Crisis news reports play a critical role in shaping society’s response to emergencies, disasters, and unforeseen events. This is a challenging yet important work that requires specialized skills, resources, and training. However, journalists must balance the public’s right to know with the obligation to keep their audiences safe and informed.
In this study, we examine the recent UK energy crisis and its related media coverage. We analyse the reporting structure to reveal how it draws in and sustains viewers, enveloping them in a mediated account of the crisis that includes multiple layers of comprehensible developments, severe impacts, intransigent elite responses, and related politics, solutions and advice.
A key feature of this structure is the frequent introduction of accounts of crisis impacts, drawing on information sourced from charities’ announcements of increased demand for help and their observations of companies’ inaction. These stories thereby build up an impression of observed struggle, its likely duration and extent across a wide geography of impact.
The coverage also includes voiced criticism of government intransigence and their self-proclaimed powerlessness in the face of the global energy market. This is complemented by an emphasis on the profits of energy companies and their potential to profit from an extended crisis, culminating in a call for a windfall tax on their profits to support customers’ bills. Similarly, the evacuation of the Japan Airlines plane is described as a miracle. These attributions reinforce the idea that success in a crisis is essentially down to luck, highlighting the role of luck in crisis outcomes and further devaluing the hard work of those involved.