EPA’s “Substantial Involvement” in Television News Elicits Negative Reactions by Bill Dawson A federal grant program that would give the Environmental Protection Agency “substantial involvement” in selecting and developing on-air stories for delivery by certain television meteorologists and anchors was met with suspicion by individuals involved with broadcast news. “It seems to me that any effort by outside sources to use money to try to influence the content of a newscast is very suspect,” said Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), adding that she plans to “caution” association members about the program in an upcoming column. Cochran noted recent disclosures about federal government activities including video news releases not identified as government produced, and efforts to pay media commentators to advocate government policies. “It seems to me this is the same thing — trying to get newscasters to do pieces that are unduly influenced by government policy,” she said of the EPA proposal. An EPA announcement, reported by Environment Writer in January (http://www.environmentwriter.org/resources/articles/0105_epa.htm), sought applications from states, Indian tribes, U.S. territories, interstate and “other public or nonprofit organizations” for grants to help them produce material on subjects such as water quality standards, fish advisories and beach water quality. The EPA would have “substantial involvement” in the stories that would air; it would provide “technical review and advice on content of on-air news stories to ensure accuracy”; and it would help identify federal and other governmental officials “who may be able to appear during on-camera, on-air stories,” according to the agency’s announcement. One criterion for selecting recipients from among the public or nonprofit applicants for grants would be a commitment “from station managers and news directors to produce and broadcast 8-10 national, local and/or regional (on-air stories)—consisting of 3-4 minutes, or other appropriate lengths, in each of 4–9 media outlets (stations),” the EPA said. Asking grant applicants for a guarantee that a certain number of stories would be broadcast about certain topics would amount to “a real intrusion” in the stations’ editorial independence, Cochran said. Parts of the EPA proposal drew a critical response from other persons interviewed by EW. Scott Libin, a former television news director and now faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in Florida, said the “substantial involvement” wording, along with the provision for EPA to provide “technical review and advice” on story content, “raised my eyebrows.” This would be “a deal-breaker for me as a news director,” because of con?ict of interest, said Libin, whose teaching specialties at Poynter are leadership and ethical decision-making. Television news operations “want to maintain a healthy distance from government agencies that will be the subject of their coverage,” he said, adding that government agencies should have “no editorial authority in any credible news organization.” That viewpoint was shared by Deborah Potter, president and executive director of NewsLab, a journalism training and research center in Washington. “I can’t frankly imagine that any news organization would want to do stories with ‘substantial involvement’ by any government agency,” said Potter, a former network correspondent for CBS and CNN. She speculated that the “substantial involvement” phrase, and associated wording, may have been the result of “an unartfully written” proposal by the EPA. Bob Ryan, chief meteorologist at WRC, Washington’s NBC4, said that “nobody in any serious news business would agree” to broadcast stories produced under the government oversight that seemed to be suggested by the EPA proposal’s language. “I think an overzealous PR person was behind that language,” Ryan said, adding that his station would never broadcast stories with “EPA control.” WRC has participated with the EPA and others in an environmental education project relating to watershed protection (http://wrc.iewatershed.com/). The station has maintained “full control over any information” it broadcast in connection with the effort, Ryan said. A page on WRC’s website devoted to the watershed information project says its “sponsors” include EPA, U.S. Forest Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Environmental Education & Training Foundation (NEETF), Chesapeake Bay Program and StormCenter Communications, Inc. KVUE, the ABC station in Austin, is another broadcast outlet that has participated in the watershed project. It also maintains a watershed web page, which lists “sponsors” including EPA, Storm-Center, and Austin municipal agencies (http://kvue.iewatershed.com). Environment Writer asked the EPA to explain the new program and answer criticism of it, but an agency spokesperson said he was unable to provide a response by the deadline for this edition. But a page on EPA’s website describes the already-existing watershed project as one in which the agency and the nonpro?t NEETF have “teamed up with a number of public and private partners on an innovative effort to educate the public about watersheds.” (http://www.epa.gov/owow/watershed/weather/project.html) This undertaking is “a collaborative project to employ local TV weather reports as a means to teach people about watersheds and to raise the environmental I.Q. of the American public,” the EPA web page says. Deborah A. Sliter, NEETF’s vice president for programs, said the watershed project is not related to the EPA proposal for a new program with “substantial (agency) involvement” in broadcast stories, except that the new proposal is “a spinoff of our (watershed) program.” Echoing others who were interviewed, she said she thinks the “substantial involvement” language was “probably an overstatement” by the EPA. The agency’s request for grant applications, issued in December, said awards would total no more than $140,000, though it added that no grants may be made. Applicants were asked to outline how the stories they help produce would be aired in media markets through “already existing and established” delivery mechanisms involving “broadcast meteorologists and other on-camera newscasters (including station anchors).” RTNDA’s Cochran observed that all water-related issues that might be addressed in the envisioned reports have “policy implications” that news reporters may cover. “Depending on what stance the administration is taking, the information could be couched one way or another,” she said. “If you’re talking about watersheds, what if there’s a huge movement to control pesticides getting into the water, and the administration is against that, saying it would be an undue expense to farmers to use more bio-friendly pesticides?”