A former climate journalist has admitted she intentionally downplayed or ignored encouraging climate-related developments in order to preserve the apocalyptic narrative favored by the environmental left.
According to Western Journal, Lucy Biggers, now with The Free Press and formerly a climate reporter and activist, acknowledged on X that she consciously chose not to highlight stories that might complicate the prevailing storyline of imminent catastrophe. When I was a climate reporter, I never covered positive climate stories because it would muddy the narrative that climate change was an existential threat, Biggers wrote Tuesday. No one told me to behave this way. I chose to do this of my own volition.
Biggers cited the remarkably calm 2026 Atlantic hurricane season as a prime example of the kind of development that does not fit neatly into the alarmist script and therefore tends to be sidelined. I think this is why we rarely see events like this years historically quiet eastern hurricane season covered widely by the news, she wrote. Many reporters believe covering it will give fodder to climate change deniers.
The data so far back up her point that this season has been unusually tame by historical standards. Just five tropical storms have formed, none of which have reached hurricane strength, The Weather Channel reported, and CBS News noted the season set a record Saturday for the latest start without a hurricane in the satellite era, which dates back to 1966.
In an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation, Biggers described the process not as overt censorship but as a kind of ideological conformity that she willingly embraced. [I]t was mostly soft self-censorship. I knew what the accepted beliefs of the climate movement were, and I wasnt going to stick my neck out and challenge them. That would have been so much work and threatened my standing within the group, Biggers told the outlet.
Her admission underscores how groupthink inside progressive media ecosystems can shape coverage far more than hard editorial directives. So I ignored anything that challenged the mainstream understanding of climate change anything positive about plastics, fossil fuels, or capitalism. I stayed away from those topics because I was protecting my own neck and wanted to fit in with the group, Biggers said.
Biggers has previously described herself as a former climate activist who spent years uncritically accepting the movements talking points while working at the left-wing outlet NowThis News. She now argues that the same mindset continues to influence how major newsrooms frame climate stories, particularly when reality fails to match the most dire predictions.
I would say it is still common today. You can see it with the quiet east coast hurricane season were experiencing right now. Nobody is covering it in the same way they would if we were having a very active hurricane season on the East Coast, she told DCNF. If that were happening, we would never hear the end of it. But because the story doesnt confirm a dangerous climate catastrophe, newsrooms are less inclined to cover it.
Meteorologists, for their part, have largely attributed the unusually quiet season to a strong El Nio pattern in the Pacific. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has explained that El Nio tends to increase vertical wind shear over the tropical Atlantic, disrupting storm formation and making it more difficult for hurricanes to organize and intensify.
Even so, forecasters caution that the Atlantic hurricane season is not yet finished, and conditions could still change. The National Hurricane Center officially designates Nov. 30 as the end of the season, leaving several weeks in which tropical activity could still emerge.
Biggers has been candid about how deeply she once internalized the most extreme climate rhetoric without doing the hard work of independent verification. I basically spent half my twenties, kind of just buying everything as it was sold to me. Never really investigating, she said during a May appearance on the podcast TRIGGERnometry.
She now concedes that her conviction that climate change posed an existential threat was not grounded in a robust understanding of the underlying science. That was how turned off my critical thinking was, because I was getting so much support from being part of this movement that I just pushed it, Biggers said, describing the social and professional incentives that rewarded ideological loyalty over skepticism.
Although Biggers contends that the quiet hurricane season has been largely ignored, several major outlets have in fact run pieces on the lack of storms. The Associated Press, CBS News, The Washington Post and The New York Times have all reported on the unusual lull in recent days, though typically without challenging the broader narrative of escalating climate danger.
Her broader critique is that climate journalism has become fixated on worst-case scenarios and speculative models while giving short shrift to real-world data that complicate those projections. Climate reporters now frequently cover studies that project a frightening future without looking at the empirical evidence we already have, Biggers said, arguing that this imbalance distorts public understanding and fuels unnecessary panic.
The political right has seized on the calm season as evidence that the constant drumbeat of climate alarmism is overstated and selectively framed. Thank you, President Trump! the White Houses Rapid Response 47 account wrote on X Sunday in response to a post from meteorologist Chris Martz, describing the hurricane season as historic.
Martz had pointed out that no hurricanes had formed in the North Atlantic as of Sept. 12, marking the first time since the satellite era began in 1966 that the basin had gone that far into the calendar year without producing one. He also noted that year-to-date accumulated cyclone energy, a key measure of overall tropical storm activity, was at its lowest level since 1941, further underscoring how out of step the season has been with the constant rhetoric of intensifying storms.
For Biggers, the core problem is not that journalists report on dangerous weather, but that they do so selectively in a way that always seems to support one political agenda. When frightening weather occurs, the news harps on it endlessly. The positive stories are rarely covered at all, she said, warning that this pattern erodes trust and turns science reporting into a tool of ideological advocacy.
Her reflections raise uncomfortable questions for legacy media that have invested heavily in climate branding and activism, often blurring the line between reporting and campaigning. If reporters are willing to admit they suppressed or ignored facts that might muddy the narrative, it suggests a deeper institutional bias that conservatives have long warned about, and it invites a broader reassessment of how honestly the public is being informed about both the risks and the realities of a changing climate.
Login