Reflections of an Environmental Reporter
By Rocky Barker, Idaho Statesman
At the environmental history conference several years ago
in Durham,
Donald Worster told his audience of historians that they were inherently a part
of the environmental movement.
My immediate reaction was similar to several other people in the room, who as historians viewed themselves as outsiders looking in, observers of the environmental movement but certainly not participants. It forced me to think more about my own role as an environmental journalist.
My craft, environmental journalism, is relatively new. It began in the 1960's in the days after Rachael Carson wrote her landmark book Silent Spring and before Earth Day in 1970. The craft was pioneered by people like Dick Kienitz at the Milwaukee Journal writing about pesticides, Michael Frome writing about wilderness for Field and Stream and Paul McClennon in Buffalo revealing the horrors of Love Canal.
It remains a controversial segment
of the journalism family because we care passionately about the subjects we
write about. We have had to fight for
credibility with our editors and had to protect it for our readers and
ourselves.
We must continually ask ourselves
when caring gets in the way of credibility.
In many ways we share the challenge community journalists have for
decades. As a journalist, by
professional standards, I'm not supposed to be a player. Tony Hillerman, the former newspaperman
turned Western mystery writer, described our recognized proper role as a fly on
the wall to the events we cover, listening, reporting and even interpreting,
but not getting involved.
For many of my colleagues the way
to deal with objectivity is to keep their opinions to themselves. I lost the luxury of hiding my views in 1989,
when I became the Idaho Falls Post Register's editorial page editor and again as author and
columnist. My readers got proof of what
they already knew. I loved wilderness,
wildlife, clean air and water.
I address my biases with fairness and a balanced approach
to seeking the truth. The balance I use is the knowledge that no matter how
comprehensively I have researched a subject, I may not understand the real
truth.
I may be wrong, so I
have a responsibility to show my readers plausible alternative realities to
those I present.
Being a part of community doesn't
mean we don't compete in the marketplace of ideas, resources and politics. But as a journalist who seeks truth, and
knows he doesn't know it, I limit that involvement to bringing the voices of
all sides to each other and to the rest of my readers.
Yet I don't apologize for caring. When you care about education, you're not accused of
being pro-education or pro-children. But when you care about the environment,
you become a lightning rod.
So I too, like all of my colleagues in
environmental journalism, am a part of the environmental movement, something
larger and more powerful than I can understand today. We will have to await our
understanding for future environmental historians to sort out.
(ASEH News, winter 2007)