Climate change was the most covered issue in the media in Sweden during 2019 and the use of terms such as “climate emergency” and “climate crisis” increased significantly (Vi-skogen, 2020). These developments and the climate issue pose questions of future practices and purpose of journalism and therefore also its professional boundaries, not the least towards other social actors and institutions. This study focuses on journalists professional boundaries with their sources, specifically non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Environmental NGOs play an important role in climate- and international politics, such as for instance in the setting of United Nations’ climate summits (COPs), and are themselves engaged in producing public information (Powers, 2015b; Wozniak et al. 2017). The study therefore explores journalists’ conceptions of NGOs for climate journalism and these organizations’ roles in the climate reporting during COP25 in Madrid. It uses a theory of boundary work in journalism and applies a methodology of online interviews with journalists from Swedish national news organizations and with two representatives from environmental NGOs based in Sweden. The findings demonstrate four overlapping roles of NGOs in climate journalism based on the practices and views of the participating journalists: dependency; established source; partnering watchdog; and agenda-driven player. It further concludes that the climate issue and COP25 offer a context for blurred boundaries between the two actors, however, it is limited as journalists maintain control over NGOs’ participation in the news making process.

This study analyses the frames and discourses in different news media reporting on the same events in news outlets in Canada, the US, and Sweden. This was done by analysing both digital-born media and legacy media. The theoretical framework consists of theories about discourse, framing, media logics, the economic prerequisites for journalism, and environmental journalism. The aim is to find what frames, discourses, tone and what voices are being heard in the news coverage of Greta Thunberg’s climate protest, the migrant caravan, and the UN report on climate change released in 2018. Also, differences in the different media are analysed. This is done through discourse analysis by using Fairclough’s CDA and the three-dimensional model, combined with tools from critical linguistics. The analysis of the news texts found that the discourses in the coverage of the three events followed previous research on journalistic values, production and the way that climate change events were reported (or not reported) on. The study also found some themes, frames, that were producing new discourses in climate change journalism. Among these was the way that Greta Thunberg and other young voices were heard on a subject that previously has been heavily focused on politicians, scientists and NGO’s. Thunberg and the migrant caravan were also covered more extensively by the news media included than the UN report, not framing climate in the articles, even though they are about climate change events.