JOURNALISM, CLIMATE ACCOUNTABILITY, AND STRUCTURAL BARRIERS: A CRITICAL SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Environmental destruction and climate instability have now reached a critical stage, yet mainstream media coverage often fails to clearly identify the forces most responsible for these interconnected crises. This paper investigates the difficulties journalists encounter when trying to expose the real agents behind environmental harm, especially those linked to global production networks and the broader logic of capitalist economic systems. Using a critical perspective informed by discourse analysis and political economy, the study brings together academic scholarship and corporate reporting to examine how profit-driven structures, weak transparency, and systemic patterns of accumulation make accountability difficult to trace. The analysis shows that journalists confront a range of obstacles, including limited data access, fragmented regulatory systems, corporate influence, and widespread public misunderstanding of how climate responsibility is distributed. These barriers make it difficult to connect visible environmental damage with the deeper structural actors and institutions that sustain it. The paper argues that reporting on climate responsibility will remain partial and insufficient unless journalism moves beyond surface-level events and engages more directly with the systemic foundations of ecological crisis. In response, the study proposes alternative investigative and framing strategies that can help climate journalism place greater emphasis on structural accountability.