A Media Matters review of national TV news coverage of the Central Texas flooding from July 2-7 found:

• Corporate broadcast and cable news shows aired 46 hours and 42 minutes of coverage across 718 segments about the flooding.
• Cable news networks — CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC — aired a combined 43 hours and 25 minutes across 648 segments about the devastating flooding. CNN mentioned climate in 14 segments, and MSNBC mentioned climate in 10 segments. (Fox News mentioned climate change in 7 segments, but only to deny or downplay the role global warming played in amplifying this event.)
• Corporate broadcast TV networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — aired a combined 3 hours and 17 minutes across 70 segments about the Central Texas flooding. Only CBS discussed climate change in this context, with 1 mention.
• Excluding Fox News’ coverage, out of the 527 total segments about the Texas flooding aired on major cable and corporate broadcast news networks, 25 — or just 5% — mentioned climate change.
   

Over the July 4 weekend, extreme rainfall triggered catastrophic flash flooding across the Texas Hill Country. Fueled by the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, water levels along the Guadalupe River rose more than 30 feet in under two hours, submerging entire communities before dawn. At least 120 people are confirmed dead, including 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp near Hunt, Texas. More than 160 people are still missing as of publication.

In addition to the devastating human toll, the flooding caused an estimated $18-22 billion in total damage and economic loss, according to AccuWeather. The estimate “includes impacts to homes, businesses, campgrounds and recreation facilities” but also “accounts for broader impacts, such as disruptions to supply chains, extended power outages, road closures, travel delays, projected tourism losses, infrastructure damage and the long-term costs for survivors and others impacted by the catastrophic event.”

Scientists have long warned that Central Texas, often referred to as “Flash Flood Alley,” is uniquely vulnerable to such flooding due to its steep terrain, thin soils, and rapid urban development, which increases runoff and reduces absorption. Climate change is also altering storm behavior, increasing the likelihood that systems stall over a single area, as happened in the Hill Country during this event. And as the atmosphere warms, it also holds more moisture, fueling heavier downpours and making flash flood events both more frequent and more severe.

A new scientific analysis published by ClimaMeter and reported by the Houston Chronicle found that climate change intensified the rainfall over Kerr County, calling its role “evident” and “in line with what we expect.” Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather at Texas A&M University, likened global warming’s effect to “steroids for the weather,” saying it “injects an extra dose of intensity into existing weather patterns.” State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon added that while floods are not new to the region, climate change “certainly can make a difference.” Recent studies estimate that today’s heaviest rainstorms in Texas drop roughly 20% more water than they did in the 1950s.

The disaster also raised urgent questions about the nation’s flash flood preparedness. Only four river gauges were active across the 230-mile Guadalupe River basin, far below the level needed for timely alerts, and at least one failed completely under the rushing waters. Many rural communities lacked sirens or cell-based warning infrastructure, leading to delayed or missed notifications. Residents in the flood zone reported getting no alerts or receiving them only after floodwaters had arrived. While the National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings, proposed upgrades to the region’s warning systems including radar detection and gauge expansion had been delayed or denied funding in recent years.

Flood fatalities are rising nationally and many existing preparedness systems, including river gauge networks and local alert infrastructure, are outdated or insufficient for the pace and intensity of today’s extreme weather. In this case, the combination of predawn flooding, scant warnings, and thousands of people vacationing in flood-prone areas contributed to the scale of the tragedy.

Given the scope of the disaster — and the questions it raised about climate change, government capacity, and accountability — the nature of national TV news coverage mattered.

National TV news provided extensive and often empathetic coverage of the Texas floods, explaining how and why the flooding occurred, documenting rescue efforts, and honoring the lives lost, including children, with sustained attention. That depth of coverage created space for more discussions about preparedness and systemic risk, though climate contextualization remained inconsistent.

On cable, CNN aired 24 hours and 21 minutes of coverage across 350 segments about the flooding, with 14 climate mentions, and MSNBC aired 7 hours and 29 minutes across 107 segments with 10 climate mentions. Fox News aired 11 hours and 35 minutes across 34 segments with 7 climate mentions, all of which denied or downplayed the role global warming played in amplifying the Central Texas flooding event.

On corporate broadcast networks, ABC aired 1 hour and 17 minutes across 27 segments with no climate mentions, CBS aired 55 minutes across 21 segments with 1 climate mention, and NBC aired 1 hour and 6 minutes across 22 segments, with no climate mentions.

Analysis of TV coverage of Central Texas flooding

Only 5% of national TV news segments about the Texas floods explicitly mentioned climate change. But that figure doesn’t capture the full shape of how climate discussion surfaced during the coverage — unlike previous events such as the June heat dome, when climate and disaster preparedness were largely ignored, the Texas flood prompted a more layered narrative.

Climate change discussions emerged at key moments across CNN and MSNBC in particular, often embedded in expert interviews, policy discussions, or segments examining the region’s potentially degraded disaster response capacity and rising flood risk. These segments were not always framed as climate stories, but they did reflect a meaningful shift: mentions of climate change often surfaced when it was materially relevant to explaining impacts, risks, or failures in the catastrophic Texas flooding.

Dozens of segments raised concerns about the Trump administration’s proposed elimination of FEMA, cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Weather Service, and staffing shortages in emergency forecasting offices. In the vast majority of cases, these concerns were raised with caution, avoiding speculation about direct causality in the immediate aftermath of the disaster while still making clear the stakes of institutional disinvestment.

These critiques often ran parallel to climate framing, pointing toward a broader reckoning with institutional vulnerability in an era of more intense and less predictable climate-driven disasters.

Broadcast coverage, by contrast, remained focused on the immediate situation in Texas: the scale of the destruction, the storm mechanics, and the rescue response. Several segments referenced the National Weather Service in the context of warning timelines, but structural critiques — including agency staffing, preparedness failures, and federal disinvestment — were never incorporated into corporate broadcast coverage. Climate change was mentioned only once, briefly, across all three broadcast networks (the reference aired on CBS).

The recent Texas flooding revealed the potential for TV news networks to connect extreme weather events to stories of deeper systemic vulnerability, even if their coverage of that connection remains uneven, cautious, and far from complete.

Cable news hosted several notable segments

More than 100 segments across CNN and MSNBC mentioned the Trump administration's cuts to the National Weather Service and proposed elimination of FEMA. While some of these were brief or routine references during White House correspondent reports, others engaged more directly with the risks posed by weakened federal disaster infrastructure —  linking staffing shortages, degraded forecasting capacity, and proposed budget cuts to broader questions of national preparedness — without drawing direct lines to the Texas flood itself.

Although climate change was rarely the central focus, many of the best segments grounded their reporting in the practical consequences of a warming atmosphere, particularly examining how extreme rainfall can overwhelm underfunded early warning systems and emergency management networks.

For example, CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem appeared across multiple segments framing the Texas floods as not just a climate-influenced disaster but a stress test of national resilience and a potential warning about the downstream effects of disaster policy retrenchment during the Trump administration.

These points were echoed across several notable segments on cable news.

During the July 6 episode of CNN Newsroom Live, Kristina Dahl of the Union of Concerned Scientists explained how global warming increases rainfall intensity and warned that vacancies in key forecasting positions, such as warning coordination meteorologists, could impair local emergency response and erode the national early warning system.

During the July 7 episode of MSNBC’s Katy Tur Reports, meteorologist Alan Gerard warned that eliminating NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would cripple efforts to improve short-term rainfall forecasting and limit the ability to provide actionable warnings ahead of rapidly developing flash floods.

During the July 7 episode of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, meteorologist Eric Holthaus explained how the loss of experienced federal forecasters and ongoing cuts to NOAA’s research divisions have undermined the development of the forecast models that underpin U.S. weather prediction systems.

During the early days of the disaster, Fox News focused largely on logistics, search and rescue updates, and community impact, providing field reporting and live coverage that largely mirrored other cable news outlets.

By Monday, July 7, however, the network's coverage had shifted sharply. Hosts and guests began accusing Democrats and the media of politicizing the tragedy, specifically by raising concerns about Trump administration cuts to FEMA, NOAA, and the National Weather Service, or by mentioning climate change at all.

Unlike CNN and MSNBC, which aired segments cautiously interrogating the roles of disaster preparedness and institutional capacity in the disaster, Fox's prime-time programs framed those lines of inquiry as opportunistic attacks on the Trump administration. The effect was to deflect attention from the Trump administration's deliberate policy decisions that are leaving communities more vulnerable to extreme weather events. By recasting legitimate questions about climate and preparedness as partisan attacks, Fox News is effectively treating accountability itself as a political threat.

Coverage of the Texas floods demonstrated that national TV news can provide meaningful reporting on disaster preparedness and degraded federal capacity, but still too often stops short of connecting extreme weather events to global warming, political disinvestment, and other forces driving systemic risk.

The Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle FEMA, NOAA, and the National Weather Service are not aberrations; they are the logical outcome of a decades-long climate denial campaign funded by the fossil fuel industry.

To meet the scale of the moment, national outlets should:

• Clearly connect extreme rainfall, heat, fire, and other intensifying events to global warming and its physical consequences.
• Treat cuts to forecasting agencies, staffing shortages, and weakened disaster infrastructure as political choices, not technical oversights.
• Hold the fossil fuel industry accountable, not only for driving global warming, but also for decades of denial and influence that helped normalize disinvestment in the very systems meant to protect people from its consequences.
• Center the communities most at risk, especially rural, low-income, and marginalized populations facing compound exposure and the fewest protections.

Climate-driven extreme weather isn't just a local tragedy; it's a foreseeable consequence of climate inaction driven by political decisions. The Texas flood coverage showed what national news can do at its best. But coverage going forward must connect climate and preparedness with clarity, and reclaim accountability as the central purpose of journalism.

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original episodes of ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week, CBS’ Mornings and Evening News, and Face the Nation, and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press as well as all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC for any variations of either of the terms “flood” or “rain” within close proximity of any of the terms “Kerrville,” or “Kerr County,” or “Guadalupe River,” or “Texas” from July 2, 2025, when the Texas Division of Emergency Management announced that it was activating state emergency response resources, through July 7, 2025.

We timed segments, which we defined as instances when the flooding was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion about the flooding. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the flooding with one another.

We did not include mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned the event without another speaker engaging with the comment, or teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about the event scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We then reviewed the identified segments for whether they also mentioned “climate change,” “global warming,” or the Trump administration's cuts to the National Weather Service or FEMA.