‘Degrowth’ is increasingly relevant as a transdisciplinary research and political discourse field. This makes it a key journalistic topic, especially with regard to climate and economic policy. Ultimately, media discourse shapes its political implementation, making examining this discourse relevant. This research analyses 389 articles from 27 different daily and weekly newspapers and political magazines using critical discourse analysis (CDA); in turn, determining the patterns, trends, and influencing factors informing the media discourse on degrowth in leading British and German print media sources between 2015 and 2023. This discourse was analysed using general structural features such as publication frequencies, time trends, sections, and outlets. Then, the sentiment of articles concerning degrowth was analysed, considering variables of political orientations of the media, their section (e.g. ‘Economy’, ‘Environment’), the gender identities of the authors (derived from the names), and frequent writers' respective institutional backgrounds. Overall results showed the prevalence of degrowth discourse is growing, albeit predominantly in superficial terms. Degrowth-negative articles are most likely to be written by men in conservative media, especially in the ‘Economy’ sections. By contrast, positive articles are most likely to be written by women in progressive media, especially in the ‘Environment’ sections. In addition, within the first few years of this timeframe (2015-2019), there were more articles on degrowth featured in leading progressive print media than in their leading conservative print media counterparts. However, from 2020 onwards leading, conservative print media dominated the discourse with degrowth-negative articles. In Germany, degrowth opponents in leadership positions at leading conservative print media outlets shape the degrowth discourse in the media landscape. This can be interpreted as a structural barrier to a positive media discourse on degrowth. In British outlets, there were fewer frequent writers on degrowth, which is a barrier at the agenda-setting level. In this article, the influence of mainstream economics, economic education, and cultural gender bias are discussed as possible causes for these results.