During the recent heat waves in France, viewers may have seen close-ups of glasses of water served in nursing homes or the temperatures flashing on the green crosses outside pharmacies in television reports. But beyond interviews with ice cream shop owners reporting booming sales, news programs no longer fail, as they once did, to emphasize the harmful effects of extreme heat – such as the increasing hardship faced by certain professions. The summer of 2022, marked by three heat waves and massive wildfires in Gironde, in the southwest, proved a turning point, leading to the adoption by more than 200 French news organizations and 15 journalism schools of the charter "for journalism that meets the urgency of the ecological crisis."

"The focus remains solely on the fact that it's hot, which is still deplorable," said Eva Morel, secretary general of QuotaClimat, a group advocating for better media coverage of environmental issues. "Even though the link between heat waves and climate change is now drawn more often than in the past, we still don't address their root cause: our greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel consumption," added Sophie Roland, journalist and climate issues trainer for media professionals.

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