Climate sceptics feature more prominently in newspapers in the US and UK than other countries, and their views are more likely to go unchallenged in right-leaning papers, an academic study has shown.

Friday’s report, which was published in the Environmental Research Letters journal, delved deeper into data that was first published last year. For the study, 2,064 newspaper articles from the US, UK, France, China, Brazil and India over two three-month periods in 2007 and 2009-10 were scrutinised for the quantity and type of climate sceptic voices featured on both news and opinion pages.

The authors examined in particular the political leanings of each newspaper and concluded that there was “little evidence” that this influenced coverage of climate sceptics in Brazil, India and China. However, in the US and UK, and to some extent France, the political leaning of the newspaper did affect coverage of climate sceptics.

Newspapers in UK and US give climate sceptics most column inches via The Guardian.