Environmental Journalism

Environmental Journalist

The Sector
Environmental journalism is the collection, verification, production, distribution and exhibition of information regarding current events, trends, issues and people that are associated with the environment.

The Sector Profile
The national broadsheets and some regional papers have dedicated environment writers. The BBC has a large number of correspondents at national and regional levels, providing radio, TV and online journalism. Sky takes the subject relatively seriously, as does Channel Four, whose science specialist covers it well. Otherwise, often the science correspondent or general news reporters cover the environmental issues. 

Issues and Trends
The growth of environmental journalism as a profession roughly parallels that of the environmental movement, which became a mainstream cultural movement with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. Grassroots environmental organisations made a booming appearance on the political scene in the 1960s and 1970s, raising public awareness of what many considered to be the “environmental crisis,” and working to influence environmental policy decisions. The mass media has followed and generated public interest on environmental issues ever since.

There exists a minor rift in the community of environmental journalists. Some believe in objectively reporting environmental news, while others believe that journalists should only enter the environmental side of the field if saving the planet is a personal passion, and that environmental journalists should not shy away from environmental advocacy, though not at the expense of clearly relating facts and opinions on all sides of an issue. This debate is not likely to be settled soon, but with changes in the field of journalism filtering up from new media being used by the general public to produce news, it seems likely that the field of environmental journalism will lend itself more and more toward reporting points of view akin to environmental advocacy.

The environment is becoming a bigger and bigger issue, with climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty, sustainable development, droughts, floods, water shortages and aviation gaining the most column inches. As the public become more and more aware of the issues, the demand for environmental news will increase. However, there isn’t much turnover at national level of environmental journalists.