• Corporate broadcast networks aired 2 environmental justice segments in 2025 across ABC, CBS, and NBC. This represents a sharp decline from 2024, when these same networks aired a total of 7 environmental justice segments.
• CBS and NBC each aired 1 environmental justice segment. ABC aired 0 environmental justice segments in 2025.
• Separately, PBS NewsHour aired 3 environmental justice segments in 2025. (NewsHour is included to contextualize coverage of environmental justice for comparison purposes only. PBS is excluded from our corporate broadcast totals due to differences in funding structure and program format.)

Environmental justice coverage has fallen from 19 segments in 2021 to just 2 in 2025, continuing a multiyear erosion in both frequency and depth. What began as a limited, but measurable, area of reporting has narrowed each year, with networks offering fewer segments about how environmental harms disproportionately affect marginalized communities.

The 2 segments aired in 2025 constitute the smallest total recorded since this study began and reflects a yearslong pattern in which environmental coverage has become increasingly detached from questions of equity, exposure, and systemic risk.

ABC did not air any environmental justice segments in 2025. CBS and NBC each aired 1 qualifying segment.

On April 22, 2025, CBS Evening News aired a segment examining cuts to an Environmental Protection Agency program designed to reduce pollution “in minority and low-income communities,” explicitly linking federal policy decisions to disproportionate environmental harm and public health impacts.

On May 15, 2025, NBC Nightly News aired a segment investigating pollution from artificial intelligence infrastructure, reporting that industrial emissions and environmental impacts from data centers were harming nearby Black communities.

These segments demonstrate that environmental justice reporting remains possible within broadcast formats, but in 2025 this lens was nearly absent.

Broadcast networks aired coverage of some environmental stories in 2025 that contained clear environmental justice dimensions, but the segments were not framed through that lens. Across coverage of policy, emerging technologies, and industrial disasters, reporting did document environmental harm — but it rarely explained how that harm was unevenly distributed or why certain communities faced greater exposure.

Trump administration environmental actions

In 2025, the Trump administration advanced a series of disastrous environmental policy changes, such as workforce reductions at the Environmental Protection Agency, which included eliminating the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights and regional environmental justice divisions; regulatory rollbacks; and a proposed repeal of the endangerment finding, which underpins federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions. That proposal came to fruition in February of this year, when the EPA finalized a rule overturning the endangerment finding.

These policy changes have direct environmental justice impacts. Communities of color and low-income communities are often located in proximity to environmental hazards and rely on federal support to address environmental harm. 

For example, the Trump administration terminated $180 million in congressionally authorized funding supporting projects focused on “environmental justice” and “environmental and public health challenges that local communities identify as priorities, from watershed cleanups to air-quality monitoring, stormwater infrastructure, remediating lead and asbestos poisoning, and reducing childhood asthma," before a federal court ruled the termination unlawful.  

These kinds of cuts, alongside weakened regulatory authority, can mean fewer inspections, delayed cleanup, and weaker enforcement, compounding exposure in areas where residents already face elevated risks.

Broadcast coverage of these developments largely failed to provide this context, leaving viewers uninformed about how changes to environmental enforcement and regulatory authority could affect vulnerable communities already facing disproportionate pollution exposure.

Pollution from emerging technology infrastructure

The expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure and data centers has introduced a new set of environmental risks. These technologies require large amounts of electricity and water and can contribute to emissions, particularly when powered by fossil fuel-based energy systems. Data centers can also be “disruptively noisy,” to the point where some residents living near them have reported sleep disruption and headaches. This is consistent with findings from public health researchers: Noise pollution is linked to poor sleep, learning and mental health issues, heart disease, and even hypertension.

These impacts are largely borne by marginalized communities. One study found that “nearly half” of U.S. data centers are “in census tracts with above-median environmental burdens, such as air pollution, park access and water pollution,” while many others were located in communities with “social vulnerability indicators, such as poverty and lower education levels.” State-level reviews show that new facilities are frequently sited near low-income communities and communities of color.

This pattern raises clear environmental justice concerns. The environmental burdens associated with data centers — including increased nitrogen oxide pollution and heavy water use in drought-prone regions — are often concentrated in communities that already face higher exposure to environmental hazards but are “desperate for economic development.” 

Despite these risks, broadcast news coverage in 2025 rarely examined the uneven distribution of these impacts. Only one segment, aired by NBC, reported that pollution from artificial intelligence infrastructure could harm a nearby Black community.

Industrial pollution and disasters

Broadcast networks aired numerous segments about industrial accidents throughout the year, including refinery explosions, chemical plant fires, a lithium plant explosion in California, oil leaks along the Gulf Coast, and manufacturing plant accidents. Events like these pose immediate risks to the surrounding communities, including exposure to toxic chemicals, degraded air quality, and potential long-term health effects.

These incidents would have been excellent opportunities for networks to discuss environmental justice. Industrial facilities are “more likely to be located in low-income communities of color,” where residents face multiple other stressors that could make them more vulnerable to the health impacts associated with chemical exposure. The risks associated with these facilities are not limited to acute events such as explosions or leaks; they are part of ongoing patterns of exposure shaped by “land-use decisions, regulations, and market-based forces.”

Broadcast coverage of these events typically focused on the immediate impacts, such as evacuations, injuries, and air quality warnings. For example, after an explosion and subsequent fire at Chevron’s El Segundo refinery in October, coverage across broadcast networks emphasized the explosion, emergency response, and safety conditions, but it failed to examine the effects that long-standing pollution burden caused by the refinery had on the surrounding communities. Reporting rarely extended beyond the incident itself to examine the historical factors that shape industrial siting or the cumulative risks faced by residents.

PBS NewsHour aired 3 environmental justice segments in 2025, more than the combined total of ABC, CBS, and NBC, but still a small number given the scope of environmental harms affecting socially marginalized communities throughout the year.

Segments that met our criteria for environmental justice coverage explicitly identified how environmental risks affect marginalized communities and connected those impacts to broader systemic conditions.

(NewsHour is included to contextualize coverage of environmental justice for comparison purposes only. PBS is excluded from corporate broadcast totals due to differences in funding structure and program format.)

Environmental justice coverage continued to decline in 2025 even as pollution events, industrial accidents, AI infrastructure, and environmental policy changes affected vulnerable communities across the country. There’s no shortage of opportunities to tell these stories. But environmental reporting often stops before asking the questions that would make those stories complete.

Ask who is impacted, and why

Stronger coverage would begin by treating unequal exposure as a key detail of the story, rather than an optional follow-up. When a refinery explodes, a chemical plant burns, a water system fails, or federal protections are weakened, the central questions should include who is most exposed, what risks those communities already face, and what public or private decisions shaped those conditions.

All this matters because environmental harm is not distributed randomly. As mentioned above, industrial facilities are frequently concentrated near communities with less political and economic power. Aging infrastructure, weak enforcement, land-use decisions, and regulatory rollbacks can turn already overburdened communities into places where residents breathe polluted air, drink unsafe water, face higher health risks, or struggle to recover after disasters. 

In majority-Black Birmingham, Alabama, residents living near a former coke plant and a federal Superfund site lost EPA funding for an air-monitoring program meant to help document the pollution they breathe every day. 

Reporting that stops at the agency announcement, for example, rather than examining who relied on the funding or protection being cut, misses the larger public-interest question: Why are vulnerable communities repeatedly placed in harm’s way?

Draw on diverse sources

A stronger environmental justice framework would also broaden the range of sources included in environmental coverage. Official statements, company responses, and emergency briefings are necessary but not sufficient. Grassroots organizations, environmental health researchers, legal advocates, former regulators, and local public health officials can often provide the context needed to understand how exposure compounds over time. Community members should not just appear as witnesses after a disaster; they’re often the people with the most direct knowledge of recurring pollution, complaint histories, health concerns, and enforcement failures.

Connect policy to material outcomes

Environmental justice reporting also requires outlets to connect policy decisions to material outcomes. Regulatory rollbacks, permitting and zoning decisions, enforcement changes, and infrastructure development can determine where pollution is allowed, which violations are addressed, and whose complaints are taken seriously. Coverage that reports these decisions without explaining their consequences leaves viewers without a clear understanding of the stakes.

This approach would not require every environmental story to become a long investigation. It would require networks to consistently incorporate context into the reporting they’re already doing. 

A chemical spill can be reported as a breaking news event while also noting who lives nearby and whether the facility has a history of violations. A refinery explosion can include emergency response details while also explaining the pollution burden surrounding the facility. A story about federal environmental cuts can identify which communities depend most on federal programs. A report on new energy or technology infrastructure can examine not only economic benefits, but also who bears the environmental costs.

Broadcast networks have the reach and resources to make those connections visible. Doing so would give audiences a fuller account of environmental risk and strengthen accountability for the industries, institutions, and public officials that shape exposure. Without that context, environmental harm is too easily presented as isolated, unavoidable, or disconnected from power. That’s why environmental justice should not be treated as a niche topic or a special frame reserved for rare segments. It must become a basic standard for reporting on pollution, public health, infrastructure, and environmental policy.

Media Matters searched transcripts in the Kinetiq video database for ABC’s Good Morning America, GMA3, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS' Mornings, Saturday Morning, Sunday Morning, Evening News, Weekend News, and Face the Nation; NBC’s Today, Today 3rd Hour, Sunday Today, Nightly News, NBC News Daily, and Meet the Press; and PBS’ NewsHour for any of the terms and any derivations of the terms “chemical,” “pollution,” “air pollution,” “particulate matter,” “ozone,” “smog,” “soot,” “asthma,” “fossil fuel,” “oil,” “coal,” “fracking,” “natural gas,” “air quality,” “carbon emission,” “greenhouse,” “water pollution,” “contaminant,” “Superfund,” “environment,” “health hazard,” “drill,” “contamination,” “Environmental Protection Agency,” “EPA,” “climate change,” “global warming,” “climate crisis,” “carbon footprint,” “pollutant,” “toxin,” “toxic,” “hurricane,” “tropical storm,” “flood,” “environmental racism,” or “environmental justice” from January 1, 2025, through December 31, 2025.

To determine how broadcast news programs told stories about environmental impacts that are overwhelmingly borne by poor and minority communities, we reviewed the identified segments for any mentions of any of the demographic and socioeconomic terms “white,” “Black,” “African American,” “American Indian,” “Alaska Native,” “Latino,” “Hispanic,” “Indigenous,” “low income,” “poor,” or “immigrant.”

To count as an environmental justice segment, a segment had to connect the environmental impact, regulation, or health hazard to a specific “race, color, national origin, or income,” per the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of environmental justice. We analyzed the identified segments for whether they mentioned that the environmental pollution impact, regulation, or health hazard affected a fixed community or population.