Environmental journalism may be an endangered species, according a panel of media observers at the 57th annual Conference on World Affairs held at the University of Colorado's Boulder campus.
"This Just In: The Environment is Out" was the title of the April 7, 2005, session that featured CNN's Peter Dykstra, executive producer for science, technology, space, environment and weather; Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute, an international research organization whose focus is an environmentally sustainable future; Marley Shebala, senior reporter for the Navajo Times; and Harvey Wasserman, an environmental activist and senior editor of Free Press Online.
Panelists agreed the session's provocative title was largely not apt in much of the world, but in the U.S., coverage of the environment is threatened as news becomes increasingly commercialized, often nudging environmental stories to the margins or eliminating them altogether.
A case in point, Dykstra said, is CNN's decision to cancel its science, technology and environment show as of May 1, accompanied by a raft of layoffs. Dykstra's own litany of titles is further evidence: they are the result of four other executive producers being laid off. "I said to my bosses, 'You guys want me to be in charge of everything you don't care about?'" he quipped.
What's really needed to jump-start environmental coverage, according to Dykstra, is a major environmental disaster with a visible human and economic toll. Unlike the late 1960s, when Ohio's Cuyahoga River caught fire as its chemical-laced waters ignited, when the stacks of coal-fired power plants poured inky pollutants into the sky, when Pittsburgh businessmen took an extra white shirt to work, there have been "no dramatic disasters – by TV standards – in the last 15 years," said Dykstra, not since the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound, spreading an oil slick across the pristine wilderness.
And without striking visuals, it's hard to get the public to pay attention, Dykstra observed.
Perceptible environmental problems galvanized public opinion several decades ago, leading to grassroots activism, the nation's first Earth Day, and Richard Nixon's signing of "some of the most inclusive and progressive environmental legislation," Dykstra recounted, citing the passage in the late 1960s and early 1970s of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
The movement became complacent with success but was re-engaged in the 1980s with the appointment of James Watt as Ronald Reagan's Interior Secretary, as well as events like the disasters at Bhopal and Chernobyl, the ozone hole and acid rain, all of which "were key by the end of the 1980s," Dykstra said.
The 1990 Earth Day was a major television event, he recalled, and membership in environmental organizations had grown dramatically in the prior decade. "Bush I at least had to pay lip service" to the environment as a result.
But today's environmental crises are different, and that's a problem when it comes to news coverage.
"There are less telegenic but potentially more lethal events taking place" now, such as climate change, Dykstra explained. But since you can't see it, "TV pays no mind…The view from the top in my business is that everything's fine." Alongside a Congress that is "less concerned with environmental values," there is little incentive for news organizations to pursue environmental stories.
And while "TV is lashed to the spectacular visual," Dykstra said, TV stories are getting ever shorter, making it next to impossible to give environmental topics the coverage they deserve. Since the average CNN story is just 55 seconds, he said, the network is unlikely to do a story on the real costs of energy, for example.
He also said "consolidation of media is a real problem." U.S. policy has helped create enormous corporations whose leadership is "generally conservative," Dykstra said, citing News Corporation head Rupert Murdoch, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone and Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons as "heavy Republican contributors."
That political persuasion at the helm "shows itself in our failure to cover the environment responsibly," Dykstra said. "Gatekeepers at the top are personally unfamiliar with environmental issues" and thus vulnerable to influence from industry and conservative think tanks. They're more likely to believe that climate change is a hoax, he said.
The media also "increasingly focus on the cult of personality." And there is no charismatic figure in the environmental movement to focus on, like Martin Luther King, Jr. was for the Civil Rights movement, he said.
What's gotten lost is the public-service ethos, according to Dykstra, at the expense of making more money. "TV is responding to the standard of entertainment, not the standard of journalism."
"On a global basis," however, "the environment is definitely not out," according to Worldwatch president Chris Flavin. "Environmentalism is growing worldwide," especially in Europe, he said, and most nations' news organizations are striving to cover it. Unlike the current U.S. administration, European ministers "all understand the centrality of environmental issues."
While the U.S. "led the wave of modern environmentalism in the 1970s," it is now one of very few countries without a full cabinet-level department of the environment, Flavin said.
Even China is surpassing the U.S. in environmental awareness, he said. "Seven or eight years ago it was illegal to have an environmental organization in China. Now there are more than 2,000 environmentally related NGOs in China." And most General Motors cars can't be sold in China today because they would be illegal, he added, explaining that China now has tougher fuel-economy standards than the U.S.
Environmentalism is "one of the fastest-growing areas of civil society in the world," said Flavin. "The U.S. is out of step with the rest of the world."
Yet if you ask individuals in the U.S. whether they care about the environment, they say they do, according to Flavin. Citing a recent poll, he said more than half of Americans call themselves environmentalists, and "a majority believes that global climate change is a significant threat."
Yet "clearly in terms of the political fight, environmentalists are not doing all that well in the U.S. today," said Flavin.
Why? His assessment mirrored some of Dykstra's observations. "The problems that got the environmental movement going were really in your face. Rivers were burning, the air was dark, garbage was piling up." Yet many problems today remain out of sight, he said, "mainly affecting minority and poor communities with little political power."
Other problems are big in scale and happening as part of a process, not exactly a draw for the news media's bias toward concrete detail. Flavin cited the loss of biological diversity, the condition of the oceans and global climate change which are "long-term problems unfolding gradually over a period of time and are not that visible to the public."
Such complex problems "feel abstract but clearly have major consequences," Flavin said.
"We're like a frog in water that's being slowly heated up. It will jump out of boiling water, but dies when it's gradually warmed," he warned. "If climate change suddenly erupted the way it was depicted in the film The Day After Tomorrow, people would act."
Compounding the dilemma, and in stark contrast to Nixon, Flavin said, is the "anti-environment Republican president we have today."
Conservative economic and ideological forces have become much more organized against the environment, according to Flavin. He cited examples such as Exxon getting government scientists fired when their findings shed negative light on the company, or the ability of industry to get its people appointed to government oversight positions.
Flavin also pointed a finger at the power of right-wing think tanks to influence media coverage of the environment.
"They've become very successful in providing what they call facts and information…They feed ammunition to Rush Limbaugh and his compatriots, they write speeches for Representatives on Capitol Hill…[It's] a much more organized, well-prepared opposition we have today.
"They're not winning the battle for hearts and minds, but they are winning the political war," Flavin claimed.
Harvey Wasserman concurred. "The sky, if not falling, is certainly heating up…We're in territory now where there's no turning back. We must err on the side of caution," he urged, especially with regard to climate change.
For Marley Shebala's people, the Dine, or Navajo, of Arizona and New Mexico, that's not news. "The people have always understood that you take care of Mother Earth, she takes care of you." But tribal elders have been convening recently to discuss unusual environmental events, such as the season's heaviest snow two weeks earlier, an anomaly that interfered with the tribe's centuries-old ceremonial schedule. They are concerned about the changes taking place, and she, as a reporter, has a duty to explain what is happening.
"As journalists, we are looked at by our people as storytellers," Shebala said.
If environmental stories are not being told, or are being told inaccurately or ineffectively, the public is not being served – on this the panelists agreed.
Far from conceding defeat, however, Flavin offered a set of guidelines to improve media coverage of the environment and garner more attention for environmental issues:
- "Don't marginalize issues as 'green.' Talk about the health of the public, the future of the economy. Keep stories mainstream. Don't let the opposition define 'environmentalist' as marginal."
- "Carry a positive message," Flavin said. Don't frame environmental stories so they're perceived as "all gloom and doom." "Fear and scaremongering do not work in the long run;" instead, focus on a "bright future," such as environmentally cleaner new jobs. "That's ultimately what motivates people," he said. "It's not that people don't care about the issues, it's that they feel it's become hopeless."
- "Talk directly about values. We can't leave values to the right wing and the fundamentalists." Flavin suggested focusing on respect for nature, the value of human health, the welfare of human societies and the world community as a whole, emphasizing a concern for future generations.
- "Welcome the religious community," Flavin encouraged, challenging stereotypes that Christians, even of a conservative stripe, are not concerned about the environment. "It's uplifting to see a significant portion of the evangelical community embracing stewardship of the planet," he said.
Wasserman advised linking the environment to the economy as the most effective way to galvanize the public's interest.
What might have happened, he asked, had the U.S. followed Denmark's lead in developing wind power in the 1990s, a decision that made the Danes a wealthy country now that wind energy is a multi-billion dollar industry? Or if U.S. automakers had developed the hybrid vehicle before the Japanese? "Ford did not produce the Prius," and that's as much an economic story as an environmental one, said Wasserman.
Journalists could also cover the hidden health care costs of oil- and gas-based energy production, noting that solar and wind energy are "way ahead in true cost accounting" when you factor in effects of air pollution such as asthma, Wasserman said.
The challenge to improve the public's understanding of complex environmental issues doesn't rest solely on the news media, though. Citizens, too, have a role to play, the panelists contended.
If people want better environmental news, they need to "look for reporting that shows as many voices as possible," Shebala said. In the Native world, that includes "even the voice of the animals."
The tendency of audiences, though, is to gravitate toward coverage that reflects what they already believe, Dykstra noted. It's a growing problem with the rise of blogs and ever more niche-oriented media where even news is now likely to be colored by a self-conscious ideological stripe, as on the Fox network.
Citizens should consult more independent news sources, said Shebala, where journalistic values prevail over a purely business approach. Independent media are able to cover issues that other papers, stifled by corporate pressure, won't.
But corporate media aren't impervious to change, Dykstra suggested. "The media business is incredibly sensitive to criticism." If you don't like what's on offer, you have to "push back from the other direction," he said, citing groups like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (www.fair.org) as an organized example of such an effort.
No comments:
Post a Comment