Several dozen invited journalists met recently at the Nieman Foundation, Harvard University, for a two-day environmental conference focusing on climate change and water resource issues.

Those familiar with such meetings likely would have recognized many of the faces and names of the journalists present, both the presenters and the students. That led to concerns that the meeting amounted to, in effect, "preaching to the choir" in which the [information]-rich get richer and the [information]-poor stay poor. That's not an uncommon problem given the relatively small universe of established environmental journalists nationwide and the natural tendency of conference planners to draw from past recruits and to skim what they see as the top of the barrel.

The meeting, held at Nieman's venerable Walter Lippmann House in Cambridge, billed itself as "Coming to Terms With Complexity: Covering the Environment in the 21st Century." The formal agenda called for consideration of "How good a job are we doing in covering it?" at the end of major panel discussions.

As it turned out, however, the official presentations by panels of presenters dealt by and large with the technical, economic, and political substance behind each issue, rather than with journalism on that issue. Some veteran journalists, having covered both sets of issues extensively, likely felt they gained few new insights from the official panel discussions.

On the other hand, final-day presentations on Saturday, May 15, involved more journalism-oriented exchanges, with that day's formal presenters consisting entirely of current or former science and environmental journalists.

The Problem with Objectivity

Cornelia Dean, former science editor, New York Times, on leave from the paper to work on a book on misuse of science for policy reasons, advised the room full of reporters about what she called "the problem of objectivity," which she said can risk elevating or overstating the seeming importance of uncertainty or debate.

"Fringe opinions" can appear to warrant the same merit as mainstream scientific perspectives, she cautioned, in particular on issues such as climate change.

But Dean emphasized that she does not think all the blame for shortcomings in reporting on scientists lie solely with the media. She told the group that "the culture of science needs to change" so that civic involvement and working responsibly with the news media are rewarded, and not penalized, by the science community.

Look for, Expect Uncertainty

Former science reporter for the Washington Post, Boyce Rensberger, now director of Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT, told the group that "meek science can be made to appear strong if there's a lot of strong opinion attached to it."

Rensberger advised reporters to expect and seek out uncertainty in science, saying it's a good indicator of responsible science. But he cautioned that "scientists have different temperaments in evaluating the same data sets," and he said the media need to better identify facts, areas of uncertainty, and scientists' individual opinions and perspectives on those points.

"How well is the uncertainty described?" Rensberger asked rhetorically, saying reporters can use that question as one marker of responsible science.

"We're supposed to be watchdogs," Rensberger continued. "We bark in the night if there is something wrong." But he added that dogs "sometimes just like to hear themselves bark .... And there are also just purring cats."

Cautioning that a normal first human reaction is to feel fear, and then to think a situation through more rationally, Rensberger suggested reporters not act solely on their first instinct ... and "avoid a balance based on ignorance."

On climate change, Rensberger said that based on previous scientific understandings 10 or 15 years ago, the media appropriately gave "skeptics" 25 percent or 30 percent of the space in a story. Like the scientific understanding of evolution and creationism, he said, "it's OK now to give skeptics zero percent of the space" in climate science stories.

In a Q&A session after their remarks, Dean pointed to "a larger and larger influence of science" in society. Once told she could rely on "computer models as objective analysis," she recalled a caveat along the lines of "You tell me the objective, and I'll give you your analysis."

And once told that all of her reporters in the science department should have a Ph.D., Dean says she had a simple comeback, "What in?"

Also speaking on Saturday, former journalist and book author Ross Gelbspan (see related story, this issue) told the reporters that journalism "sometimes is institutionally antagonistic" to issues not fitting clearly into a political or economic niche.

"When it's a question of facts, it's up to the reporter to get off his or her ass and get at the facts," Gelbspan said, agreeing on risks posed by an over-reliance on journalistic "balance."

Pitching a Series ... Get Angry, Be Conniving

The Times Picayune environment writer Mark Schleifstein offered reporters some practical advice on newsroom politics to advance enterprise stories or an in-depth series.

"Get angry" at editors and others, he suggested. "Be conniving" about the politics of the newsroom so you can determine which editors can best go to bat to support your story ideas. He said he came to do a major series on fisheries upon realizing that "The fisheries beat no longer exists. It's covered by a variety of people who cover it when a story comes up. But no one spends all their time messing with it."

Reporters' Compelling Devotion to Environment Beat

Concluding the workshop, Nieman Foundation Curator Bob Giles, former editor and publisher of the Detroit News and then a senior officer of the Freedom Forum, told the group that he was struck that environmental journalists are unusual among reporters in having "a compelling devotion" to their beat.

He characterized the beat, perhaps only partly in jest, as consisting of lots of "boring and complex material, but still you stick with it."

The environmental beat, Giles said, is "a beat where training matters."

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