This paper focuses on the role of the news media in the (re)definition of contested environmental issues. It analyzes how the media, by means of various discursive strategies, legitimize or de-legitimize different claims about how to handle environmental issues. Guided by critical discourse analysis, the paper analyzes the news reporting on two cases of insect outbreaks in Sweden: one which resulted in spraying and one which did not. The analysis concludes that the production of hegemonic meaning on contested environmental issues – i.e. the process by which certain definitions of how to understand and manage them emerge victorious from the discursive struggle between stakeholders – is closely linked to journalistic routines, as well as to media logic in general and to the media’s difficulties in handling scientific uncertainty in particular.