It's All about the Money

Critical political economic methods are used in this study to examine climate change editorials published by prestige press newspapers in the United States between the years 2014 to 2017. This includes exploring elements of corporate ownership for each newspaper of interest, editorial sourcing practices and ideological messages perpetuated within global warming editorial coverage. Political economic methods are utilized due to their ability to expose how neoliberal social, political, and economic values shape the tone and substance of editorial content available for mainstream news consumption. The history behind the pro-capitalist agenda of mainstream news media in the United States is reviewed to contextualize how this study is rooted in the methods of a historical, political economic approach. This paper specifically recalls shifts in financial and political power within the news industry beginning in the 1850s while supplementing this information with the corporate histories of each newspaper utilized in the analysis. The three newspapers analyzed in this study include the New York Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. This thesis was conducted utilizing the search terms “global warming” and “climate change” on ProQuest historical newspaper database. After filtering for results from the desired publications, the editorial content was textually analyzed to examine ownership influence over climate change editorials through an analysis of sourcing patterns and ideologies perpetuated within editorial news content. This study’s results found that while each newspaper of interest showed varying degrees of support for climate change prevention efforts and belief in climate science evidence, all three publications were similar in their unwavering support for pro-market policies as solutions for climate change-related issues. Furthermore, each newspaper examined had a history of close collaborative efforts between ownership and editorial board staff. These cooperative relationships become potential conflicts of interest when understood in the context of modern day newspaper ownership – primarily with regard to the increased investment in newspaper companies by non-news related business entities. Given that all three newspaper companies analyzed in this study have investors directly engaged with the oil and gas industries, climate change coverage in particular can be seen as a potentially risky action that could have a negative impact on corporate profitability. In this context, each newspaper’s affinity for pro-market ideology and sources sympathetic to capitalism can be understood as a consequence of political economic interests that subtly influence the range of available discourses within mainstream news media.