Officials don’t yet know the initial cause of the fires that began ripping through Los Angeles on January 7 — but we do know that a hotter and drier climate created the perfect conditions for multiple massive wildfires. 2024 has the distinction of being the first year on record to average 1.6°C warming, and it seems likely that 2025 will follow suit. For those clued in to the climate crisis, watching LA burn feels like a sign that the predicted climate collapse is already upon us.

But you won’t find reflections like these in the mainstream media. Since the LA fires began, cinema-quality shots of reporters leading viewers through the flame-ravaged landscape have filled the media sphere, while climate change has taken a back seat. You’d be forgiven for thinking you were watching a behind-the-scenes special for an action blockbuster — not the real-life burning up of the planet.

“Our team is in the fire zone as the flames rage tonight,” said Lester Holt, opening NBC Nightly News’s first night of fire coverage on January 7. Across the networks, reporters dressed in fire-retardant gear braved the growing flames. One reporter screamed to be heard over raging fires as houses burned all around him and a cloud of black smoke swallowed the sky; reporters walked through lanes of abandoned cars left by residents forced to flee the flames on foot; reporters intercepted residents as they fled their burning homes, some clutching a few cherished possessions; one journalist reported on special counsel Jack Smith’s resignation in front of smoldering remains; another took viewers on a drive through his old neighborhood before FaceTiming his own mother in front of their old house, which had burned down. “Reporting on danger inside the fire zone,” read one chyron. Graphics depicting flames and embers preceded title cards reading “56+ square miles burned” and “12,000 structures damaged or destroyed.”

Broadcasts heavily featured heartbreaking scenes and interviews with residents who had lost loved ones and pets, homes, possessions, and livelihoods. One segment showed residents standing on rooftops brandishing firehoses in a futile attempt to save their beloved homes; another showed a man breaking down in tears while telling a reporter about his two dogs that were still trapped in his house (in another segment, the man was reunited with his beloved pets); in another, a woman recounts through tears how her relative’s body was found holding a garden hose after the flames had receded; a firefighter told the story of saving a horse from encroaching flames; and other gut-wrenching segments featured residents visiting what was left of their homes for the first time.

The scenes are deeply affecting and, sadly, such utter devastation lends itself well to such cinematic representation. But in the process of framing the “biblical” and “apocalyptic” “inferno” — cliches that are too sensationalist to effectively communicate the deep trouble we’re in — they have failed to use the words that do still mean something: “climate change.”

Between January 7 and January 13, the phrase “climate change” was not mentioned once during regular weekday coverage on NBC’s Nightly News, despite the broadcast devoting at least half of its airtime to the fires every night. On January 11, at the very end of its Saturday coverage, NBC did mention that 2024 was the hottest year on record. And a special edition of Nightly News, “Fire & Ash Devastation in LA,” which aired on Saturday, January 11, did mention climate change — once, ponderously wondering if it might have had something to do with it. ABC’s weekend editions on January 11 and 12 likewise mentioned climate change during two brief segments, though not during its weekday coverage. ABC also devoted at least half of its airtime to the fires every night after January 7. It was roughly the same for CBS.

Throughout days of coverage of “block after block of utter devastation,” a disaster born of the climate crisis seemed to prompt little mention of that crisis. Instead, viewers were hit with action-packed montages of reporters braving the fires and residents reeling from their losses, with a handful of feel-good stories of communities helping their own, volunteers saving left-behind animals, and optimistic promises to rebuild thrown in for balance.

All of this begs the question: What is the point of news? And further, who is this coverage for? Well, if the news is — at the very least — to inform its viewers, legacy media has failed. If it’s to educate, it has failed all the more. And for those viewers looking to “know what’s going on,” they have gained little from these largely disposable action montages. One person I know in LA told me she stopped looking at the news for information about the actual state of the fires. Even after the flames had stopped consuming entire zip codes per day, headlines still implied that the fires were as strong as ever and that new winds were going to make them even worse.

“If it bleeds, it leads” is the ethos of for-profit news media on a normal day. During a disaster, that attitude intensifies — and like disaster capitalism more broadly, there is an extra layer of exploitation baked into the endeavor. Scenes of “apocalyptic destruction” are lifted from their context, unmoored from the larger story from which they are a part. (And in the case of the LA fires, a near-perfect story structure was revealed in which we opened up the story of the fires, bore witness to the disaster, and are now concluding the story before it disappears almost entirely.) Without genuine analysis or explanation of the causes and implications, the disaster footage amounts to little more than rubbernecking. Media give viewers an opportune moment of disaster voyeurism before ushering them onto the next thing, having learned nothing. Coverage of this disaster, and others like it, is entirely disposable.

While news channels were reluctant to mention climate change, they did constantly reiterate that the combination of drought conditions (some areas haven’t seen significant rain for eight months) and hurricane-force winds (which spread the fires while making it much more difficult for firefighters to fight) led to rapidly growing “massive infernos.” What they neglected to highlight is that California is in the midst of a twenty-year-long fossil-fueled drought, which exacerbated conditions that would have been deadly during the best of times. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the state’s water goes toward agriculture — a majority to the dairy and meat industry, and another large percentage to tree nuts and alfalfa grown to feed cows on factory farms. (Saudi Arabia, which prohibits growing alfalfa due to its extreme water use, purchased water rights in California to grow alfalfa for export to support their dairy industry.) There was scant discussion of this, even as news outlets were focused on whether LA’s reservoirs had enough water to fight the fires.

This kind of coverage does a grave disservice to ordinary people inside and outside disaster zones. But the solution is not for outlets to spend less time covering these disasters — in fact, they should be ramping up their coverage of climate catastrophes. What’s important is proper framing: a sincere discussion about climate change and the fossil fuel companies that are fanning the flames.

News becomes the record of history, which means that the LA fires will likely be remembered as a montage of buildings in flames, reporters decked out in fire-retardant gear, and residents doing their best to reconcile with heavy losses and save what could still be saved. It should be remembered instead as a moment when the nation reckoned with the reality of the climate crisis, but the news media were too interested in capturing stunning footage of the flames and the wreckage to bother.

The next big stories in the news cycle — Trump appointees’ confirmation hearings, the Gaza cease-fire — have already drawn attention away from the LA fires, and coverage has begun to drop off. The media missed its shot to use this disaster to have a real conversation about climate change. Unfortunately, another opportunity is coming, and another, and another. Let’s hope they don’t squander those too.