Environmental reporting has always struggled to garner column inches: It is not purely event-based, but ongoing, making it hard to penetrate the media agenda. An oil spill or earthquake will be splashed over the front page for up to a week, depending on the severity, locale or casualties, before disappearing into the ether where important, ongoing, but not necessarily exiting stories reside. Any news agency worth their salt would be all over a bull in a china shop, but no-one would report on sticking the plates back together.
Climate change has the same problem, of course: It’s hard to document in actual time, as a narrative of significant events, despite continuing every minute of every day. The consequences are dire, yet climate change does not fit into the media model of what is happening right now.
Environmental journalism in Britain has attempted to evolve from antithetical scaremongering into something more scientific and consistent. Furor over nuclear power, GM crops, or the MMR vaccine is a thing of the past: The MMR example would never happen today, as journalists strive to create a balanced picture of the science behind a potential story, rather than finding and publicising the most controversial report, sometimes based around an insignificant sample of evidence.
The desired change can be summarised by the prioritisation of evidence over sensationalism, environmental journalism mirroring science by using research to create hypothesis, rather than plucking select information to prove what could become a powerful story. Points to the journalists, then, but not so to the publications…
You are the editor: A rival publication runs a story that attracts hightened public attention, increases their circulation, and sparks debate. You speak to your environmental correspondent, who says ‘I’ve come across this story before, it doesn’t add up, it’s based on one report from some crackpot source’. Do you abandon the story and miss out on the chance to compete in the marketplace and become part of the genesis of public discourse? Or do you tell your reporter to go with it, regardless of concerns surrounding the integrity of the story?
A pre-eminent environmental journalist (who shall remain unnamed) told me: “The closer you get to the front page, the less likely it is to be true.” A scary thought indeed, and symptomatic of an incompatible relationship between news culture and environmental science.
Target Aquired | Mission Aborted 