Climate Change and Terrorism News: Similar or Different?

Journalists in the US regularly are thought to publish climate change news that uses less negative language than the terrorism reporting they provide. Using data from eight major newspapers, we show this supposition is true. However, we also show that terrorism news’ more negative tone is an epiphenomenon of the events journalists cover. When presented with identical climate change and terrorism stories, journalists report on these threats using roughly the same language. This result, based on data from five experiments, calls the idea that journalism’s principles and practices are the source of the differential coverage people receive into question. Instead, the result is consistent with the idea that journalisms institutions homogenize the news.