Eyewitness Science: Framing Climate Crisis Coverage in Local News

We assess audience reactions to local TV news coverage of the climate crisis. First, we trace the development in TV news of the now universally recognized reporter-driven emphasis: the local Eyewitness News model. That format’s role in establishing station scientists as local elites offers a basis to examine audience response to partisan and policy frames sourced to these reporters. Using a 2022 nationally representative survey panel of 1500 US adults, we examine different, randomly assigned combinations of human-interest content in the traditional thematic and episodic framing approaches in TV news for their effect on respondent climate change attitudes. We conclude by showing how these results inform an expansion of the topics and approaches local TV news affiliates should take to offer political coverage of value.