Environment and Energy Policy: Comparing Reports from US and Canadian Television News.

This paper presents results from a content analytic study of evening news programs on energy and environmental news topics - 1,532 on NBC and 1,819 on CTV - from 1999 to 2009. The analysis reveals a focus on severe weather news in both countries, albeit with a somewhat greater focus on that topic in the US. There has been somewhat more extensive discussion of climate change in Canada, and the tone of that coverage has been more critical than comparable climate change coverage in the US. Granger causality tests reveal that coverage of climate change, pollution and related issues are strongly effected by - or, rather, dependent on - coverage of disasters and other weather events. In the concluding section, the paper discusses the implications of this strongly events-focused coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]