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Environment Reporting
Writing about the environment from
Washington has put me in a good position
to see trends and predict changes
on the horizon for government policies
on pollution control and federal
land-use policy. During the next two
years, it’s likely the Bush administration
will ramp up its efforts to change
the nation’s environment and land-use
policies. Currently Bush regulators
have been actively reinterpreting the
laws. Next on the agenda is to rewrite
such critical statutes as the Clean Air
Act, the National Environmental Policy
Act, and the Endangered Species Act.
The challenge for all environmental
reporters will be to give the Bush administration
credit when it comes up
with new approaches for protecting
the nation’s environment, while also
shining the spotlight on proposals that
would cause harm.
Much has changed on the environmental
beat since the nation’s air and
water pollution laws were enacted in
the 1970’s. Perhaps the most important
shift has occurred as Americans
have embraced environmental policy
as a quality of life issue. As a result, they
are relying far more on accurate, informed
environmental reporting. Environmental
coverage is not as black
and white as it was in the days of The
Fox. To keep up with the times, reporters
are expanding their perspective
and knowledge in their quest to paint
lively and coherent portraits of today’s
environmental issues. ■
Margaret Kriz is the National
Journal’s staff correspondent for
environment and energy. She is on
the board of directors of the Society
of Environmental Journalists and
writes a bimonthly column on federal
environmental issues for the
Environment Law Institute’s magazine,
The Environmental Forum. The
May issue of American Journalism
Review identified Kriz as one of
Washington journalism’s “Unsung
Stars.”
mkriz@nationaljournal.com
WATCHDOG
A Government Agency Impedes Access to Information
What right do the public and journalists have to see data about children’s health and
the environment?
By Joseph A. Davis
In mid-summer 2002 the Environmental
Protection Agency finished
a major report on the environmental
health of children in the United
States. But as 2002 nears its end, nobody
can read it—not the press, not
the public. The Office of Management
and Budget (OMB), the arm of the
White House that oversees regulatory
and information activities at most federal
agencies, has kept the report locked
up in indefinite review, with no release
date in sight.
The incident underscores a key problem
facing U.S. environmental journalists—access
to government information,
even scientific information, is
increasingly restricted. A major player
in bringing this about is OMB, which
offers industries a back-channel way to
influence regulatory agencies. This
method is unhindered by laws such as
the Administrative Procedures Act that
are meant to ensure the process of
open government. It also highlights
another tough problem environmental
journalists confront—how to tell a
story our audience cares intensely
about (whether the environment is
making children sick and what government
is doing about it), when some
answers might be buried in a tangle of
government procedures and jargon.
The Story That Doesn’t Get
Told
Most audiences are bored with stories
about what goes wrong in government—about
things that didn’t happen,
reports that didn’t get published.
A possible direction for this story might
be the exploration of ways in which the
Bush administration is working to
shelve a Clinton administration push
on children’s environmental health.
Selling such a story to editors can be
tough enough when it has to compete
with celebrity crime trials for space,
but in the press of daily deadlines and
the absence of a report, often no story
will be told.
The general contents of the report,
“America’s Children and the Environment:
Measures of Children and the
Environment,” are actually not much
of a mystery. This is merely an update
of a report of the same title published
in December 2000, during the last days
of the Clinton administration. The report
tracks trends in a variety of indicators
related to children’s health and
the environment—in some cases, simply
adding another year’s data to the
10-year trend chart. It includes information
such as how many children live
in counties where health-based air
pollution and drinking water standards
are exceeded. It also records the percentage
of homes in which children are
exposed to tobacco smoke, the average
concentrations of toxic lead in the
blood of children, and the incidence of
diseases such as asthma and cancer
among children. None of this informa-
Nieman Reports / Winter 2002 49