Print Media Coverage on Climate Change Issues in Coastal Regions of Bangladesh: An Assessment of Professional Needs

Abstract

The role of news media to communicate climate change issues is critical. Being one of the worst suffering countries from the climate change shocks, Bangladesh needs effective media coverage to raise mass awareness on the on hazardous effects of the climate change, adaptation and mitigation techniques. The Bangladesh media in general have no any agenda to deal with the issue except covering reports occasionally, particularly during the disaster period. The daily newspapers in the coastal regions of the country rarely cover climate change issues. Whatever they publish include mostly the disaster time reporting without much information and way-forwards. The present study was conducted to reveal the tendency of the print media coverage in the coastal region, figure out quality of the reporting and understand professional needs of the journalists. Content analysis approach was applied to assess the tendency and quality of reporting while Key Informant Interviews (KII) were carried out to understand the professional needs of the journalists. The study reveals that 72 percent reports were surface with an average column inch of 10.5. Only 7 percent reports were complete in terms of information and narration. Only 10 percent reports used expert’s interviews while using the sources didn’t adhere to the standard practice of journalism in most of the cases. The content analysis revealed major drawbacks of the journalist’s understanding of the climate change issues as well as standard practice of journalism. The findings from the KIIs suggested to improve the reporting skills and knowledge of the journalists working in the coastal regions in the field of climate change.