|
 Journalists need to write
environmental stories in an engaging and compelling fashion, Willis Duff
said Saturday.
"I believe that [poor
public response to environmental stories] overwhelmingly has to do with
composition and research," he said. "Stories concerning education,
issues of the family, and the environment often are not very well
executed by reporters."
Duff, chief creative
officer of Audience Research and Design--a media
consultancy that helps news organizations decide what's news, joined
panelists Rod Jackson, Peter Thomson and Lawrence McGill at the Seventh
Annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference to share reasons
why environmental issues get so little media coverage.
A report presented by
Lawrence T. McGill, director of research at the Freedom Forum's Media
Studies Center, showed that the total number of minutes given to the
coverage of environmental issues on the weekday nightly newscasts
steadily declined from 1989 to 1996 showing only a slight increase in
1994. The 1989 peak in news coverage was due to the Exxon Valdez oil
spill. The 1994 increase featured the continued clean-up efforts and
lawsuits that resulted from that disaster.
Peter Thomson, former
editor and current host of National Public Radio's weekly environmental
program Living on Earth, said "The news hole for environmental issues is
becoming smaller."
He said one explanation
for limited coverage is that environmental disasters cannot be resolved
quickly by the news media. Comprehensive and continual day-to-day
coverage disinterests the viewer.
McGill said 80 percent of
all local news broadcasts provide coverage that can be viewed on all
three networks and 20 percent is left to provide stories that are unique
to that station. Environmental issues only make it into a station's
unique part of the broadcast when made into a feature.
"Breaking news events may
drive journalistic decisions, but ratings [for environmental events] are
lower than expected," McGill said.
Because viewer ratings
are important to networks media research is conducted to help stations
decide what type of news should be included in a broadcast. However, the
results are sometimes misleading, he said.
"Media researchers may be
told that an audience will watch, but the audience doesn't follow-up,"
McGill said.
Thomson and NPR are not
driven by ratings or the need to please sponsors and shareholders.
"NPR is an anomaly--we do
what do because of [the low ratings for
environmental coverage in other broadcast outlets]," he said. "We have
autonomy."
However, Thomson said,
they are driven by the foundations that provide funding. "Sometimes we
can't get funding for what we would like."
The future of
environmental reporting may lie in the hands of television news magazines
like Dateline NBC, McGill said.
News magazines have the
luxury of casting experts and taking the time to cover issues thoroughly.
Despite suggestion that stories broadcast on news magazine shows may not
be taken seriously, McGill said survivor stories that show human emotion
can create a vast viewing audience.
Rod Jackson, ABC
News/News One |
Rod Jackson, moderator
and producer of ABC News/NewsOne in Los Angeles, said another way to get
environmental stories covered includes journalists pitching ideas to
editors by putting a unique spin on the story. For example a story may be
about hiking, but interwoven in that can be facts about the terrain
hiked.
And if editors still make
decisions not to include the environmental story, newsrooms can always
rely on stories that have always had a high viewer response. These
include stories focusing on air and water quality, disposable wastes, and
more recently, weather-related stories, Duff said.
McGill said stories that
show threats to personal health and create a "fear factor" are also well
received.
Thomson said journalists
should tell the ramifications of a specific environmental occurrence.
"It is incumbent upon journalists to fill in the context of an
environmental event--they need to tell the bigger picture."
Thomson said, "[The
audience] responds better to stories which address solution." |
