Canada’s 2023 wildfires broke longstanding media caution around climate reporting

Facts and arguments

The researchers analyzed almost 2,000 stories published between May and December 2023 by six Canadian and US news organizations: The Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Le Journal de Montréal, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The New York Post. The sample included English- and French-language coverage, broadsheet and tabloid media, as well as news and opinion stories.

To conduct the analysis, the researchers combined automated text mining with human coding. Researchers then manually reviewed the relevant stories to determine whether the coverage connected the wildfires to climate change. This distinction proved important: keyword searches alone could identify climate-related terms (for example, “spreading like wildfire”) without establishing a connection to the fires, leading to false positives.

The researchers found that the likelihood of making a climate connection varied most strongly according to the newsroom and whether a story was news or opinion. Language, country and whether a publication was a tabloid or broadsheet had smaller effects.

Nearly 40 per cent of all stories mentioned climate change, while more than 30 per cent explicitly connected the wildfires to climate change.

Almost 78 per cent of opinion pieces mentioned climate change, and about 65 per cent of them explicitly connected the fires to climate change. For news stories, about 34 per cent mentioned climate change and 26 per cent explicitly connected it to the fires.

Science as a reliable source

Climate mentions and connections became more pronounced with the August 2023 publication of a report by World Weather Attribution, an international scientific collaboration that examined the root causes of extreme climate events. The report specifically said climate change more than doubled the likelihood of extreme fire weather conditions in Quebec.

“Our statistical analysis shows clear trends before and after the publication of this report,” Daoust-Boisvert says. “Journalists always need a source before they write that climate change is involved or contributing to natural catastrophes. This report provides that. The field of extreme weather attribution has expanded over the past few years, so reporters feel more confident making that link going forward.”

The researchers suggest that media practices are shifting, in part due to reporters’ better understanding of the scientific consensus around climate change and the link between climate change and extreme weather events.

Daoust-Boisvert also notes that climate is a politicized and polarizing topic, with straightforward reporting under pressure from influential voices on all sides of the political spectrum. She also cautions that as extreme weather events become the new normal, they could lose their newsworthiness, leading to a decrease in the urgency of addressing anthropogenic climate change.

Read the paper: “Increased Attribution of Climate Change in the Press Coverage of the 2023 Canadian Wildfires”