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By Bill Dawson

Environmental coverage – not counting natural disasters and weather – dropped nearly to record low levels in 2005 on the three national broadcast networks' weekday nightly newscasts, media analyst Andrew Tyndall has determined.

Tyndall's findings were contained in a report that he prepared for presentation to a July 28 meeting in New York sponsored by Michigan State University's Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and the Society of Environmental Journalists.

According to Tyndall's analysis, coverage by ABC, CBS and NBC of a variety of topics that he places under the heading of "environment and manmade disasters" totaled just 168 minutes on those networks' nightly newscasts in 2005.

Since 1988, when Tyndall began monitoring and analyzing the newscasts, the only years with less such coverage than 2005 were 1994 (with 122 minutes) and 2003 (with 132 minutes).

Last year's coverage of stories on "natural disasters and weather" – a separate Tyndall category – was another matter. With the deadly Asian tsunami early in the year and powerful hurricanes including Katrina and Rita later, 2005's total coverage of news in this category was by far the most extensive since 1988 – 2,226 total minutes.

The previous peak for coverage of news in the natural disasters category was 1,179 minutes in 1998.

Since 1988, the three networks' nightly newscasts have devoted an average of about 2 percent of their time to environmental stories and about 4 percent to natural disasters, Tyndall wrote in his report of his 2005 findings.

"The tsunami in Indonesia and Hurricane Katrina made 2005 an exception to these trends," he added. "These cataclysmic events radically increased the focus on natural disasters. Nature accounted for 15 percent of last year's newshole – whereas the environment is stuck even deeper in its habitual cellar at only 1 percent."

The peak year for nightly newscast coverage in the environmental category in Tyndall's surveys was 1989, the year of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, when the three networks devoted a total of 774 minutes to the category.

Until the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Tyndall wrote, the three networks' 2001 attention to environmental issues was on a record-setting pace, driven by coverage of California's energy problems and the then-new Bush administration's energy policy proposals.

Since 9/11, however, the three networks have reverted to their typical "minimal coverage" of the environment, he added.

"In this journalistic environment, how should television news cover the preeminent environmental issue of the day – global warming?" Tyndall wrote. "The question reveals a Catch 22: global warming will only grab headlines when it becomes an issue of political controversy; only prominent coverage in the news media can force it to the forefront of political controversy – yet attempts to cover global warming per se amount to occasional discretionary features on light news days."

He suggested that instead of stand-alone stories on climate change, "there is plenty of scope to cover global warming, not per se, but as an angle in stories that grab headlines for other reasons."

According to Tyndall's survey, these were the 10 top stories covered in the nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS and NBC in 2005, with the networks' total amount of time devoted to each:

1. Energy exploitation plan approved, signed into law – 25 minutes
2. Energy conservation and alternate fuel use urged – 18 minutes
3. Teflon chemical PFOA ingested from food packaging – 11 minutes
4. Alaska's ANWR oil exploration debate – 10 minutes
5. New Orleans flood-control levees construction flaws – 8 minutes
6. Arctic Ocean ice cap shrinks, melts – 6 minutes
7. Clean Air Act pollution-fighting regulations – 6 minutes
8. Asbestos contamination feared from excavation – 5 minutes
9. Asbestos danger in Montana mining town kept secret – 4 minutes
10. Chemical industry plants' toxic emissions dangers – 4 minutes

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