And the final speaker in this session at the ECREA 2026 conference in Brno is Floriane van Alphen. She begins by pointing out the challenges for climate journalism: by some accounts, news media do not do enough to alert audiences to the challenge of climate change; by others, they are complicit in confusing their audiences about how to address it. Nonetheless, climate journalists remain relatively well trusted, compared to other journalists, even in spite of the flood of climate mis- and disinformation that floods this space.
The challenge with addressing any of this is that it may be renegotiating the concept sof neutrality and objectivity in climate journalism; these are controversial terms in journalism studies in the first place, of course, and some news outlets have explicitly embraced advocacy journalism instead, which entails a reconceptualisation of the role of journalists. This may also reflect changing audience attitudes.
This project worked with six focus groups, grouped as alarmed and concerned, cautious and disengaged, and doubtful and dismissive audience members. These were asked to discuss whether a (fictional) climate news article should be included in news reporting; this surfaced approaches of truthfulness vs. normativity (letting the facts speak for themselves, being objective, independent, critical, and well-evidenced), ‘all-sideism’ (comprehensive, omnipartisan, and nuanced), and actionability and palatability (enabling, palatable, vigilant against fear-mongering, and tangible, relevant, and understandable).
Overall, though, there is an expectation of objective and value-free reporting which covers all views – but those terms meant very different things to different people, and are imbued with value judgments. This emphasis might relate to a wish for journalists to maintain their epistemic authority.
