Activist and/or Neutral Disseminator? Citizens’ and Journalists’ Views on Climate Reporting

Abstract

For decades, research on journalism’s role in society has examined an array of role orientations, spanning from neutral disseminator to advocate. Regarding reporting on climate change mitigation, however, the question takes on new relevance. In that context, is balanced reporting still appropriate or being replaced due to a greater demand for evidence-based reporting? Is journalism responsible for taking a stance, politically mobilizing its audiences, and reporting activist? Can neutral dissemination and activist journalism even be expected to occur simultaneously? To answer those questions, we surveyed 2,577 German citizens and 391 political journalists regarding their expectations/role orientations and evaluations of balance, weight of evidence (WoE), and activist journalism in reporting on climate change mitigation. The results show that citizens expect balanced, evidence-based reporting on climate change mitigation. Journalists also see it as their role to report balanced and evidence-based in this context, even despite the risk of false balance. Meanwhile, though citizens tend to expect activist journalism, journalists reject it as part of their role. Moreover, our results show that WoE and activist journalism are not mutually exclusive but are expected to occur simultaneously. Last, citizens and journalists who favor stricter climate measures generally expect activist journalism in reporting on climate change mitigation.