Just Thinking: SEJ Meeting

Something stank. Okay, it was audible. But to many it just plain stank. Big time. The
applause, after all, was deafening.

Some wished not to have heard it at all.

Standing O. Not just one or even two. Not just to say thanks for accepting the
invitation to speak, but in conspicuous agreement with the message.

For those traditional journalists with ink in the veins, it hurt. Hurt badly. Deeply. Not
just a passing glance.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was delivering a red-hot political stemwinder. He did so
in what clearly was a decisive swing state within just two weeks of a bitterly fought
presidential election. An election in which environmental issues, as usual, paid nary
a discernible role in the broad electorate’s mind, notwithstanding the very clear philosophical
differences between President Bush and then-candidate John Kerry on the issues.
Kennedy spoke using the kind of heated rhetoric even opposing candidates avoid in
referring to their adversaries: Kennedy used “lie” and also, are you ready?, “impeach” in
decrying Bush administration environmental and other policies.

The venue for this partisan and hotly politicized diatribe? You’re thinking it was a
Democratic fundraiser, or an environmental activist get-out-the-vote drive? It wasn’t. It
was the Friday evening plenary session of the Society of Environmental Journalists’ (SEJ)
annual meeting in Pittsburgh. A keynote address.

Got that? Picture that? Just think of it:
Repeated standing ovations at a journalists’ annual meeting for a blatantly political
speech by one of the nation’s leading environmental activists. Reporters applauding?

Come again?

Go figure. Let’s. Or at least let’s try.

There are, after all, ways to rationalize it:

- The audience was merely expressing mandatory thanks for the speaker’s having
accepted the group’s invitation to speak. They were not remarking on the specific
substance of those remarks.

- The audience consisted of far more than just working press. The SEJ annual meeting,
for certain, has never has been limited to “working press.” There are legal and tax
reasons why that is the case, and also some very good substantive reasons in terms of
what best meets reporters’ needs.

- There are the inevitable cultural pressures — you’re the only one remaining
seated on your hands in a large group of standing bell ringers. The pressure is to
rise…and perhaps also to clap.

There are lots of ways to rationalize it for those so inclined.

But I’m not so inclined.

Sitting in that room, one would be hard-pressed to conclude that those weren’t
reporters—at least some of them, and some is too many—joining in those PDAs. (Think
“public displays of affection” and not “personal digital assistants.”).

Some reporters, true to their professional convictions, stayed seated and noncommittal.
Too many others did not.

Nor was it possible, sitting in that room, to conclude that the applause was merely a
polite sign of appreciation for the speaker’s merely having accepted the group’s invitation
to speak in the first place. That just wasn’t the case, and you’d have to have been
blind and deaf to conclude otherwise.

While some in the Q&A seemed almost to indulge Kennedy and virtually offer
political counsel, a Knight-Ridder reporter mercifully played the role of independent
journalist and asked whether such rhetoric from the far left wasn’t just as culpable as
that from the right in fostering distrust and impeding progress.

Kennedy had an interesting rejoinder here. He averred at one point by saying
that he was “probably more conservative than many of you in this room,” at least on
certain issues, such as support for “choice” and for free market policies.

Ouch. The truth, if that’s what it was, hurts.

The fact is that environmental journalists have a problem perhaps unique to their
calling: They are battling the perception that many of them have both inside and beyond
their newsrooms of being “greens with press passes,” as a former Scripps Howard
reporter used to say.

The fact, too, is that SEJ, as the single national symbol for environmental journalists
and an excellent one, must share that burden. Denying its existence would serve no one
well, least of all those committed to the sound practice of independent and journalistically
sound environmental reporting.

The fact is that the SEJ annual meeting is the single most visible manifestation of
the field. The shocking/frustrating/disappointing/disgusting public displays of affection
(PDAs) are far more visible than the very worthwhile internal soul-searching
those standing Os are triggering among the group’s serious and committed members.

One can argue: The no-applause rule is a vestige of an earlier period of ink-in-theveins
journalism, an era now consigned to the trash heaps of yesteryear.

One can argue: Even among “traditional” daily newspaper reporters, there is no single
mindedness on the value and merit of that no-applause practice. Let alone among what
passes for journalism today in the form of various broadcast, web, blog, and other
media.

One can argue: Reporters attending a meeting to “learn” are in a different role
from those attending an event, a press conference, for example, to cover it.

One can argue: The polite reception given EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt
the next morning offset the applause for Kennedy and, the previous evening, for
Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Argue all you want. The PDAs for Kennedy’s fiery speech—clearly coming
both from journalists and non-journalists attending the SEJ meeting—make clear
one point: Those journalists longing to be and be perceived as being more committed
to the “j” than to the “e” in the term environmental journalism have their work cut
out for them. The remedy lies in the most determined, most independent, and most
responsible journalism on issues involving natural resources and the environment. It’s
not an easy road in today’s media climate. It’s just the only one that has even the faintest
chance of working in the long run.