ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 (“Sources of Australian Climate Change News”) discusses how Australian journalists drew on various sources to frame the news coverage of climate change in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. The qualitative and quantitative analyses of the selected content reveal different journalistic strategies employed in the selection and representation of sources. The chapter examines the flow of information between different interest groups, such as politicians, experts, activists, businesses and farmers, to establish how the news media responded to these diverse groups. It reveals a dominance of political sources in the articles from both 2009 and 2015, albeit with a significant presence of business sources in the two Australian newspapers. The chapter also seeks to ascertain how far the news media can uphold the “critical gaze” (Berkowitz 2009) in the coverage and shows that the statements of political sources are among the least verified or scrutinised.
