1. How have you seen the media shift in the last 40 years or so in how it covers environmental stories?
When I started covering the environment in the mid-seventies, very few media outlets had full-time reporters on the environmental story. Television paid little attention, except for catastrophes. Even The New York Times didn’t let me cover it full-time until Reagan, Watt and Gorsuch turned it into a political issue. By the 80s, most media had at least one environmental reporter–including TV. Environmental reporting became much more knowledgeable and sophisticated. But media managers, to whom the environment was an unfamiliar issue, tended to treat the stories with skepticism, influenced probably by complaints from polluting advertisers.
2. Has the economy affected good environmental reporting?
In recent years, as economic troubles have piled up for the media, environmental coverage is often the first thing dropped. CNN, for example, which set the pass for broadcast coverage of the issues for years, got rid of its entire environmental staff recently. The NYTimes, however, seems to be bucking the trend, have just formed and environment and health team.
3. How have you seen the media shift in the last 40 years or so in how the media covers environmental issues?
I wrote my first story on global warming in 1978. It was held for months and then printed near the back of the Saturday paper, about as deep as The New York Times can bury a piece. I used to have to fight with editors to get global warming stories in the paper. The evidence was clear from the beginning, but only in recent years has the skepticism of editors eased. Now it appears to be the single most covered environmental story. Unfortunately, few other issues get the same kind of sustained coverage these days, particularly issues involving health and the environment.
4. What are the biggest problems with media coverage of ‘green’ topics today?
There’s not enough of it.
5. Does the way the media views environmentalism do any damage?
Only in places like Fox news which distort the story through an ideological prism.
6. What do you consider the most trusted media sources for environmental coverage?
The NYTimes, The Washington Post, NPR, and Bill Moyers.
7. What is the most egregious error you see over and over in environmental reporting?
The misguided striving for balance–on one hand…and on the other hand when there is no other hand. It is everywhere, but especially on global warming where the “skeptics,” most of them paid by industry, always have their say even though the evidence is overwhelming against them. Balance in journalism is commendable, but not when it is at the expense of truth. That is a grievous disservice to the public.
8. Is there an environmental topic you wish would get more media attention?
Indeed there is. The impact of chemicals, heavy metals, and nuclear contamination on the environment, and especially on human health, is an enormously underplayed story. The toxification of the environment is as great a threat to the future viability of life on earth as global warming, probably greater. But it is getting scant attention in the media, certainly not as much as it deserves.
9. Does this relate to your current work?
I just co-authored a book with my wife showing that toxics in the environment are helping generate an epidemic of chronic illness among America’s children. But we are all at risk; kids are our canary in the coal mine. It seems we are finally going to address the climate change issue. We cannot wait another 30 years to stop the toxification of the environment.
10. Environmental reporting is often undertaken to effect change. Have you seen certain methods work better than others?
The best is good investigative reporting that exposes misdeeds by industry or government that harm the public.
11. Earth day was last week. Is there a vision there that you saw undertaken in 1970 that you think is still being carried forward? Or has some sight been lost in that regard?
The first Earth Day took place at a time of social ferment and citizen activism: the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the anti-war movement. That social and political climate gave substantial impetus to the environmental movement and put pressure on government to act. The public reacted strongly to the Reagan administration’s effort to roll back environmental progress. Since then, however, the country has become more subdued on social issues, nowhere more than on the environment. The goals of Earth Day remain, but the impetus behind them has slackened, I believe.
12. Do you have a favorite, reliable, thorough reporter who could use more attention?
One of the most solid environmental reporters year in and year out is Ken Ward of the Charleston (WVA) Gazette.
13. Do you have opinions about the new environmental channels and media services?
I was founder and first publisher of Greenwire back in 1991, and it is still going strong–better than ever, I think. Environmental Health News, a service of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, also does an excellent, comprehensive digest of environmental news every day.
Philip Shabecoff has covered environmental issues for decades. His books on the issues include Earth Rising, A Fierce Green Fire, and his most recent, Poisoned Profits. Shabecoff spoke on C-Span’s Book TV in February 2009.
