Washington Post columnist David Broder made an odd confession recently:
“If you want to be a stickler for journalistic ethics, I shouldn’t even be writing about the Great Lakes, because I have a huge bias – especially when it comes to Lake Michigan.”
Broder recalled youthful summer visits to a cabin on Lake Michigan and explained that for the past 50 years he has enjoyed another cabin on the lake’s Beaver Island.
“Like everyone who comes under its spell, I love Lake Michigan,” he wrote.
Broder felt a need to reveal that background before explaining his support of a new federal plan to clean up the Great Lakes.
But is it an embarrassing impingement of journalistic purity to favor a clean environment?
Environmental journalists are rightly cautious about getting painted green. It’s often a cheap shot by critics who feel wronged by coverage — fair or not.
In my view, and the view of many of my generation, journalism is the key word in environmental journalism. You seek truth regardless of where it lies.
To be honest, early in the hey-day of environmental reporting, journalists sometimes failed to adequately challenge green orthodoxy. A lot of that had to do with struggling to report on increasingly complicated issues requiring knowledge that scientists — let alone reporters — still sought.
That’s a sin hardly confined to covering the environment. It still happens today. And with a widening view of what constitutes a journalist, it is even acceptable in some quarters more interested in implementing a script than seeking the truth.
Still, I and many of my colleagues, have carved careers around whatever the green equivalent is to the journalistic cliché, “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”
(What would that be? If the EPA says the water is dirty, take a drink? If a manufacturer extols smokestack reductions, check out its sewer outfall? If an environmental group says the air is impure, breathe in a lungful? None are as catchy as mother’s love.)
All that said, perhaps its time for journalists to admit a bias toward a clean, sustainable environment.
Is that such an objectivity-compromising sin?
Well, would you say the crime reporter is biased if you overheard her remarking that murder is a poor way to settle a dispute? How will murderers ever get a fair shake in the media if we allow such people to report?
Is it OK for the education reporter to indicate that literacy is a fundamental value and measure of quality of life? Could such a reporter fairly and accurately cover a school strike? I think so.
I like to drink and breathe.
I admit that the cleaner water and air become, the better off I am. I favor the stuff. Environmental journalists should feel no shame in such an admission, or even if such values influence the angles they take when reporting.
That does not mean they no longer challenge assertions or weigh the relevant merits and costs of getting every last contaminant out of the environment. It can mean acknowledging that sometimes the best thing you can do for someone’s health is to give them a job, and that sometimes that job may require compromises on the environment.
Whether those compromises are required or worthwhile is exactly the kind of stories environmental journalists should be exploring.
No one is unbiased. The key is for journalists to manage those biases and to be transparent about them. In this exploding world that is recasting and broadening the definition of a journalist, not everyone believes that.
But there is a great need for those who do believe that — who cling to traditional journalistic values of fairness and accuracy, and yet who are not so afraid of cheap shots and false criticism that they hide behind a false shield of objectivity.
Clean air and water and sustainable communities are worthy goals. I fail to see how acknowledging that is a compromise of journalistic ethics.
David Broder’s experience with Lake Michigan make him precisely the kind of journalist who should be writing about attempts to restore it.
Echo Editor David Poulson is the associate director of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism
I think environmental reporters need to have a sense of care for the enviornment. A journalist who has a passion for environmental issues will most likely work harder to write a complete, truthful story. Nobody expects that an environmental reporter has no regard for the enviornment. When you truly care about a story, you will most likely produce better results.
That being said, enviornmental journalists need to be careful about their biases. It’s easy when the topic is clean air or water – we all want that. But what about climate change or other controversial topics? Enviornmental journalists, like all reporters, need to recognize their bias and make sure it does not affect their selection of sources or amount of attention given to one side of the issue. Journalists should rely on the facts to tell the story, not their beliefs.
When I taught at the University of Minnesota Duluth, I had a student challenge me on the first day of an Environmental Policy class. His charge? That I was biased toward the environment and would use the class to indoctrinate students that semester, and not give enough balance to the “other side”. My response was that “the other side” is the dominant paradigm, and without classes like mine, that was all we would hear. The same goes for “green” articles, in my mind. The only reason we have an environmental movement, at all, is because irresponsible parties in power – economically and politically – have spoiled important resources like water and air at some point along the way. If they acted responsibly, there would be neither an “other side” nor an environmental movement. Who doesn’t like clean air and water? No one; so in order to justify spoiling them, the environment had to become something fringe and marginal and kooky. Green journalists are just grappling with what environmental advocates deal with weekly. Hang in there.
It’s impossible to find a truly unbiased journalist, because we all enter this profession to cover something that we love. Sports reporters cover sports because they love sports, technology reporters cover technology because they love technology, politics reporters cover politics because they love politics (for the most part, of course). If you can understand why you chose this profession, and how to control your emotions about the subject you are covering, then you are still being fair to your readers.
Actually, I’d even argue that clinging too fiercely to the appearance of objectivity does readers a disservice – that’s when you end up quoting someone with no credibility whatsoever just so you can show “the other side” of a story for which the second “side” is somewhat questionable.
Striving for balance and objectivity shouldn’t mean that journalists have to step aside when the story is about something they care about. It just means they have to make sure their reporting shows how much they care by avoiding any whiff of bias.