Download issue (PDF) - Nieman Foundation - Harvard University

Environment Reporting
for many an insult. Plain and simple.
“There’s a perception of bias in the
newsroom that seems to be unique to
the environmental beat,” one environmental
reporter recently complained
at the annual meeting of the SEJ in
Baltimore, Maryland. No such perception
had tainted her previous work on
health or other beats, she insisted.
Should There Be
Environmentalist
Journalists?
Let’s get one thing straight: There are
environmental journalists. And there
are environmentalist journals. But using
the most traditional, conservative,
ink-in-the-veins definition, except for
those few columnists and editorial
writers who write from a “green” perspective,
can there also be “environmentalist
journalists?” This pairing of
words strikes me as an oxymoron. Environmental
journalism? The noun
trumps the adjective in the hearts and
minds of reporters who are most committed
to their craft. Environmentalist
writers, yes. Environmentalist journalists?
Not by the strict definition of journalism.
The effort to inform and to
separate fact from fiction in the forever-elusive
pursuit of “truth” or accuracy
comes first.
Reporters who cover the environmental,
natural resources, pollution
beat at mainstream news organizations
would find satisfaction in producing a
thoroughly reported, soundly sourced
article documenting that how chemicals
such as DDT or PCB’s in the environment
do more good than harm.
They’d climb mountains, burn midnight
oils, for a bulletproof piece that
contamination of the Hudson, Ohio,
or American rivers is good for freshwater
fish or, for that matter, good for the
local economies. With global warming,
any journalist would welcome the opportunity
to report a well documented
piece in which scientists find that there
is absolutely no basis for concern that
climate change is happening, that humans
are contributing to it, or that it’s
a problem worth taking seriously.
Stories that parrot the growing scientific
consensus can’t compete when
it comes to prime-time, Page One real
estate. But produce a well-reported,
documented piece containing contrary
evidence—and bring on the science
journalism awards. Of course, things
are not really quite so clear and unequivocal.
Like other beats, the environmental
one is cyclical. Its well-being—in
terms of how its news is
reported and played—depends on numerous
other factors and events. For
example, there is a correlation between
times when environmentalists and environmentalism
are bullish and when
the environmental beat itself is robust.
Want to know when the next boom
cycle for environmental coverage will
begin? Determine the time and place of
the next environmental disaster—the
next Exxon Valdez, Love Canal,
Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Bhopal,
India or the next Alar-on-apples scare.
(Surely we haven’t seen the “last” major
industrial environmental or health
disaster this early in the industrial revolution—just
the most recent one.)
Then look for environmental column
inches and airtime to swell. Are
the victims cute and cuddly critters,
perhaps even humans, better yet, babies?
Are they neighbors or, at least,
Americans? Or do they live in some
distant country few Americans can find
on a map?
The answers drive the environmental
coverage, its duration, and its sweep.
And to a large extent, human nature
plays a vital role as well. Don’t be
surprised if cuddly critters outrank distant
infants in driving coverage. But if
they’re slimy and yucky, even if their
value to emerging medical treatments
is unquestioned, expect a much smaller
spike in coverage.
Environmental Coverage Was
Dubbed DBI—‘Dull But
Important’
Environmental coverage has experienced
several mountains and perhaps
more valleys since 1970 when President
Richard Nixon anointed “the environmental
decade” with enactment
of the landmark National Environmental
Policy Act (NEPA) that mandated
environmental impact statements.
In the post-Vietnam War, post-
Watergate time, marked by the first
international “Earth Day,” the American
public’s rising interest in domestic
issues—and in particular the emerging
environmental movement—gave rise
to the start of the environmental beat
in many newsrooms. Having one of
Nixon’s leading adversaries for the
presidency be Maine Democratic Senator
Edmund S. Muskie—who was labeled
“Mr. Environment”—didn’t hurt,
either, in fueling newsrooms’ interest.
The decade of the 1970’s witnessed
enactment of a slew of sweeping federal
pollution-control regulatory programs,
with Democrats and Republicans
both jockeying for the emerging
green vote. When The New York Times
White House correspondent Philip
Shabecoff left the White House beat in
1977 and sought the environmental
beat, the legitimacy of the beat in many
newsrooms gained increased credibility.
[See Shabecoff’s story on page 34.]
Over time more and more news organizations
added the “ecology beat” to
their repertoire.
During the early and mid-1980’s,
the Reagan administration’s controversial
assaults on the nation’s environmental
regulatory programs—and in
particular its highly visible persona in
Interior Secretary James Watt and Environmental
Protection Agency Administrator
Anne M. (Gorsuch) Burford—
helped again to focus political reporters
on the environmental beat. Their interest
didn’t last. ABC White House correspondent
Sam Donaldson, on leaving
the White House in the spring of 1989,
told The Washington Post’s Eleanor
Randolph that he wasn’t just disappearing
into thin air. “I’m not walking
away, kid,” she quoted him as saying.
“No one’s carrying me out or shifting
me to the ecology beat.”
Randolph, at the time the Post’s
media writer, credited “Subtle Sam”
with making an important point “about
the way Washington’s journalism establishment
views the assignment to
cover such piddling little items such as
our food, water, air and planet.” In
Washington and, to some extent New
York, she wrote, “the environment beat
is so far down the journalistic pecking
Nieman Reports / Winter 2002 41