Media, including TOI, leading climate-health coverage: Lancet | India News
NEW DELHI: At a time when climate change is increasingly reshaping global public health risks, the Indian media, including TOI, has quietly taken the lead in linking the two, reports Janhvi.A new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health found that Indian news outlets are emerging as global leaders in climate-health journalism, surpassing coverage trends in both the US and China. According to the study, Indian outlets – including TOI – recorded the highest proportion of significant climate-health coverage at 46.4%, compared to 31.3% in the US and 17% in China.The study, titled ‘Evolution of news coverage of climate change as a health issue: a decadal analysis in China, India and the United States’, examined legacy media coverage in three countries between 2012 and 2023. The researchers conducted a manual content analysis of articles from five mainstream newspapers and one news organization per country collected through archival databases. In India, TOI was among the five newspapers included in the sample.Climate-health journalism was defined as news content that significantly linked climate change to human health outcomes or health-related actions.The study noted that the Indian media has consistently performed better in covering issues that directly affect daily life such as heat, food security, air quality and extreme weather.
