As Climate Realism Rises, Climate Alarmism Coverage Is Collapsing

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Good news has never sold very well with the media. “Lost Child Found” stories have never competed well with lurid headlines about crime or scandal. The latter capture more readers’ attention and thus linger longer on the press’ news desks.

What’s true in general is true of climate change coverage as well. Data show it is increasingly apparent that climate realists, whom the media have tried to silence or censor, have been right. There is no climate crisis in the offing.

The modest warming is not making things worse. In fact, plants, ecosystems, and crops are benefiting. Rather than running stories highlighting this good news, the media’s obsessive climate change coverage is dramatically and rapidly waning.

The media’s declining climate coverage seems to be a bow to economic reality — climate change just doesn’t sell. Dollars are drying up for climate-focused think tanks, publications, and news departments. The media’s flagging coverage of climate change is a lagging indicator, following a trend rather than leading it.

Polls consistently show that climate change is not among the top issues of public policy concern for most of the public.

Meanwhile, global finance, commercial activity, and politics have shifted away from concern about cutting carbon emissions toward bringing more affordable, reliable energy, which means fossil fuels, to the market as quickly as possible.

The first big domino fell in early February, about a year after President Donald Trump took office for the second time, when The Washington Post fired 13 of its climate desk reporters, about two-thirds of the staff dedicated to writing about climate change.

The Washington Post had long been leading the charge with pushing climate scare stories and detrimental energy policies, which were supposedly necessary to prevent a climate catastrophe.

In late May, National Public Radio announced it was firing its chief climate editor, Neela Banerjee, and disbanding its 10-person climate desk. The department was dedicated solely to report stories of climate doom.

Then, in early June, Politico announced it was shutting down its flagship climate and environmental set of publications, E&E News Daily, Greenwire, Climatewire, Energywire, and E&E News PM.

These publications were leading independent outlets covering climate, energy, and environment news for nearly three decades. Only a few years after Politico took them over, supposedly to “substantially expand Politico’s footprint” in the energy, climate, and environment fields, it is shuttering their operations.

Politico portrayed its action as a restructuring, but the union representing E&E News viewed the action as less of a restructuring and more of a betrayal.

“Union blindsided by E&E News closure” is the title of a story on Politico’s E&E News closure published in TalkingBizNews. “On January 29, as we were discussing buyouts for the energy and environment teams, Joe Schatz told PEN Guild union leaders, ‘The brands and the publications are not going away. We are looking to sharpen their missions.’”

“This is the second time management has lied to employees in six months — the first being when John Harris said in December there would be no layoffs at the company, only to lay off some managers a month later,” the story continued.

It is likely that the Trump administration’s decision to cut federal government subscriptions to numerous outside publications, including more than $8 million to Politico, played a role in the decision.

It is also probable that the end of taxpayer funding for NPR played a role in NPR’s climate reporting decline. As the government has stopped funding climate propaganda, climate propagandists are being forced to retreat and retrench.

These are just three outlets — important outlets, no doubt, but still just a ripple in the entire climate journalism industrial complex. But this seems to be symptomatic of the decline of climate change coverage in general.

Climate Home News reported that fewer journalists will attend this year’s UN-sponsored annual climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany, than at any time since COVID. Indeed, with only 135 media representatives signed up, the registrations are lower than in 2016.

In addition, the article noted that climate coverage in general has seen a sharp decline in recent years. Specifically “climate coverage in the first five months of 2025 was 35% down… and 41% less than in 2021. New analysis by the Yale Programme on Climate Change Communication found a similar fall in climate coverage in 2026.”

By any measure, climate change just isn’t the draw it once was, which is good news for the public whom the media has misinformed and harangued on the need to change their dining, shopping, and travel habits for far too long with false claims that climate change is dooming the planet. That was never true!

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