Environmental problems are poorly reported in the media because of the need to provide entertainment, rather than political awareness, to attract audiences for advertisers, even in news and current affairs programmes. This occasionally affects a specific item of news but more generally affects the sorts of stories that are covered and the way they are covered. News editors are reluctant to deal with controversial political and social issues that might alienate potential consumers. As a result news has become bland and neutral and ignores issues that concern large portions of the population who are not considered to have or exercise much buying power (Bagdikian 1983, pp. 180-1, 201-2).

Yet bland news can be boring so the lack of controversy and social significance is made up for by making the news entertaining and interesting. Intellectual and political interest is replaced by 'human interest', conflict, novelty, emotion and drama or as one feature writer put it "currency, celebrity, proximity, impact and oddity"—the elements of newsworthiness (Ryan 1993, p. 31).

Keith Windschuttle in his book The Media claims that each news outlet has a 'news formula' which aims to attract a loyal, predictable audience for advertisers. The 'news formula' is a way of selecting 'good stories' for this purpose; an "unwritten hierarchy of favoured news." For example, he says that "the formula of the popular, or down-market, press [is] based on stories about celebrities, disasters, monsters, politics and deviance." (1988, p. 274)

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References:

Bagdikian, Ben H. 1983, The Media Monopoly (Beacon Press: Boston).

Ryan, Charlotte, 1991, Prime Time Activism: Media Strategies for Grassroots Organizing (Boston, MA: South End Press).

Windschuttle, Keith, 1988, The Media: A new analysis of the press, television, radio and advertising in Australia, 2nd ed (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin).