The Triple Bottom Line Blog

Check out this nice little piece from the Columbia Journalism Review online about how and why environmental reporting goes wrong, often generating more buzz and controversy than information (let alone wisdom).

Some of the problems highlighted by author David Downs are pretty much unavoidable. For example, there's the need to constantly define and explain environmental terms and scientific principles, which eats up precious column space and frustrates journalists who want to write brief, snappy, alluring stories. Other problems are products of today's culture of journalism, such as the pressure to build stories around great quotes (whether or not those quotes are truly enlightening) and the urge to treat every factoid or scientific study as important (whether those details represent outliers or genuinely meaningful symptoms of real change).

In any case, it's clear that journalists and editors who read Downs's article and make a conscientious effort to avoid the mistakes he lists will do a better job of informing readers about environments issues. Come to think of it, there are reporters covering lots of other fields, especially politics, who could benefit from a similar analysis.

Labels: David Downs, journalism, Personal Musings