NEW DELHI: At a time when climate change is increasingly reshaping global public health risks, Indian media, including The Times of India, has quietly taken a leadership role in connecting the two, reports Janavi.A new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health finds that Indian news outlets are becoming global leaders in climate health news, surpassing reporting trends in the United States and China. Research shows that Indian media, including the Times of India, has the highest proportion of substantive climate health coverage at 46.4%, compared with 31.3% in the United States and 17% in China.The study, titled “The Evolution of News Coverage of Climate Change as a Health Issue: A Ten-Year Analysis in China, India, and the United States,” examined traditional media coverage in the three countries between 2012 and 2023. The researchers conducted manual content analysis of articles from five mainstream newspapers and one news organization per country, obtained through archival databases. In India, The Times of India is one of five newspapers included in the sample.Climate health news is defined as news content that materially links climate change to human health outcomes or health-related actions.The study noted that Indian media consistently performed better in reporting on issues that directly affect daily life, such as heat, food security, air quality and extreme weather.
