The public cares about climate change, and wants to hear about it from broadcasters they trust. And it isn’t easy for many journalists to get climate stories onto the airwaves. That’s where we come in.
As ex-news journalists, we know that complex climate and nature stories can feel unsuited to the pace of the daily news round. Most newsrooms hand the story to climate specialists, who compete with reporters in areas such as politics, health or economics. These other desks can also miss opportunities to see the connections between their subject and climate change. Framing climate stories is challenging for all desks.
We partner with the University of Exeter to create original research that objectively tracks UK broadcast reporting on climate change in a way that has never been done before.
Until now, broadcast media coverage has been difficult to monitor and analyse reliably. The University of Exeter’s newly formed Centre for Climate Communication and Data Science (C3DS) has built a custom application which uses state-of-the-art AI tools to continuously track climate related coverage from the BBC, ITV, Sky News, Channel 4, and Channel 5 – covering television, radio, online media, and social media feeds.
We publish this data as a resource for newsrooms to know where, how often and in what way they are reporting on climate. By understanding broadcast output more accurately, newsrooms can plug the gaps, spot new opportunities and widen the reach of climate and nature reporting.
We also track audience research into how the public perceives climate news, building on broadcasters’ existing insight, to help them provide climate news that makes audiences feel informed, motivated and hopeful.
As Climate News Tracker develops, we will offer data and insights, regular reports, briefings, workshops and events, designed to support, inform and champion the best quality climate journalism across public service newsrooms.
Advisory Board
Our advisory board includes those with many years experience leading public service news rooms, as well as experts in climate science, policy and communications.
Dr. Travis Coan
Computational Science, University of Exeter
Lord Deben
Former Chair of the UK’s Independent Climate Change Committee
Mary Hockaday
Former Head of the BBC Newsroom and acting Director, BBC World Service
Professor Saffron O’Neill
Climate & Society, University of Exeter
John Ryley
Former Editor-in-Chief of Sky News
Chris Shaw
Former Editorial Director of ITN
Team
We are a group of former news journalists, managers, communications specialists and academics, united by a desire to support and promote excellence in public service climate journalism on the UK’s main TV, radio and online news bulletins.
Dr Sylvia Hayes
Research Fellow
Dr Sarwat Qureshi
Research Fellow
Mark Smalley
Co-Founder
Claire Stocks
Co-Founder
Alan Strange
Managing Editor
David Weiland
Co-Founder
Phoebe Wollocombe
Co-Founder
Climate News Tracker is a not-for-profit organisation funded by philanthropy
Our monitoring tool is currently under development.
Register here to be the first to receive insights from Climate News Tracker.