Environmental and sustainability issues shape TV reporting on the food industry

While sustainability and climate protection have increasingly become less important topics in political discourse in times of international conflicts as well as the migration debate and economic slowdown, this trend is not reflected in TV reporting on the food industry. No topic was covered more frequently by German TV channels last year in the context of food and nutrition than sustainability. This is the result of our latest TV analysis, which included 277 TV programmes in 2024. Another important finding: the food industry remains under critical scrutiny. More than 200 programmes had a critical tone, an average of four per week. This continues a trend that has been part of our analyses for years: Broadcasters continue to question the quality of food and paint a picture of an industry that is playing tricks.

In the ‘Environment & Sustainability’ category, we sorted contributions that dealt with the topics of environmental and climate protection or the consequences of industrial agriculture on the environment. Examples include the ARD documentary „Wie wir Landwirtschaft nachhaltiger machen“ (‘How we can make agriculture more sustainable’) or „Lebensmittelverschwendung – Tonne statt Teller“ (‘Food waste – bin instead of plate’). It is noticeable that when it comes to the environment and sustainability, the programmes are almost always critical. This means that the title of the programme or the programme description suggest that the content is critical. In the quality and taste tests, the topic category with the most contributions, the ratio is somewhat more balanced. Although programmes such as „Olivenöle aus dem Supermarkt – Was steckt wirklich drin?“ (‘Olive oils from the supermarket – what’s really in them?’) dominate here too, there are also classic consumer programmes that do not have a critical tone (see chart 1). The channels play with the tried and tested contrast of good vs. bad, big vs. small or expensive vs. cheap. And, of course, last year we again discovered plenty of programmes that dealt with supposed ‘tricks’ of the industry, which the broadcasters ‘uncovered’ in the interests of consumers.

In the ranking of sectors, the field of ‘agriculture’ dominates, a trend that was already evident in the previous survey in 2022. The broadcasters covered a particularly wide range of topics here – from environmental and climate protection in connection with agriculture to animal farming issues and the working conditions and career prospects of farmers.

Individual sectors are less in the focus of reporting. This was different in previous years, when the meat industry, for example, was reported on particularly frequently and critically. It is also noticeable that such industry reports are much less often clearly critical than programmes that deal with the food industry or the food industry in general (see chart 2). Examples of this are ‘Healthy cheated food’ or ‘The tricks with the best-before date’. „Gesund gemogelte Lebensmittel“ (‘Healthy cheated food’) or „Die Tricks mit dem Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum“ (‘The tricks with the best-before date’).

Most of the programmes we recorded were broadcasted by public broadcasters. In many of these formats, we can only advise our customers against participating in the programme with a statement in front of the camera due to the one-sided focus. However, there are also opportunities for positive positioning in the mass medium of TV. Here it is always important to weigh up the costs and benefits – because filming in food production is time-consuming due to hygiene regulations. We also need to know the formats in detail in order to be able to assess what kind of report we can expect. E&Z has the experience and contacts with editorial teams and production companies to provide companies with professional advice and support in this area.

Throughout the year, we analysed television programmes – consumer magazines, reports, talk shows, documentaries and other formats across all television channels – relating to the food industry. Current affairs reporting was not counted. A total of 277 TV programmes were included in the analysis this time. A special service offered by E&Z is the weekly TV newsletter, in which food-related programmes are announced. This is produced every Monday. If you are interested in receiving this free TV newsletter, please contact me at c.wolfram@engel-zimmermann.de or register directly via our website www.engel-zimmermann.de.