People often claim this, but I don't think it's true. I think news organisations on average underplay the threat from climate change.
What actually sells is confirming people's world view. Telling people "everything's fine, look at these silly scientists panicking over nothing" seems very popular with a large segment of the population.
I haven't watched recently but at least in the USA, local news is always a parade of crimes, accidents and fires with sports and weather to round out the 22 minute run time, but as you write, climate change was non existent since it's hard to adapt to the few minutes of video and sentences each story got. One would get the impression that there is a lot of crime and fires in the local area from the sampling bias, and my understanding is this where a large percentage of old people and less educated get their news so it sort of reinforces a lack of urgency to these people about climate change.
People often claim this, but I don't think it's true. I think news organisations on average underplay the threat from climate change.
What actually sells is confirming people's world view. Telling people "everything's fine, look at these silly scientists panicking over nothing" seems very popular with a large segment of the population.