DefinePK

Abstract

Environmental degradation and climate change have consensually reached a tipping point but mainstream media reporting remains ambiguous about the identification of main drivers of these profound crises. This paper attempts to examine the challenges journalists can face in reporting the actual culprits responsible for these crises, particularly those drivers that are embedded in global supply chains and capitalist structures. Drawing on a critical framework based on discourses analysis and political economy, this paper synthesizes corporate disclosure and academic literature to point out how capitalist structural features, lack of transparency and capitalist logic of profit accumulation obscure accountability. Findings illustrate that journalists face practical barriers and methodological issues such as public misconceptions, corporate power, fragmented regulatory regimes and limited access to data. The paper concludes that journalistic efforts in identifying actual actors behind climate crises will remain incomplete without adopting a broader perspective interrogating systemic roots of these crises. Recommendations provide alternative investigative approaches for climate coverage framing to highlight systemic accountability