All Kobe, all the time

Why don't environmental stories get covered? Because the giant media conglomerates -- with the help of the Bush administration -- have abandoned any notion of civic responsibility.

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Aug 24, 2004 | For the last couple of years I've traveled around the country on an informal speaking tour, sounding the alarm about George W. Bush's record on the environment. I've spoken to hundreds of audiences, including conservative women's groups; public school teachers; civic, religious and business groups; trade associations; farm organizations; rural coalitions; and colleges. As I talk about the plundering of our shared heritage, I urge these Americans to help protect the air and water, landscapes and wildlife, that enrich our nation and inform our character and values.

The universally positive response to my speeches confirms national polls that consistently show strong support for environmental protection across party lines.

But I invariably hear the same refrain from audiences: "Why haven't I heard any of this before? Why aren't the environmentalists getting the word out?" The fact is, there is no lack of effort on our part to inform the public, but we often hit a stone wall: the media. They are simply unwilling to cover environmental issues.

To some extent this has always been true. In 1963, President Kennedy and Sen. Gaylord Nelson made a cross-country tour to alert Americans to the environmental crisis. In speech after speech Kennedy warned that air and water pollution, species extinction and pesticide poisoning were threats to our nation's future. But as he later complained to Nelson, the press asked only about national defense or power politics and never mentioned the environment in its stories. In fact, it was Nelson's experience on that trip that inspired him to organize the first Earth Day eight years later.

Now the crisis that President Kennedy predicted is upon us. Ocean fisheries have dropped to 10 percent of their 1950s levels, the earth is warming, the ice caps and glaciers are melting, and sea levels are rising. Asthma rates in this country are doubling every five years. Industrial polluters have made most of the country's fish too poisonous to eat. The world is now experiencing extinctions of species at a rate that rivals the disappearance of the dinosaurs. Nearly 3 billion people lack sufficient fresh water for basic needs, and over 1 billion are threatened with starvation from desertification. Hundreds of millions of desperate people have been displaced by environmental disasters; the presence of these refugees puts added pressure on the local ecology, often leading to wars and further environmental degradation. All this at a time when our president is engaged in the radical destruction of 30 years of environmental law. These things are certainly newsworthy.

Yet it's hard to find much mention of this in the press. The Tyndall Report, which analyzes television content, surveyed environmental stories on TV news for 2002. Of the 15,000 minutes of network news that aired that year, only 4 percent was devoted to the environment, and many of those minutes were consumed by human-interest stories -- whales trapped in sea ice or a tiger that escaped from the zoo.

Why is the media barely covering such a vital public policy issue? Why isn't it informing the public and providing Americans the news they need in order to be effective citizens?

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