The publisher of The New York Times recently made an extraordinary speech about AI, journalism, and the public square that’s received surprisingly little public reaction. What makes A.G. Sulzberger’s speech extraordinary is that it was unabashedly crusading, and crusading is a stance New York Times publishers have rarely if ever adopted over the newspaper’s 175-year history. What makes the scant reaction surprising is that the speech’s audience — fellow leaders of some of the world’s most powerful news organizations — have a commercial self-interest in the crusade Sulzberger is advocating for. What’s more, the accusations Sulzberger made, the plainspoken language he used, the alleged villains he called out by name — Google, Meta, OpenAI — are the stuff of high drama.
Sulzberger’s core argument when addressing the annual WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference on June 1st was that Big Tech is stealing the news media’s property and undermining democracy, and that the only solution is for news organizations to work together to resist them.
Big Tech’s “hijacking of the public square is made possible by the original sin that animates their AI products — a brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an unprecedented scale,” Sulzberger argued. “Tech giants strip-mine news websites without permission or compensation. They repackage these stolen goods as their own, siphoning off the audiences and revenue that otherwise would go to the news organizations that created this work.”
If such stealing is allowed to continue, he continued, we risk a “future where a crucial wellspring of a healthy society and a stable democracy — the truth, understanding, and accountability provided by original journalism — continues to dry up…. The news industry’s only path to counteracting [Big Tech’s machinations] … is by working together” to protect the industry’s property rights, including through lawsuits. (The Times, he noted, has spent $20 million on such lawsuits.)
In sum, the publisher of one of the world’s most influential newspapers has accused some of the richest, most powerful companies on earth of being criminals, of building their vast fortunes on a foundation of lies and theft at grand scale. And he urged the rest of the media to join the Times in fighting back, not only for the sake of their own commercial survival but the survival of a free press and the democracy it nourishes.
Bravo to Le Monde, Variety, and Press Gazette for writing about the speech, and to The Seattle Times for publishing excerpts on its opinion page. But given the big names, enormous sums, and profound stakes involved, why has there been so little other coverage? Why are those outlets the exceptions?
Here’s a hint: the Times itself didn’t report on the speech. Instead, the business side of the paper issued a press release containing the text. But there was no mention of the speech in the news, business, opinion, or other sections of the paper. That absence reflects a view long held by newsroom traditionalists: We (almost) never report on ourselves. The corollary — nor do we report on our competitors — likely explains why the rest of the media has been silent.
Perhaps such coverage is still to come; certainly Sulzberger’s call to arms warrants the attention of any specialist outlet focused on the news media. And maybe there are executive conversations taking place right now that will result in other newsrooms joining Sulzberger’s movement. After all, his speech did invite journalists and news executives to get in touch, offer their own ideas, and explore possible collaborations.
Covering Climate Now welcomes this opportunity, and we urge fellow journalists around the world to consider pursuing it as well. We find Sulzberger’s analysis of the dangers facing our industry and our society persuasive, and highly pertinent to our core concern of how journalism reports on the climate emergency and its solutions.
AI, in case it isn’t obvious, is bad for the climate because its data centers demand gargantuan amounts of scarce water and costly electricity, but it is also bad because building AI chatbots, among other things, sucks away revenue that rightfully belongs to news outlets. That theft is one reason why, as Sulzberger noted, the US has “lost 75% of its journalists and more than 3,000 newspapers” over the last two decades. That’s 3,000 newspapers that will never tell the climate story.
Even for news outlets that remain in business, shrunken revenues make it challenging to cover even routine subjects, much less a story like climate change. AI is no friend to a free press or a livable climate, and it’s time journalists grapple with how we respond.
From Us
Covering Heat & Sports. Explore how worsening heat is putting players and fans of all ages at risk (plus expert tips!) in the new edition of the Locally Sourced newsletter. Plus, sign up to receive the latest Locally Sourced every other Tuesday.
Mirar: Acompaña a Covering Climate Now y Climate Tracker en un seminario web especial sobre cómo el cambio climático afecta al Mundial.
Watch: Santa Marta & the Future of Climate Journalism. CCNow and UNESCO hosted a conversation about the recent landmark conference at which 57 countries pledged to transition away from fossil fuels. Plus, UNESCO launched a new manual, “Reporting the environment: a practical manual for journalists,” which includes contributions from CCNow staff.
Noteworthy Stories
Changing winds. Last week, Trump’s Justice Department gave up in the legal fight to defend the president’s moratorium on permitting wind projects. The plaintiffs — 17 states and Washington, D.C. — called the news “one of the most significant legal victories against the Trump White House’s campaign against the energy transition.” By Aman Azhar for Inside Climate News…
- Emily Pontecorvo writes for Heatmap that the Trump administration’s move may not be a surrender, but a shift in strategy — from lawsuits to paying companies to cancel their offshore wind leases.
$10 trillion market cap. The green economy surpassed $10 trillion in market capitalization, surpassing health care to become the world’s third largest industry in 2025, according to new analysis from the London Stock Exchange. By Stuart Stone at Business Green…
Synthetic scorcher. Journalists at Consenso and Dialogue Earth visited the fields of the Paraguayan youth soccer team and recorded the temperature difference between synthetic pitch and natural grass on hot days. Synthetic pitch was 20 degrees Celsius hotter. By Maximiliano Manzoni for Consenso…
Community know-how. Climate change impacts the poor more acutely and nowhere is that more apparent than in informal settlements often on the outskirts of cities in the Global South. Community members are coming up with creative solutions for dealing with extreme heat, flooding, and other challenges that may be useful for cities of the future. By Laura Spinney for Knowable Magazine…
Teeth health. A dentist in Pakistan noticed that a number of his patients who do agricultural work in the central-eastern state of Punjab were suffering from an aggressive form of tooth decay. Climate change and extreme heat, he concluded, “is turning Pakistani farmworkers’ mouths into hostile environments for their own teeth.” By Zain Azhar for Earth Island Journal…
Quote of the Week
“Democrats’ messaging on climate has long been weak. But the choice isn’t between crap messaging and no messaging. There’s a good and just fight to be had — and we better have it now, while there’s still time.”
– Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D–R.I.) in The Boston Globe
Resources
- “The 2026 Digital News Report” (Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism)
- On the “Curiously Climate” podcast, hosts Shel Winkley and Tom DiLiberto talk about how climate impacts affect people locally. (Climate Central)
- “A clean break: leaving fossil volatility for clean tech security [in the EU]” (EMBER)
- “Nearly half of the world’s children exposed to at least three overlapping climate threats” (UNICEF)
On the Beat
“From Silence to Whisper.” From 1984 to 2025, climate change made up just 0.55% of all news coverage, according to a new report from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, Korea; the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication; and the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Journalism. That accounts for “one-thirty-sixth the attention devoted to sports and entertainment,” and climate was largely relegated to the environmental news section. Climate coverage across beats is uneven and “nearly absent” in health and social justice stories.
Bonn brush-off. Fewer journalists registered for this year’s UN climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany, than any year since the Covid pandemic in 2021.
Jobs, Etc.
Jobs. Earth Journalism Network is hiring a Media Manager (remote, US). Our World in Data is looking for a Writer (remote). STAT is hiring a Trust-in-Science Reporter (Boston, Mass.) Grist and KERA are hiring a Climate, Energy, and Environment Reporter (Dallas, Texas). The World is hiring a Show Editor/Producer (Boston, Mass.) The New York Times is hiring a Climate Policy Correspondent (Washington, D.C.). The Boston Globe is hiring a Climate Science and Environment Reporter (Boston, Mass.).
Fellowships. The 2026 EJN Biodiversity Fellowship is accepting applications from young journalists interested in attending the UNCBD COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia; apply by June 29, 2026. ProPublica is accepting applications from local newsrooms to host a Local Reporting Network Fellow (consult map for eligible states); apply by July 27. Inside Climate News is accepting applications for its fall 2026 fellowship; apply by August 15.
Awards & grants. The Journalism Institute at the National Press Club is accepting submissions for the Pamela Tobey Award for Excellence in Visual Storytelling; apply by July 20. The Net Zero Institute is sponsoring a contest for writers working on a fictional story or series that imagines a regenerative future; apply by August 30.
Workshop. Internews’s Earth Journalism Network is accepting applications from Brazil-based journalists for a workshop about covering ocean science and deep-sea exploration; apply by TODAY, June 18.