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.
