Transnational Problems and National Fields of Journalism: Comparing Content Diversity in U.S. and U.K. News Coverage of the Paris Climate Agreement

Abstract

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s (1993, The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. New York, NY: Columbia University Press., 1996, The rules of art: Genesis and structure of the literary field (S. Emanuel, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.) field theory, this study compares U.S. and U.K. news coverage of international negotiations in 2015 that culminated in the Paris agreement to curb climate change. Findings indicate commercial news outlets at times produced more diverse accounts of the negotiations than nonprofit or public-funded outlets. However, these more diverse accounts often stem from journalistic practices somewhat shielded from market pressures. A niche focus on particular aspects of the negotiations dampens content diversity at individual news outlets but increases content diversity as measured across outlets within a country, which this study finds to be higher in the U.K. These findings indicate that forms of funding resistant to market pressures and approaches to reporting diverging from legacy journalistic practices can support diverse news accounts of climate change.