“Up in smoke, but still on fire,” would have been the motto of many major busy cities in the US, and around the world, during the 1960s-80s. Due to major amounts of pollution from an overall increase in industry, and a move away from agriculture, people in these cities were being majorly impacted by their own productivity. The rise in popularity of vehicles also heavily contributed to the damage that was occurring to the environment. Without proper regulation, environmental problems began to snowball. It was clear that something had to be done.
From this problem sprang environmental journalism. This specific type of journalism, “focuses on reporting issues related to the environment, climate change, biodiversity, and sustainability & aims to provide accurate and timely information to educate the public and drive positive change.” During the 1960s and going into the 1980s, environmental journalism was, and still is, utilized as a form of media that brought awareness to significant problems that society needed to be conscious of. Jumpstarted and inspired by writers like Rachel Carson through her book, Silent Spring, which spoke to the dangers of chemicals on the ecosystem, journalists began to dig deeper into the relationship between humans and the nature around them. Raising questions such as, “How many pesticides are too much?” or “What is the effect of air pollution on communities?” and even, “Should factories have some kind of environmental regulation?” Getting to the true root of the pollution problem and seeing if there were viable ways to fix said problem, was the goal. Journalists did face some challenges when trying to get the right scoop on what was going on environmentally. Industrial pollution, which came from factories, was so widespread and built into the economic part of society that questioning its effects was very striking. Additionally, the overall effects of what was being put into the atmosphere could be exaggerated and were not completely understood.
The Global Cooling Scare of 1970 was a prime example of lack of knowledge leading to exaggerated media. When aerosol pollution was reported by scientists to be blocking the sun leading to the possibility of the Earth cooling, some journalists took this and published articles about an impending ice age. This was of course false and led to unnecessary fear that was later calmed due to the true explanation of the matter.
Industry influence was another hurdle that journalists had to jump over when reporting on environmental issues. Factory and business owners would try and cover up or downplay their negative effects on the environment. When doing so, it would limit the amount of true and reliable facts journalists could pull from, thus hindering their role as promoters of truth.
Despite some of those challenges, journalists during this time still managed to adequately cover stories about what was happening in the environment. Especially in major cities where pollution was more prevalent, and people were more condensed, articles surrounding the environment began to become more common.
In 1966, both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times wrote articles about their smog incidents. Due to the immense number of vehicles, power plants, and factories in both cities releasing so many air pollutants, thick smoke hovered over. This lasted days and caused major health problems and even deaths for many people. Then three years later, the Los Angeles Times made headlines about the Santa Barbara Disaster which surrounded an oil explosion. That explosion heavily affected the local ecology and some property. Awareness of these events, spread by journalists, led to much needed regulations being put in place to protect the environment. Journalists were able to fulfill their role. Today, environmental journalism is alive and well. With more journalists specializing and being trained in environmental studies or even science, articles have increased in accuracy and have become more reliable in certain ways. Scientifically backed maps and charts are incorporated by journalists to provide the public with as much information as possible. Although topics surrounding elements of the environment have become a bit polarized, more in-depth coverage overall has allowed the public to better understand environmental issues at large.
