Systemic challenges to reporting complexity in journalism: HIV/Aids and climate change in Africa

Several early studies into the media's reporting on climate change in Africa have been completed, suggesting common threads in the kinds of coverage that are emerging. These include a lack of training in the newsroom, editorial disinterest in climate change, poor coverage of local impacts, and a low level of scientific understanding. While the climate change story can be considered a ‘new’ story for African journalists, this author suggests that the challenges it presents have been encountered before – specifically in the coverage of HIV/Aids. The author argues that both climate change and HIV/Aids present systemic challenges to news production, given that they share important characteristics, such as a difficult and unsettled science, the influence of the political, the need to interpret at times complex impacts on society, and a sense of social or humanitarian urgency. These drivers come into conflict with under-resourced newsrooms and a news agenda that is ill equipped to deal properly with the complexities which phenomena such as HIV/Aids or climate change present. Given these observations, and drawing on research, this article considers the kinds of climate change coverage that are likely to emerge, and the challenges these will pose to the newsroom.