someone at the very top pushing those issues” (BJ, ex-Sun). Fiona Harvey cautioned that the politicised attempts to create a left/right climate culture war “hasn’t really worked [in the UK]”, but pointed to the US—as most interviewees did—as more challenging. One US reporter said her biggest problem has been knowing a large population segments would never read climate change stories “no matter how I write it” (EH, Guardian US). Yet crucially, Politico’s Annie Snider pointed out how all media—not just environment journalists—are facing hostility, reflecting the current US political climate. Irish journalists broadly accepted that Ireland is not so divided; one attributed this to high acceptance of science (KO’S, Irish Times), while others raised the milder cynicism sometimes surfacing from business communities, disagreement over agricultural emissions, and urban/rural tensions as key areas of contention. The journalists’ experiences broadly align with expectations given the various polarised positions of each country (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism 2020), as the US faces challenges both in media polarisation and climate awareness, while Ireland is less polarised and more climate aware, and the UK lies between the two. Many interviewees also pointed out how their specific outlet, not just the national context, is crucial to certain aspects of how they approach their work.

“I Am Not an Advocate” and Online Negativity

Most reporters gave a firm negative response when asked about being activists, asserting that reporting evidence and scientific reality does not equate to advocacy. Many insisted their credibility is tied to their professional practices, as articulated here by Matt McGrath (BBC):

[I am] looking at the material, looking at the facts, looking at the data as best we can, speaking and interviewing people, and presenting that in this hopefully coherent way that people can understand that. That’s my job and I am not an advocate for a green agenda or action or whatever.

However, some suggested they start from a “base point” (CO’D, Irish Independent) that climate action is needed, or the problem’s scale means it is becoming more acceptable “to be more open with our warnings” (EH, Guardian US), though some resisted aspects of this more active position like consciously using more alarmist language. Drawing on traditional tabloid campaign culture, Ben Jackson (ex-Sun) enjoyed being able to “crusade” and “push people in favour of action”, while another felt a “need to push [the truth] out there quite strongly” (DM, Business Post). These responses illustrate complexity within the advocate role, and how ingrained professionalism can operate as a check: Kevin O’Sullivan (Irish Times) explained how “logic and scientific evidence would impel you to be an activist, but I am a journalist, so therefore I don’t go to that extent in terms of what I do”. Questions of boundaries also surfaced as Fiona Harvey highlighted a trend of NGOs blurring lines between reporting and activism, establishing “so-called journalism units”, such as Greenpeace’s Unearthed. Another echoed these concerns, explaining how any shift towards philanthropy could turn into advocacy, which would remove the space for the journalist as the objective intermediary between industry and activists in the media (EH, Guardian US).

Elsewhere, some felt that it was other people who made certain assumptions about environmental journalists’ subjective motivations, aspersions which they felt may not be applied to those covering other beats:

It’s good-natured but I think there’s an assumption that if you come into this field to report on it, that you have your mind made up and that you’re on a mission or the vocation … they tend to think you want to run Greenpeace and save the world. (CO’D, Irish Independent)

Valerie Flynn (Sunday Times) explained how, for her, these activism expectations manifested in digital arenas, not the newsroom: “There’s pressure to be an advocate—and not a reporter—from people online”. She described social media backlash on issues like cycling, which she said she may not face reporting other beats. However, Flynn insisted she did not mind such critique, as it was “just par for the course” of someone active on social media. Many others reported a frustration and reluctance to engage online due to the “hassle” (PH, Irish Examiner), or referencing the “strong environmental lobby” meaning you were either chastised or praised on Twitter (DM, Business Post), while some others noted increased “other-side” criticism as activists such as Extinction Rebellion call attention to apparent journalistic shortcomings. While social media may have exacerbated the hostility, Alister Doyle (ex-Reuters) noted that attempts at delegitimisation had a long history: he described a US-based blog focused on discrediting him in the mid-2000s. This sort of direct criticism may now be commonplace, but Fiona Harvey (Guardian UK) suggests environment journalists were among the first targeted, via whatever means available, dating back 20–30 years:

I think we were among the earliest to get trolled … the climate skeptic community is extremely well-funded. So they’ve been paying people for years to abuse us in one way or another, and whether it’s on the internet and social media, or whether it’s writing letters to the editor … Being extremely well funded, and having a lot to defend, they have been [at it] for a long, long time.

Public Engagement

When asked about public engagement participation like conference panels, some described it as too time-consuming, while others insisted they enjoy these activities and their organisations encourage it. Some highlighted pragmatic dimensions, such as subscribers expecting access to reporters, or professional profile-building, with many acknowledging the sheer number of events within the environment space. Two themes emerged as to why reporters value this work. Firstly, to explain journalistic decision-making and newsroom processes, e.g., “how we go about building stories” (AD, ex-Reuters); this can be categorised as journalistic efforts to reclaim professional authority in response to questions of trust and credibility, drawing on increased transparency regarding their work (Fahy 2018). The second related to taking on proxy roles between science and the public: referred to as an “arbiter” (BJ, ex-Sun) or “guide”, stepping into debates (KO’S, Irish Times). In such positions, “you are the reader in many ways”, asking questions, verifying information, and explaining complexities (FH, Guardian UK). The overall support for such work demonstrates how journalists draw on ideas around the curator and convenor roles (Fahy and Nisbet 2011).

Conclusion

This is an exploratory study in which we examine relevance to other beats of the experiences of environmental reporters, but there are, of course, certain limitations to be acknowledged. The first relates to how this study is reliant on the observations from the 13 contributors who, while providing rare on-the-record insight into major outlets, do not represent the whole environment journalist field, nor can they truly speak to the experience of journalists on other beats. It is also impossible for us to determine the extent to which other beats are facing current problems highlighted here, nor can we predict what lies ahead for other journalists and whether or not they will suffer similar challenges, opportunities and changes to their work. Nevertheless, both practitioners and researchers can benefit from considering how environments journalists have dealt with such developments given how they have been among the first to reorientate some well-established journalistic roles, practices and values.

The five key themes extrapolated from the interviewees—complexity, resource constraints, objectivity, advocacy and online hostility, and public engagement—are presented here as key components to our portrait of the contemporary environment journalist. The insights shape our understanding of a beat which has established a hard-fought position as a newsroom staple, despite economic challenges, and maintained its value as a “must-cover” topic (Whitlock 2020). On route to this seemingly indispensable position, journalists have had to navigate hostility and attempts to undermine their professionalism long before the contemporary wave of attacks on journalists in all corners of the newsroom, and are well versed in interactions with the public in outreach and engagement contexts. Our study also reinforces previous work on how environment journalists grapple with objectivity, balance, and advocacy, while maintaining the professional values which ultimately motivate their work as journalists. Elsewhere, many of the challenges experienced by environmental correspondents support the contention that they are centrally involved in changes to specialist beats, and this study, therefore, reinforces previous work suggesting they are potentially “indicator” species (Gibson, Craig, and Harper 2015). Our interviewees were reluctant to valorise their work above that of their colleagues, yet many noted that the Covid-19 pandemic had exposed other specialists to challenges similar to those faced by environmental journalists for several years. The data-dense briefings, the complex global nature of the pandemic itself, the polarisation over masks and restriction measures, the online abuse: these elements, long familiar to environmental journalists, are now being experienced by health correspondents and political correspondents. In some senses, many of the “indicators” revealed by environmental journalists’ experiences have already arrived, sped by the outbreak of Covid-19. Looking to the future of their beat, many of our interviewees foresaw changes that apply to other specialist roles: an increase in sub-beats (energy, biodiversity, sustainability), a retreat to niche publications, and a situation whereby the concerns of the environmental beat become a major aspect of every other beat. In terms of funding, there were also insights regarding the role of philanthropic funding, while concerns were raised about direct NGO involvement in producing “news” content; there is little reason to suggest such trends are limited to the environment, so may also become established in other beats.

Several environmental journalists attested to the fact that audience demand, especially among younger readers, was an influential factor in newsroom decisions to increase or maintain environmental coverage levels. They also mentioned the interaction with audiences in the comments section, or on social media, was increasingly a feature of their work. Their publics are highly engaged: they fact-check, and even spell-check, their work, point to other sources, and suggest story topics. Researchers have often tracked coverage levels of environmental topics in the belief that higher levels of coverage increase public engagement with the issue. The reality may be more complex, and to some extent at least, it is public engagement that increases levels of coverage. This, of course, ties into broader discussions around audience behaviour, and the editorial attention granted to analytics software and data (Tandoc 2014), which may hint at an inherent and ongoing vulnerability to coverage of the environment—as with any topic—if public interest was to drift elsewhere.

In this study, we have shown that environmental reporters have been among the first to deal with challenges that, in some cases have already, and in others, will eventually affect beat reporting generally. The experiences of our interviewees suggest that greater complexity, the need to communicate a global story, increased use of data, beat fragmentation, polarised online debates, and challenges to journalistic norms will affect other beats, or have already done so On the question as to whether beat journalism is under threat from resource constraints and loss of expertise, our interview subjects present a more complex picture than what some previous research pointing to cutbacks and diminishing numbers of environment correspondents suggests: in large media organisations who emphasise their in-depth beat coverage, more space and greater resources become available; in smaller news outlets, specialists are asked to take on other beats in addition to the environmental role, and find themselves neglecting their core area. However, a key finding of this study is the unexpected resilience of the environment as a news topic, despite having been characterised as unstable—or at least subject to fluctuation—in the past (Friedman 2004). In previous periods of upheaval, such as the financial crisis of 2008, coverage of environmental issues declined steeply (Robbins 2018). Our interviewees have not for the most part seen a similar decline since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and climate change has not been “crowded out” (Djerf-Pierre 2012) as might have been expected. Thus, the future of beat journalism, as exemplified by the experiences of environmental journalists, is not all bleak, and its relative strength at present reinforces its resilience, despite general trends towards despecialisation in many newsrooms. Elsewhere, there are well-established concerns, supported in this study, about the potential politicisation of the environment beat, something which could be more deeply explored in future work, which may extend beyond the environment to other arenas in which political actors are the most cost-effective sources upon which to build narratives. Further research into how other specialist correspondents are dealing with the changes and challenges initially faced by environmental journalists over recent decades is also required to map the territory of beat journalism more fully. For instance, comparative studies, in which the experiences of reporters on different beats, across different outlet types and territories, would help to identify those specialist areas most vulnerable to the out-sourcing of expertise, resources constraints, and online attempts at delegitimisation.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).