Environment Reporters in the 21st Century

JoAnn Myer Valenti

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351297660
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Environment Reporters in the 21st Century is the story of a relatively new journalistic beat, environmental reporting. This book explores the development of the environmental beat as a specialty during the last thirty years. It also discusses broader trends within American journalism resulting from technological changes that challenge traditional mediums, especially newspapers and magazines.

The book is divided into three parts. The first reviews the literature and explains the methodology. The second describes the results of the authors' research. The third provides in-depth accounts of environment reporters at work. A final chapter puts the research in historical perspective, viewing it in terms of the economic decline of the newspaper business and of local television news.

Journalists mediate a constant struggle among thousands of environmental activists, corporate public relations people, government officials, and scientists to shape environmental reporting. This volume tells the story of environmental reporting imaginatively and innovatively.

Part I
Environment Reporting

1
The Environment Beat¹

Researchers have long been interested in the work habits and attitudes of journalists, including specialized reporters such as environment and science writers. As early as the 1930s, scholars began studying the characteristics of science writers: who they were, how they were trained, and their impact on science and the mass media. ² By the 1980s, this experienced, well-educated group of journalists, who had a non-adversarial relationship with their sources, reported they were devoting nearly a quarter of their time covering environment and energy subjects, primarily in breaking news or feature stories. ³ While many environmental stories were written by science writers, a separate environment beat was emerging. By the early 1990s those attending the annual convention of the Society of Environmental Journalists were writers interested in politics, land use, transportation, and economics, as well as science. ⁴

From the 1930s to modern times, the nature and focus of reporting changed. A review of the history of how the media presented engineering research to the public from the 1930s through the 1950s applies equally well to the environmental issues of the time. Media then celebrated engineering accomplishments, featured famous engineers, discussed failures and problems overcome, identified engineering progress with prosperity, and emphasized practical applications of research findings. Most notably, corporations (DuPont, General Electric, AT&T, and Westinghouse) sponsored or served as underwriters for broadcast series on both radio and television that dramatized engineering achievements, even venturing into descriptions of mathematical principles and mechanics. “Audiences may be sometimes interested in techniques and principles but they are almost always interested in how people…succeed,” researcher Marcel LaFollette reported to an audience of scientists, journalists, and others attending the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Seattle, Washington in 2004. ⁵ Likewise, a study of environmental coverage found that environment reporting in the 1940s often was dominated by corporate public relations efforts. ⁶

By the late 1960s, however, while corporate public relations may still have dominated news stories on engineering, environmental reporting was based on conflicting statements from a wide variety of sources, ranging from environmental activists to government officials and business leaders. ⁷

America’s environmental news sources were engaged in a communication war—a war that continues today. ⁸

From the Archives:
An Early History of Environment Reporting and PR

This excerpt from the Introduction to the 1973 Stanford University Ph.D. dissertation Public Relations Influence on Environmental Coverage (in the San Francisco Bay Area) was published in the form below by SEJournal, the publication of the Society of Environmental Journalists, in Fall 2002. ⁹

Throughout most of the Sixties, unless a river was on fire or a major city was in the midst of a weeklong smog alert, pollution was commonly accepted by both the press and the general population as a fact of life. Until the late Sixties, conservationists were thought of as eccentric woodsmen and environmentalists were considered unrealistic prophets of doom.

Times have changed. By the early 1970s, environmental problems concerned many Americans. Mass media coverage of environmental issues has changed. Newspapers, magazines, books, and broadcast outlets offer the public a stream of information and opinion, much of which treats ecology seriously if not intelligently or completely. By the early 1970s, both the media and the general population were aware that there is such a thing as an “environmental issue,” and many mass media outlets transmitted environmental information and opinion to their publics.

What Rachel Carson had written about in Silent Spring in 1962 finally became a hot news story in 1969. Perhaps it was the dramatic Santa Barbara Channel-Union Oil leak that caused print and broadcast editors to begin taking seriously their own local problems of air and water pollution, overcrowding, and the loss of natural resources. It was in 1969 that the New York Times created an environment beat—a practice that would be followed by major newspapers across the nation. It was also the year that Time and Saturday Review began regular environment sections, Look devoted almost an entire issue to the ecology crisis, Life greatly increased its coverage of the topic, and National Geographic offered a 9,000-word article on man’s environmental problems. At the start of the new decade, the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite was presenting an irregular feature called “Can the World Be Saved?” and Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb was a best-seller. ¹⁰

It was no accident that the public and the media until the late Sixties accepted pollution as part and parcel of industrial society. Corporate public relations promoted this view, and skillfully kept the public satisfied. The press rarely heard the bad news of industry pollution but often received good-news releases concerning industry pollution controls and the many benefits offered to the community by local industry.

After World War II, International Harvester built a new plant in Memphis, Tennessee. Located in open fields, the Memphis Works burned coal and its big smokestacks spewed smoke, soot, and cinders. New homes were then constructed adjacent to the plant, and at the first hint of complaints (the air pollution was so bad that wash hung out to dry turned black, and windows had to be permanently closed), company spokesmen went door to door assuring homeowners that something would be done. Before the homeowners could go to newspapers or public officials, they received a letter from the Works manager stating that the company was searching for a solution. For three long years, no pollution controls were installed, and reporters did not write about the pollution. The people were apparently kept happy by the company’s claims that it had spent $68,000 on improvements. Much of this money was used to purchase 17 acres around the plant as a green belt to catch low-level debris—a very good investment. Finally, the company installed a device to trap most of the residue coming from the plant powerhouse. The final expenditure of $71,900 gave International Harvester a reputation as a company concerned for the public interest. To mark the installation, the company held a community meeting and press conference glorifying its efforts to solve air pollution. The first newspaper story ever carried on the issue was headlined: “IH Spends $71,900 to Be a Good Neighbor.”¹¹

After World War II, in those isolated instances in which a few citizens fought corporations concerning questions of land use, they faced skillfully designed corporate public relations campaigns, and local media that generally accepted the industry arguments. To build a 90-acre research center in a residential neighborhood in Wayne Township, New Jersey, United States Rubber needed to bring about a change in the community’s zoning ordinance. Stressing that buildings would be set back from property lines, the tract would be landscaped, and there would be no offensive odors, traffic problems, or water pollution, the company began a massive public relations campaign with a release to the press. Personal letters were written to local opinion leaders and community and state officials, booklets explaining rubber research were widely distributed, residents were invited to visit other rubber labs, and company spokesmen met with various civic groups. With the press, local government, and an estimated 90 percent of the people in its pocket, the company had little trouble quashing a suit filed by 10 property owners to prevent the change in zoning. ¹²

In the International Harvester and the United States Rubber cases, only the corporations were producing press releases. By the late 1960s, the picture had changed. The media now received environmental releases not only from industry and industry-related institutions, but also from government agencies and officials, citizen-action pressure groups, and other institutions such as universities. The rise of environmental awareness in the 1960s is perhaps due to what Richard W. Darrow, then president of Hill and Knowlton, the largest public relations firm, called the Great Ecological Communications War—a war between conflicting public relations forces. ¹³

At least in part, the environmental information explosion is due to the realization by politicians that ecology is a safe issue (unlike war, poverty, or taxes) and the use of public relations techniques (by officials, environmental activists, and others) to expose the crisis. President Lyndon B. Johnson was one of the first national political figures to realize that being against pollution is good public relations.

Johnson said in his message to Congress, February 8, 1965: “In the last few decades entire new categories of waste have come to plague and menace the American scene. These are the technological wastes—the byproducts of growth, agriculture and science… Almost all these wastes and pollution are the results of activities carried on for the benefit of man. A prime national goal must be an environment that is pleasing to the senses and healthy to live in… Our government is already doing much in this field. We have made significant progress. But more must be done.”¹⁴

As other government officials began to talk about the environment, the press began to treat ecology as a serious government story, and the general public began to become increasingly aware that vital questions were involved. At the same time, environmental activists began flooding the media with releases, some media began environmental investigative reporting, and public awareness was heightened by a series of ecological disasters. More and more, government officials realized that environmental action was more than a fad, and slowly they realized that they would have to add actions to their words.

As Walter J. Hickel explained: “When I took office in 1969 as Secretary of the Interior, pollution was no longer a joke; this fact was made clear by the nature of my confirmation hearings. The subject was aggravating millions of Americans; frustration and hostility were growing. The nation was desperately looking for leadership, and I decided that we should take the lead.”¹⁵

The environment is in part a government story. Government officials and agencies are directly involved in decision-making that will determine the future quality of life, and they are responsible for a great amount of the public relations environmental material received and used by the mass media. Their words and deeds are regularly covered by the press.

Not only did the established, environmental activist groups learn that good public relations made for solid press coverage, but the many new activist groups also realized that public relations was the key to reaching the public. By the early 1970s, there were dozens of national groups, and a separate citizen action organization for every local issue—all trying to reach the public through the press.

Other institutions are also involved. Universities have information departments, as do many foundations. Educational institutions, especially, are now centers of discussion and study concerning environmental matters, and speeches and...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Environment Reporters in the 21st Century
• copy
• Contents
• Foreword by Bud Ward
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Environment Reporting
• Part II: The Environment Reporters of the 21st Century
• Part III: The Craft: Telling the Environment Story
• Appendix A: The Survey
• Appendix B: Sources Used by Environment Reporters
• Appendix C: Three Factors in Environmental Reporter Analysis: Objective/Fair Reporters, Workplace Critics, and Advocates/Civic Journalists
• Index