Det miljöjournalistiska arbetet

Abstract

Abstract Title: Det miljöjournalistiska arbetet – En kvalitativ undersökning om miljö- och klimatjournalistik ur ett redaktionellt perspektiv Authors: Hanna Josefsson och Miranda Smedberg Level: Bachelor thesis in Journalism Term: HT 2021 Supervisor: Emil Östlund

Aim: The aim of our study is to examine the editorial approach to climate and environmental reporting in Swedens largest newsrooms. Through qualitative interviews with editorial offices, we investigate this matter with a basis of four questions as a foundation for further review: 1. How do different newsrooms relate to environmental issues in news evaluation and reporting? 2. How much space, according to the newsrooms, does environmental news get in contrast to other news, and how is that justified? 3. What are the differences between the environmental journalistic work of the various newsrooms? 4. How do the editorial offices look at the future regarding the work with environmental journalism?

Theoretical framework: To model the questions of the interviews and to create a theoretical framework to relate to, explaining the phenomena in the analysis, we take support and inspiration from the theories of news values and media logic.

Method: To fulfill the aim of the study, a qualitative interview study was implemented, using the interview answers as a source to how the largest newsrooms in Sweden approach to environmental journalism. We chose seven of Sweden’s most popular news medias, containing TV, radio, daily and evening news papers. Six of these participated. With help from former research and the chosen theories, we formed a questionary and met up with one (in one case two) journalists, most of them editor-in-chiefs, at each editorial office.

Results: The result of the study shows that the editorial offices all agrees that the climate is a subject of great importance that needs and gets more priority than earlier, but they work with it in slightly different ways. The interviewees are also agreed on that the news valuing work is almost the same regardless the subject. At the same time many challenges when working with environmental journalism came up for discussion. Therefore, our conclusion is that the subject in some ways is harder to work with than others. We´ve identified differences between the editorial offices in how they organize the staff. From having an own climate editorial with specialized reporters, to not having it – and instead distribute the environmental journalism to all reporters. Up until now we´ve identified a variety of methods to communicate and focusing on the issue. For example, Aftonbladet and Expressen have live pages for faster climate news. SVT has a newsletter for subscribers. Last spring DN had a whole day’s paper just focusing on climate news. In the future, all the newsrooms have the ambition to continue focusing on the matter. TV4 consider connecting a council of experts to the newsroom. SR is planning for a big focus on environmental issues in the politics, regarding the upcoming election in Sweden. Some other plans are not yet official.