Scientists, Journalists Square Off in Frank Discussion about News Coverage of Climate Change

by Bud Ward

AUSTIN, TX. -- An unidentified University of Texas journalism student stood up, identified herself as being 20 years old, and said that despite her major she seldom buys a newspaper but does spend a good two hours a day online.

She said that scarcely distinguishes her from her from her other journalism student peers. Just the opposite, it's typical. Only an occasional prodding word from a prof influences her otherwise. And then just for show, just momentarily, just, perhaps, for the grade.

It was one of a vast number of telling points for the nearly 600 reporters, editors, academics, guests, and others at the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) 15th annual conference, in Austin, Tx., September 28-October 2.

It was a conference book-ended by two prominent liberal journalists, each addressing a plenary session. Texas liberal icon and columnist Molly Ivins took no prisoners in her gruff assessment of Texas's political landscape (as in referring to Governor Rick Perry repeatedly as "Good Hair" Perry or just plain "Good Hair.")

Ivins addressed a stand-up opening night cocktail party audience with the kind of no-holds-barred rhetoric that has made her a mainstay among progressives. Only as her colorful jokes and commentary became too raffish for the staid SEJ leadership was the decision made NOT to broadcast her whole political stem winder on the group's web site.

Moyers Talk a Real Crowd Pleaser

At the other end of the agenda – at a noon end of the conference lunch on Saturday – former CBS and PBS journalist extraordinaire Bill Moyers delivered an eloquent, inspiring, uplifting-and-at-the-same-time-sobering, in-your-face, AND Yes-you-matter! crowd-pleaser.

"Our government has become a recalcitrant backslider and naysayer," Moyers intoned in one of his more heavily nuanced assessments of Bush administration policies, foreign and domestic. He had little time for "home grown Ayatollahs more set on savaging gay people" than on seriously addressing worldwide concerns over terrorism writ big.

Toying with the rhetoric, as expressed in a recent widely read essay entitled "Environmentalism is Dead!," Moyers opined that "a homicidal right-wing ideology," combined with pressures by big business, may kill environmentalism, but not the environmentalists at whose door the blame some would lay. "They own the administration lock, stock, and barrel," Moyers said of the petroleum, manufacturers, and business trade associations.

Pessimistic about the independence and future of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and public television generally, Moyers holds out hope still for National Public Radio, whose national audience has increased dramatically in recent years. He urged independent news media to be willing to "stand up and challenge a bully" in their midst, and cautioned them to be meticulous in their use of language. "If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphors," he said, quoting American mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Good Journalism – 'A Public Fight'

Moyers told a story of an Irishman walking down a street and encountering two men fighting. "Is this a private fight, or can anyone join in?," the Irishman asked. He described journalism as "a public fight," and said the public and others need to join in to help preserve it. "I believe the main purpose of journalism is to get as close as possible to the verifiable truth," Moyers said, frequently reiterating his plea to environmental reporters to fight the good fight.

Unlike at Ivins's dynamic presentation to an already-standing cocktail reception audience, the Moyers audience had to get up from their seats to afford the "standing O" he inspired. And they did. But unlike last year's standing ovation for environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., this one, this time, seemed unlikely to spark a thread of internal dissent in part, perhaps, because Moyers, like his audience, is a journalist and not just an activist per se.

Like Moyers and Ivins, two other respected journalists also left an indelible mark on the SEJ Austin meeting. One wasn't there: Kevin Carmody, an SEJ founding board member and long-time stalwart who died in March and for whom a stirring memorial and remembrance was held as part of the SEJ meeting. Carmody, at the time of his death, had been a reporter with the Austin American-Statesman. Carmody had been the principal mover in bringing the conference to Austin in the first place, and his death has left a palpable void among SEJ folks.

The other reporter indelibly leaving his mark on the Austin conference was Mark Schleifstein, of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Before this audience of journalists and journalism savants, Schleifstein practically walked on water both for the power of his pre-Hurricane Katrina reporting in 2002 warning of the inevitable disaster facing New Orleans, and also for his and his colleagues' heroic reporting since the devastating hurricane and floods (see www.nola.com).

One more memorable moment from the SEJ Austin meeting, one more among many: Winning the SEJ award for outstanding beat reporting in print, the Seattle Times' Craig Welch said he was thankful to work for a newspaper that afforded the opportunity to do the kind of journalism the prize honored. And then he added, with a nod to the journalistic value of all-too-rare local daily newspaper competition, "it couldn't be done without Robert McClure," the environmental reporter for the cross-town Post Intelligencer, the very existence of which remains unclear over the long run.

It was, as they say, a touch of class and one of the high points in what was an classy conference, start to finish.