How Italian media fails climate coverage

On 19 and 20 October, heavy rainfall hit Emilia Romagna, with over 160 millimetres of rain falling and hourly intensities of over 30 millimetres. This amount is typically associated with a summer storm that lasts less than an hour, but in Emilia Romagna, the rain persisted for hours. Bologna, the largest city in the region, reported the most damage, with many areas in the centre and suburbs flooded and thousands of people evacuated. 

During the same weekend, southern Italy was also hit by extreme rainfall, with “streets like streams” in Sicily and small towns and areas left isolated in Calabria. In Lamezia Terme, Calabria, a road’s tarmac collapsed due to the heavy rain, and a car fell into the sinkhole. 

These extreme events can no longer be considered an exception: according to the latest data, from January to September 2024, Italy was hit by almost 1900 extreme events, and it was the fourth time in a year and a half that Emilia Romagna has been hit by heavy rain and floods. In addition, temperatures in Italy have been above the average recorded over the last two decades, with Sicily and Calabria among the regions struggling with droughts for years. 

Anna Parretta, President of the Calabrian division of the environmental organisation Legambiente, explained: “High temperatures and droughts are inevitably followed by extreme rainfalls, with serious consequences on people and territories.” Despite the clear sign that this is the climate crisis, the Italian media still fail to call it for what it is. 

Over the last two years, the environmentalist organisation Greenpeace Italy and Osservatorio di Pavia, a research institute specialising in media analysis, investigated how the main TV programmes, newscasts and newspapers talk about the climate crisis in Italy. 

According to the 2023 report, the number of articles on the climate crisis increased last year compared to 2022: the peak of coverage was reached in May after the storms and floods in Emilia Romagna, Marche and Tuscany, in July due to the extremely high temperatures, and in December during Cop28. 

On the other hand, the attention on the causes decreased from 22,4% in 2022 to 15% in 2023. In the first four months of 2024, each of the major newspapers analysed published an average of 4,4 articles per day on the climate crisis and ecological transition: 55,5% of them do not explicitly mention the crisis. In TV news, 2% of the reports, i.e. less than one report every three days, covered the topic: 39% of them do not explicitly mention the crisis. In addition, the causes of the climate crisis are discussed in slightly more than one in 10 news reports on both TV and newspapers. 

But it’s not only a matter of quantity, quality is important too. Many local and national newspapers referred to the latest storms, floods and landslides as “bad weather” or “wave of bad weather”. Some newspapers described the storms and possible flooding that could occur in the coming weeks as “typical autumn weather”. 

“It is clear that to define as ‘bad weather’ or an ‘emergency’ what is happening, with the increasing severity and frequency, leads citizens to a false perception, because it will not be a transitory situation”, Parretta explained: for instance, the latest data from Legambiente Città Clima report “tell us that since 2010, Calabria has been hit by no fewer than 105 extreme events,” including “prolonged droughts, whirlwinds, and intense rainfall that have led to flooding and damage to property and people: there have been 18 victims.” 

Anna Toniolo is an Italian freelance journalist and member of FADA Collective, a non profit organisation that produces in-depth stories of public interest. Specialising in environmental conflicts, Toniolo often investigates climate disinformation: “What I see in Italian mainstream media is that they often talk about the climate crisis through news reports, with a tendency to treat every extreme event as a separate entity. What they do not do is connect the dots, consider these events together and name causes and responsibilities.” 

According to Toniolo, there are two main reasons behind this approach, the first being the state of the Italian media: “There is a limit to how much we can blame journalists for this, as newsrooms are constantly asking them to produce a large number of news stories – mainly clickbait news – leaving them neither the time and space to verify and check what they write, nor the opportunity to thoroughly investigate a story,” Toniolo said. 

The other factor mentioned by the journalist is the independence of the media:

Yet the mainstream media still fails to mention them when they talk about it. As Toniolo explained, this is mainly because “many mainstream media receive funding or feature advertisements from polluting companies, especially the Oil & Gas industry.” 

In 2022, 795 ads from polluting companies were published in the major Italian newspapers monitored by Greenpeace Italy and Osservatorio di Pavia. More specifically, it was estimated that an average of six advertisements by oil & gas companies per week were published in the Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica. In 2023, the number of ads grew significantly from almost 800 to 1,229, with automotive and fossil fuel companies among those with the largest increase. 

Other than advertisements, polluting companies also feature as partners or sponsors of events, awards or training opportunities, and they usually choose to invest in the so-called “green marketing strategies,” a way to present themselves as sustainable brands and that Toniolo defined as “a classic example of greenwashing.”

“If one of these corporations pays a lot of money to have their ads featured in a newspaper,” Toniolo explained, “the editor is more inclined to keep that client” and their money. But of course “this can make it more difficult to publish certain stories and investigations. Some generic articles on the climate crisis might appear, but not in-depth investigations into the causes and those responsible for it.” 

That is why Toniolo believes it is not a matter of lack of knowledge or awareness: “It’s the interests behind a media that makes a topic visible (or not). What we should really analyse here is media independence,” she argued. 

As an example of independent media, Toniolo mentions IrpiMedia, a nonprofit media outlet of investigative journalism, that conducts and publishes investigations on topics such as criminal organisations, migration, environmental conflicts: “It’s an independent media that doesn’t receive funding from certain corporations and this gives them the freedom and responsibility to talk about ‘risky’ topics.” 

What we see in the mainstream media instead is “an overproduction of news” and on the other hand “a miseducation of citizens about media as places where they can find in-depth analysis and understand that no, it is not just rain, it is not just a storm, everything is linked together.”

According to Parretta from Legambiente Calabria, there is also “still a lack of news and thoughts on how to limit and mitigate the causes,” but also on how to “adapt to the effects of the climate crisis that administrations at all levels and citizens should implement.” 

Another serious issue is the space climate denialism still has in the media. In 2023, 15,8% of articles on the climate crisis expressed resistance to the action needed to mitigate global warming, with climate denialism being the most frequent form; and 13,6% of news reports on the climate crisis included at least one form of opposition, with disapproval of climate activists among the most frequent. In the first four months of 2024, 19,2% of TV and news reports included criticism or opposition to climate action, with TV in particular reinforcing the denialist narrative without ever challenging it. 

“Climate deniers are still invited especially on TV, in an attempt to create heated debate and increase the audience,” Toniolo explained, “and this is a very serious problem: as journalists, we have a big responsibility to make the public understand where the scientific debate stands, and the scientific debate today says that the vast majority of climate scientists agree that we are experiencing a climate crisis. Instead, on Italian talk shows you often see two guests, one who says that the climate crisis exists and one who denies it: this is a distortion of reality because the scientific community is not split down the middle on this issue”. 

Furthermore, “What we rarely see is experts: climatologists, scientists, those who study and know the topic. It should be our responsibility as journalists to talk to scientists and together understand what the main issues are.” Politicians, companies and business representatives are in fact among those most interviewed and involved by the media when it comes to climate issues – much more than scientists or environmental groups and organisations. 

According to Parretta, “the media should portray in a more scientific and rigorous way how climate changes are a serious threat to the environment, the economy and people’s health, making it clear to all that decarbonising the economy and strengthening natural capital are crucial for Calabria, Italy and the entire planet.” 

“In-depth analysis, talking to experts, learning the most accurate way to write about it”: these are on the other hand some of the most important elements that Toniolo thinks a journalist should consider when approaching the climate crisis. “And, again, connecting the dots and looking for those who are responsible for this.”

She also believes that journalists must go beyond what they write: “Journalism is a public service,” she said, and it doesn’t stop with the publication of a piece: “We have a duty to share what we have investigated and discovered with the people directly affected by it, and make them aware of what is happening in their local areas. That’s the power of journalism.” 

Source of the cover photo: Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, public domain, CC0 photo. Floodings in Emilia Romagna, Italy (an illustrative image)