Conflicts over environmental sustainability are increasingly being fought in court, such as the use of Public Environmental Litigation (PEL) to challenge developments impacting the environment in Australia and elsewhere. News media coverage of PEL introduces legal actors to the dynamics of mediatized environmental conflict, which provides a platform for conflict actors to gain mediated visibility for their cause to influence public debate. When legal opportunities, such as PEL, are used as a campaign tactic, the dynamics of contest are exposed and, while courts have some power over legal actors, parties seek news media to favorably translate legal outcomes to the public. This article explores the nexus of PEL, news media, and communication strategies to find greater understanding of who gains from the mediated visibility that occurs when transnational environmental campaigns take their claims to court. Using content analysis and discourse analysis of news texts and semi-structured interviews relating to eight PEL cases instigated to stop the Adani Carmichael coal megamine in Australia, we seek better understanding of the mechanisms at play when PEL campaigns appear in news media, and find that the dominance of outside court sources in news coverage not only privilege the political aspects of PEL over the legal, but highlights how strategic litigation, such as PEL, can be used to influence public opinion and, therefore, a political response, regarding environmental conflict.

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The likelihood that climate change may destroy the Great Barrier Reef has been a central motif in Australia’s climate change politics for more than a decade as political ideologies and corporate and environmental activism draw or refute connections between the coal industry and climate change. The media fuel this debate because in this contest, as ever, the news media always do more than simply report the news. Given that the Reef has also been central to the evolution of Australia’s environmental laws since the 1960s, it is not surprising that the Reef is now a leading actor in efforts to test the capacity of our environmental laws to support action on climate change. In this contribution, we examine the news coverage of the Australian Conservation Foundation’s (ACF) 2015 challenge to Adani’s Carmichael coal mine to observe the discursive struggle between the supporters and opponents of the mine. Our analysis of the case shows that while the courts are arenas of material and symbolic contest in the politics of climate change in Australia, public interest environmental litigants struggle both inside and outside the courts to challenge the privileging of mining interests over the public interest.