Thursday 11th January: Record opposition to climate action by UK’s right-leaning newspapers in 2023

Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Chris.

Gosh, this is a surprise, I’m so surprised by this information, so so surprised. Carbon Brief, which tracks sentiment towards climate change in UK newspapers’ editorials, found that newspapers such as the Sun and the Daily Mail published 42 editorials in 2023 arguing against climate action, which equates to nearly three times more than they have printed before in a single year. Earlier in the year, the London School of Economics noted that the Daily Mail in particular was still perpetuating climate denialism — in 2023.

Carbon Brief states that: “around half of the climate-related editorials published in right-leaning titles, such as the Sun and the Daily Mail, actively opposed climate action. Only one-third of these editorials supported climate action and the remainder expressed a mix of views. The past two years have seen a dramatic fall in the share of right-leaning newspaper editorials supporting climate action – and a rise in the share opposing it.”

Let’s be very clear about what a total dereliction of duty to inform and protect the public this is. It isn’t exactly a shock that right-wing titles would push this anti-science narrative — but that doesn’t mean we should become numb to it.

Media Moments 2023

• AI: Media companies grapple with practical and ethical questions amidst the generative AI boom

• Newsletters: Newsletter portfolios shrinking as publishers look to consolidate reader engagement

• Print: Inflation increases pressure on newsprint, but magazine publishers are still finding niches

As part of our Media Moments 2023 report Esther took a look at the platform-publisher relationship, with a particular focus on how the efforts by publishers to get platforms to “pay for news” unfolded. Rather her than me. This one’s practically mandatory reading heading into 2024, because we 100% haven’t seen the last of that hoary old debate.

Hey, look at that! Synergy between our latest podcast — all about practical use of AI in newsrooms — and this story. Brazil’s fact-checking site Aos Fatos is rolling out a new AI chatbot, FatimaGPT, which has been designed specifically to be limited in function: “When users asked it a question, the bot would search Aos Fatos’s archives and use keyword comparison to return a (hopefully) relevant URL.” Expect more publishers to do just that this year.

We don’t often cover politics at Media Voices, thank god. Happily, this story about The Sun’s political editor Harry Cole speaks as much to the practices of the right-wing press as it does about the proclivities of our elected politicians. In short, this is a story about how a propagandist who failed upwards at a not particularly serious newspaper still found a way to get caught between its stated political leanings and telling an accurate story.

More from Media Voices