Climate Reporting Best Practices

The document outlines 13 best practices for climate reporting, emphasizing the need to connect stories to climate causes and consequences, integrate climate coverage across all news beats, and center climate justice by highlighting marginalized and Indigenous voices. It advises journalists to avoid jargon, report on solutions alongside problems, and remain skeptical of greenwashing and corporate spin. Furthermore, it argues against platforming climate denialists in the name of balance and encourages the use of representative visuals and self-care for reporters facing burnout.

• Journalists are encouraged to integrate climate reporting into all news beats—including politics, business, health, and sports—because rising global temperatures affect and are affected by nearly every social and corporate force.
• Effective reporting should explicitly link events to the causes and consequences of climate change, specifically noting that the burning of coal, oil, and gas drives extreme weather and sea-level rise.
• The guide advocates for centering climate justice by prioritizing the voices of marginalized and Indigenous groups, who often suffer the most from climate impacts but are frequently omitted from coverage.
• The document advises against providing a platform to climate denialists for the sake of 'balance,' asserting that there is no good-faith argument against climate science and that such coverage is inaccurate.
• Reporting should include a focus on solutions—technological, political, economic, and cultural—to avoid leaving the public feeling overwhelmed and to provide a more accurate representation of reality.

APA

CCNow (2023). Climate Reporting Best Practices. Covering Climate Now. https://coveringclimatenow.org/resource/climate-reporting-best-practices/

Chicago

CCNow. Climate Reporting Best Practices. Covering Climate Now, 2023. https://coveringclimatenow.org/resource/climate-reporting-best-practices/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=CCNow |title=Climate Reporting Best Practices |publisher=Covering Climate Now |date=10 February 2023 |url=https://coveringclimatenow.org/resource/climate-reporting-best-practices/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{ccnow2023climate, author = {CCNow}, title = {{Climate Reporting Best Practices}}, institution = {Covering Climate Now}, year = {2023}, month = feb, url = {https://coveringclimatenow.org/resource/climate-reporting-best-practices/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }