Pew Center Survey of Reporters Finds Increasing Anxieties, Concerns
 
Reporters increasingly dislike what they see in the mirror when they look at their 
field of work with more and more reporters indicating that "bottom-line pressures" 
are hurting coverage. 

Roughly half of the 547 national and local print, online, and broadcast journalists 
surveyed by the Pew Research Center, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, and 
the Committee of Concerned Journalists now say the field is "off the mark and headed 
down the wrong path." 

Study authors say economic pressures "more than ever" are diminishing the quality of 
journalism and making news "thinner and shallower." 

Not a good omen for serious environmental journalism, as environmental journalists 
know better than anyone else. 

News executives surveyed are apparently more optimistic that journalism is "going 
the right way" than are reporters, with 57 percent of executives and 39 percent of 
scribes feeling that way, a finding that may neither surprise nor please reporters. 
Reporters from national news organizations generally appear to be somewhat more 
pessimistic about the directions of journalism than do their counterparts in local 
news outlets. 

"But overall, things seem grimmer than five years ago," an article by Jennifer Saba 
in Editor & Publisher closed. The news article's headline: "More Journalists 
Dismayed with Profession." 

In addition to concerns about "shrinking workplaces," the survey identified "almost 
universal agreement among those who worry about growing financial pressure that the 
media is playing too little attention to complex stories," again, not a good sign 
for robust environmental coverage. 

More reporters dismiss popular concerns that the media overall are "too cynical," 
instead faulting the press as "too timid, not too cynical." At the same time, fewer 
reporters appear to champion the media's traditional "watchdog role," with print 
reporters about twice as likely as broadcast journalists to say the media are doing 
well in that respect -- but by ratios of 15 to 6 percent among national print and 
TV reporters and of 9 to 5 percent among locals. 

About 80 percent of national and local reporters surveyed said the media pay too 
little attention to complex issues, with that concern gaining some ground among 
local reporters during the past decade but losing some among nationals. 

The Pew Research Center report is available online at 
http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/journalist_survey.html.