ITEM: The Pew Research Center for the People & The Press has gone and done it again.

They’ve published a valuable entry that all serious environmental journalists, no make that all serious journalists, should get a hold of. And think about. And digest. And discuss with colleagues, spouses, students, mentors, whomever.

It’s called Striking the Balance: Audience Interests, Business Pressures and Journalists’ Values. It’s available in full on the Web at www.people-press.org/press99rpt.htm.

You really ought to read it. Now. Stop mid-sentence here, just west of this period.

You missed it. So read on, and then get the Pew report.

Nothing in it, mind you, may absolutely shock you or alter your view of what it is you’re doing with your work life. The word environment, let’s be clear about this, isn’t to be found, nor need it be.

Some of it you no doubt may have touched on, or more, in J-school some X years back. Consider it, then, a refresher course.

Pew’s survey of journalists and news media executives points to journalism’s “contributions to and impact upon society, including providing the public with information,” as factors distinguishing their line of work. As for “core principles,” it says most of those surveyed point to “getting the facts right, getting both sides of the story, and not publishing rumors.”

“There is widespread agreement that journalism is simultaneously a business, a public service, and a watchdog,” the survey reports. It finds reporters and media execs surveyed agreeing overwhelmingly that David Broder of The Washington Post and Tim Russert of ABC TV are journalists, while folks like Matt Drudge, Arianna Huffington, George Stephanopoulos, and Rush Limbaugh don’t get the nod. Nor, for that matter, Don Imus or Howard Stern. (Woe is they?)

“Nearly all journalists and media executives say they are proud of what they do for a living, and they express general satisfaction with the values, leadership, and ethics programs of their own news organizations,” the survey found.

Yet the reporters and news execs surveyed are increasingly critical of how journalism is being done nowadays. They point to too many factual errors being reported, and too little being done by way of corrections. They fear continued blurring of news and commentary, and also of news and entertainment. They are bearish on the continuing string of mergers and mega-mergers in media ownership.

“More than two in three agree that charges of paying too little attention to complex issues and the mixing of commentary and reporting are valid criticisms.

ITEM: Symptomatic, perhaps, of why the public has less and less confidence in the news media: The Columbia Journalism Review reports in its March/April 1999 issue on a Baltimore-area publisher of travel brochures and other newsletters. The company, in a direct mail piece, enticed readers to fork over $299 for a press pass and accompanying “International Correspondent’s Kit” that would carry with it all the perks of a real travel writer.

Agora Publishing’s offering came complete with sample query letters and five assignment letters from some of its own pubs — “even if you’ve never written a word or snapped a photo in your life,” CJR reported. And for another $200 on the line, the lucky newborn journalist-wannabes could get a “best deal!” 24-month press pass. Just watch the freebies fly then!

ITEM: ON THE OTHER HAND, and there’s always another hand:

Time magazine’s recent comfy deal with Ford Motor Company to carry special environmental “heroes” sections might have led some press scions, not to mention any names, to wonder how the newsweekly might cover real news involving Ford.

The chance came with the February controversy surrounding Ford’s announcement of its newest and greatest (and definitely biggest) sports utility vehicle, the 19-foot, 8,500-pound, 12-mpg Excursion.

Sure, it didn’t appear in the same issue with what so far must be dismissed as the journalism-lite eco-heroes feature, but Time and Detroit correspondent Nichole Christian nonetheless showed no sign of pulling their punches.

“Is the whole SUV craze getting a little out of control?” Christian wrote in the March 8 issue. “The new monster seems to be biting the reputation” of Ford Chairman William Clay Ford, Jr., “who has promised to lead the auto industry into a pollution-free future.” Reporting the Sierra Club’s labeling of the vehicle as the “Ford Valdez,” the Time piece also points to safety concerns with SUVs, but says Ford is unlikely to abandon “the big metal if that’s what customers want.”

“A zero-emissions vehicle that sits unsold on a dealer’s lot is not reducing pollution,” she quotes the Ford chairman as saying.

“For now, Ford seems willing to take its lumps as it struggles to balance its plan to build greener cars with going for the green.”

Safer Not to Know?

Chemical industry and House Commerce Committee leaders are acting as if information about hazards at the nation’s chemical plants could be more dangerous than the plants themselves. This spring they have worked to broaden restrictions already won on how quickly and easily the public can find out about chemical hazards facing communities.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley (R-VA), backed by the chemical industry and federal anti-terrorism officials, wants worst-case scenarios for chemical accidents kept off the Internet. They claim the data would help terrorists target U.S. communities, providing a virtual “roadmap for terrorists.” Environmentalists say the industry is raising a scare just to wiggle out of public pressure to make its plants less dangerous in the first place.

High stakes, lack of compromise, important 1st Amendment principals, and a looming June 22 deadline for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) decision on what to do with the information seem to be brewing a major confrontation.

Even after EPA agreed last November to limit access to the data administratively, Bliley announced February 9 that he would introduce legislation to keep off the Internet chemical safety data that Congress in 1990 required to be made public.

Part of the 1990 Clean Air Act (Section 112r) required some 66,000 industrial plants to draw up Risk Management Plans (RMPs) outlining the chemical hazards on their sites and their efforts to prevent and respond to chemical accidents which could endanger communities. The law requires these plans to be available to state officials, local firefighters, and the general public. The whole idea was that risks could be reduced without command-and-control government regulations — that public knowledge would create public pressure, causing companies to operate their plants more safely.

“Public release of TRI data spurred facilities to voluntarily reduce their emissions,” EPA assistant administrator Timothy Fields testified February 10.

“Keeping worst-case scenarios off the Internet offers no real protection to communities,” said Paula R. Littles, lobbyist for the 320,000-worker PACE International Union, AFL-CIO. “Communities can only be protected when companies use safer chemicals, reduce dangerous storage, widen buffer zones, and provide full information.”

EPA announced on November 5, 1998, that it would put most of the RMP data on-line, but not the offsite consequence analyses (OCAs). These contain scenarios identifying the hypothetical worst accidents that could harm the most people.

Advisory Committee Debate

The chemical industry’s “terrorism” campaign is only the latest chapter in a dogged effort, going back more than a decade, to limit disclosure of chemical hazards. Just before the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) began, the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) instituted its “Responsible Care” program, in which companies pledge to (and often do) disclose risks at the local level. But CMA, the industry’s national lobby group, has lobbied and litigated consistently against public disclosure at national levels. For example, the industry lobbied in 1995 to rescind EPA’s expansion of the TRI chemicals list as part of a regulatory reform bill. CMA also opposed TRI list expansion in a lawsuit, and joined other industry groups in 1996 in a lawsuit challenging EPA’s RMP rule.

The issue of how EPA would fulfill the 1990 law’s core requirement that RMP data be made public was debated exhaustively by various subcommittees of EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee, which is governed by a federal law requiring advisory committee meetings to be open to the public. The lone chemical industry representative raised terrorism concerns there back in September 1996. But he was the only “no” vote when a subcommittee in a February 1998 telephone meeting supported putting worst-case data on the Internet, with “speed bumps” to slow access.

Having lost the battle in an open advisory committee, chemical industry lobbyists stepped up their effort to get FBI and CIA counter-terrorism officials (who until that point had shown little awareness or concern about chemical emergency issues) involved in the decision. What followed during 1998 was a series of out-of-the-limelight meetings where EPA negotiated directly with officials like Robert Blitzer, former head of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program. Industry’s hand was strengthened by two presidential orders in May 1998 stepping up efforts against terrorism and the two August 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

On September 9, 1998, CMA issued a press release saying it did not think the RMP-posting decision “is any longer one that is exclusively EPA’s to make.” With almost no press attention, industry slipped non-binding report language into the 1999 appropriations bill instructing EPA to defer to the FBI on the RMP issue. Blitzer seemed to be virtually dictating a decision to EPA in an October 30, 1998, letter to EPA.

EPA’s decision not to post OCAs was revealed a few days later in a letter to the advisory committee. EPA never issued a press release on the decision — although CMA issued one applauding it.

Legislative Fix — or Feint?

EPA’s decision wasn’t enough for the chemical industry or Bliley. They say they think the law needs to be changed, a law that originated nine years earlier in the committee Bliley now chairs , when it was controlled by Democrats.

“Back then,” Bliley said, “Congress and the American people surely never imagined that the EPA would ever propose posting all of this information — including human injury estimates of a worst-case chemical release — in a worldwide electronic database, easily searchable from Boston to Baghdad, from Los Angeles to Libya.”

Since Bliley’s February 9 announcement, there have been no signs of his bill. As this issue went to press, the bill had not yet been introduced, and neither Democrats nor stakeholders had reported seeing even a draft.

That suggests a likelihood that any bill eventually produced would be a partisan, rather than a consensus, bill. It also suggests to some federal officials familiar with the issue that Bliley’s bill may be a bluff that has already failed. The hearings and threat of legislation, they say, are efforts to influence an administrative decision that EPA still considers its own to make.

Companies must submit their RMP data in electronic form by June 22. That effectively sets the deadline for an upcoming EPA administrative decision on how to disseminate the data to the public, electronically and otherwise. Without a change in law, it could be illegal for EPA to try to keep RMP data off the Internet.

The prognosis for final enactment of any bill is poor particularly if it involves amending the Clean Air Act. The last Clean Air amendments took the best part of a decade to get through Congress. They would also probably need to amend the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, which created the TRI. Moreover, Bliley and the industry seem to want to amend the 1966 Freedom of Information Act, a more difficult thing to do because it falls under the Government Reform Committee’s jurisdiction. Not only would they need to create a new exemption to FOIA, but they would also have to amend the 1996 Electronic FOIA amendments. That legislation requires that government information collected and stored in electronic form be made available in electronic form.

It is not even certain that Bliley will have the votes for it on his own committee, since several moderate Republicans signaled at the hearing that they were not on board.

Brian P. Bilbray, R-California asked his colleagues “not to take such hard-line positions.” He complained that lobbyists and legislators were themselves practicing “psychological terrorism on the communities.”

Few if any Democrats seem likely to vote for it. Dems complained of Bliley’s unusual tactic of holding a press conference before the hearing — and bringing along the widow of a Secret Service agent killed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Rep. Ron Klink, (D-Pennsylvania) suggested that the hearing was being held “for the majority’s press purposes.”

House Commerce Hearing

At the February 10 hearing, those supporting the chemical industry’s position included spokesmen for the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the DuPont Company. Opposing it were representatives of a community right-to-know group and union lobbyist Paula Littles. Several others, including the National Safety Council (publisher of this newsletter) and local emergency responders, took more complex positions in between.

Opposition to the chemical industry’s non-disclosure campaign has grown recently, picking up support from groups as diverse as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Newspaper Association of America, and the Center for Democracy and Technology, as well as from the predictable environmental groups.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) was one of six right-to-know groups that signed a February 9 letter to Bliley expressing “concern and opposition to proposals to limit public access to information concerning accidents at chemical plants.”

ASNE was one of the groups that pushed for E-FOIA. “We do not think rules with respect to access to information should change just because the Internet is involved,” ASNE spokesman Kevin Goldberg said.

“Keeping this information away from the public doesn’t reduce the risk, it simply means people don’t know about the risk,” said Jeremiah Baumann of US PIRG. “If there really is a risk of terrorist attack at U.S. chemical facilities, the government needs to take action to reduce that risk.”

Having gotten EPA to promise it won’t put worst-case data online, Bliley has made clear that he doesn’t want anyone else besides EPA (“third parties”) to post it either. He says he will likely introduce a bill making that illegal. The bill he has discussed would make it a crime for an environmental group or a newspaper to acquire publicly available information which EPA had scattered to make it less accessible, collect it into one location or database, and then make that database accessible through the World Wide Web.

That’s not so far-fetched a scenario. The US PIRG took EPA data from the 10-year-old TRI and did exactly what Bliley fears: calculated worst-case scenarios for areas throughout the U.S. The July 22, 1998, report was called “Too Close to Home: A Report on Chemical Accident Risks in the United States.”

It was bad PR for the chemical industry, which attacked the study’s methods. It concluded that over 41 million people, “at least one out of every 6 Americans lives within a vulnerable zone — the area in which there could be serious injury or death in the event of a chemical accident — created by neighboring industrial facilities.” Seven months after the report was issued, no chemical terrorist incident had occurred. But just four “routine” chemical “accidents” in the last three months of 1998 resulted in the deaths of 20 workers, (some in areas the PIRG had warned about).

One of the biggest forces backing Bliley’s speak-no-evil bill, officially or unofficially, is CMA. Perhaps only coincidentally, they are also important contributors to Bliley’s campaign coffers. During the 1995-6 election cycle, when Congress was considering weakening the chemical right-to-know law, Bliley received more contributions from CMA-related PACs than all but one other member of the House, according to the US PIRG.

The chemical industry position was articulated by Arthur F. Burk, a senior safety fellow with the DuPont Co., at Bliley’s February 10 hearing. Burk said there were some “issues remaining” even after EPA decided not to put worst-case scenarios on the Web. While Burk was officially speaking for DuPont, not CMA, he has been a key industry spokesman on EPA advisory committees looking at chemical risk communication.

Burk said the companies believed, that “information collected under the RMP should be made public.” All except, Burk added, “sensitive” information, namely the quantity of chemicals on-site, the distance from the plant at which a release could cause injuries, and the number of people living within that distance. That “sensitive” information, Burk said, should not go on the Internet.

“By taking the worst case scenarios out we are taking the teeth out of the RMP,” says Baumann. He says they provide “the crucial information about how much risk a facility poses to a community.”

Much of this information is already available in the public record, some of it on the Internet. The quantities of hazardous chemicals which plants use are already reported under EPCRA, although they are only available at the local level. The distance at which they can cause harm can be calculated with standard air dispersion models which have long been publicly available. And the populations within those areas can be found in the U.S. Census.

Balance of Risks

Are the CMA’s and FBI’s concerns justified? Does the risk of a terrorist attack outweigh the risk-reduction benefits most agree have come from making hazardous chemical data public?

During the 10-year period from 1987 to 1996 there were about 605,000 potentially dangerous commercial chemical incidents reported. About 29 percent of those (or 176,183) resulted in at least one death or injury (9,705 incidents), evacuation of workers or the public (4,167), or damage to property (164,082). During that decade, chemical accidents caused 2,565 deaths and 22,949 injuries, according to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.

During the entire period from at least 1987 until present, the FBI is able to point to only a single “terrorist” plot against a chemical plant — and that one was interrupted. In that 1997 incident, four KKK members planned to blow up a Texas natural gas plant to create a diversion for an armored car robbery.

There is little mystery about the location or product of major chemical facilities in the United States. They are focused for the most part in certain limited industrial corridors in scarcely more than a handful of states. Not surprisingly, chemical accidents are concentrated in those states as well: California, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Texas.

One hearing witness in written testimony called the mammoth chemical complex near Wilmington, Delaware, (headquarters of the DuPont Co.) “a potential terrorist’s dream.” Rep. Klink said trying to hide such sites was impossible: “We could find out simply by driving down I-95 and opening our eyes.” Critics say the dangers of terrorist attack a small compared to those of sabotage by a disgruntled employee with security clearance and knowledge of a plant’s workings.

What Legislation Might Do

At the hearing, Bliley’s committee heard several proposals for limiting access to RMP data.

Some witnesses and members spoke specifically of limiting access only to the “worst-case scenarios,” which are part of a larger “offsite consequence analysis.” Others spoke of limiting access to the entire offsite consequence analysis, which can include description of less catastrophic accident risks. Still others spoke of broader restrictions on all RMP data. Imprecision in use of regulatory and computer terms has made it hard to know what is being proposed.

Some, such as Robert Blitzer, former head of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program, do not want RMP information (with or without worst-case scenarios) collected onto a single CD-ROM. They object to giving someone a national overview or search capability. Although the locations of concentrations of chemical plants are widely known, they claim the reason they want this blackout is to prevent terrorists from “targeting” facilities.

Some want to allow queries about only a single facility at a time, making formation of a national picture laborious, but not impossible. Other proposals have called for a password system to limit access to employees of state or local government. Still others want to require people to get data only through their Local Emergency Planning Committees, who presumably will only have local data. Finally, there is the issue of whether state and local governments should post, or should be allowed to post, OCA data to the Internet. EPA now says it will “strongly encourage” them not to.

Can Groups Republish Data?

One of the biggest concerns focuses on repackaging and republishing of the RMP data, presumably by environmental groups. EPA gives the Web-cruising public access to many of its databases at a site called Envirofacts Warehouse. But the Environmental Defense Fund republished much of the same data on its Scorecard site, packaging it in a way that was more community-focused and that encouraged political action and pressure on chemical companies.

EDF has previously posted data which EPA had backed off of posting in the face of loud objections from the chemical companies. EPA’s so-called Sector Facilities Indexing Project would have synthesized information to rank the pollution risks plants presented to communities — but dropped rankings under industry protest. Today Scorecard does something similar to this. Even if EPA does not post OCA data to the Internet, FOIA and the Clean Air Act require EPA to make it available if someone requests it. The chemical companies are worried that environmental groups will get the information legally and post it to the Internet themselves. So are the FBI and Bliley.

“I hope,” Bliley said at the hearing, “to persuade these groups that seem intent on acquiring and spreading this information ... to act responsibly.”

Persuasion in this case has involved calling members of at least eight environmental and right-to-know groups into a January 20 session with committee lawyers, and going around the room several times, questioning each aggressively about whether they planned to acquire and republish RMP data. The groups remained noncommittal, having agreed ahead of time to say neither yes nor no. Subcommittee chairmen, Fred Upton, R-Michigan, and Michael Bilirakis, R-Florida, repeated this tactic at the February 11 hearing, trying unsuccessfully to corner Paul Orum, of Working Group on Community Right-to-Know into a definite statement.

Absent from the room and still un-grilled by the committee is a very key player: Bill Pease of EDF, architect of Scorecard. EDF not only has the most effective means of publishing the data, but a history of FOIA-ing suppressed EPA data and publishing it. Pease has not heard from the committee. “We are certainly interested in making it available,” says Pease, adding that the question is moot because it is not known “to what extent will they go to make it impossible to use.”

Another concern is that the government would be unable to monitor who was requesting the information if it were posted openly to the Internet. The FBI has made little secret of their interest in collecting this kind of information. So far, few voices have questioned whether the government should be conducting surveillance on individuals requesting public information.

On March 24, 1989, one of the world’s largest oil tankers crashed into Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, causing “the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.”

Ten years after the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into those once pristine waters, there remains much for journalists to report on, including long-term species recovery, the extent of natural resources damage, the economic and psychological impacts on the area’s inhabitants, and key personalities involved in the accident and its legal aftermath.

Here’s how the “black anniversary” played across the country:

• Associated Press: “Exxon Valdez skipper Joe Hazelwood is reiterating his belief that the 1989 accident that spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound was not his fault ....

  “Hazelwood told CBS that he realizes the world views him ‘as some drunken fool,’ but he denied being intoxicated on March 24, 1989, when the tanker struck the reef several hours after leaving Valdez, Alaska.

  “The skipper admitted that he had at least three vodkas earlier in the evening, but said his real mistake was to leave [third mate Greg] Cousins in charge as the tanker moved south out of the Valdez Arm and into the sound ....

  “[Hazelwood] was cleared in 1990 of a charge of piloting the tanker while drunk, but was convicted of negligently discharging oil. He is to begin serving 1,000 hours of community service this summer.

  “Hazelwood, now working as a law clerk in New York City, is expected to travel to Anchorage to pick up trash along highways and clean up litter in parks as part of a 10-person work crew.”

• CBS/“Sixty Minutes:” “If you talk to Exxon officials these days, they’ll tell you that Prince William Sound has recovered and that everyone hurt by the spill has been compensated. But if you go back to the sound, as we did last month, and talk to the people who live there, you’ll hear another story altogether ....

  “But turn over a rock on this beach and you’re likely to find oil. And government scientists say that that oil from the spill is as toxic today as it was 10 years ago ....

  “And while government scientists say they cannot prove it, many local fishermen argue that the spill is to blame for the current shortage of certain fish in Prince William Sound ....

  “Before the spill, Cordova had been among the top 10 fishing ports in the United States. Five years later, it had dropped to number 60. And social scientists who came here after the spill found significantly higher rates of alcohol abuse and depression.”

• Dallas Morning News: “Old acrimony from an old wound is spilling out all around Prince William Sound this spring — and for that matter, in many spots across Alaska. On March 24, 1989, one of the world’s largest oil tankers, owned by Irving-based Exxon Corp., slammed into Bligh Reef, causing the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history....

  “The year before the spill, fishing in the sound produced $80 million of revenue, according to the state of Alaska. It has since fallen by half. More than 700 crews held permits then; 500 do now. Back then, a salmon fishing permit was worth $300,000; today it fetches $27,000 ....

  “But residents [of Tatitlek] today must travel farther and hunt harder to get food, most of it very different from the traditional seal steaks they grew up on, says Mr. [Gary] Kompkoff, the village chief.

  “Plus, intangible relationships between many Natives and nature collapsed, says Michael Jennings, a professor in native studies at the University of Alaska in Anchorage.

  “He likens many Natives’ reaction to the oiling of the sea to the way Catholics might react to a burning of the Vatican.”

• Minneapolis Star-Tribune: “Despite massive efforts to clean up the oil and an epic legal battle, recovery from the spill has been incomplete and uneven. Whether that recovery is measured in biological, emotional or financial terms, the wounds fester ....

  “$5 billion in punitive damages was awarded to the residents nearly five years ago by a federal court jury, the biggest civil judgment in history.

  “But none of the 14,000 plaintiffs has seen a penny of that $5 billion, which is why Brian O’Neill was in the native village of Tatitlek on a recent morning, 40 miles west of Cordova — 2,500 miles from his Minneapolis office ....

  “The income of hundreds of commercial fishermen was either wiped out or severely diminished; natives have turned away from their subsistence hunting and gathering because of fears that their food was permanently tainted by oil; untold numbers of birds, fish and sea mammals died; oil still lingers in coves and along beaches throughout the sound; trust in Exxon and the government that was supposed to regulate the company has evaporated.”

• National Geographic: “According to the [Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee] council’s monitoring reports, some of the species on the casualty list are looking healthier. The sound’s bald eagle population, for example, was found to be fully recovered in 1996 and is holding strong. The common murre appears to be recovering after sustaining what some scientists believe was a 40 percent reduction in numbers. Pink salmon, one of the region’s top commercial species, have been rebounding after several years of high egg mortality in the intertidal stretches of their spawning streams.

  “That’s the good news. The bad news is that harbor seals, herring, harlequin ducks, marbled murrelets, and pigeon guillemots do not seem to be recovering. The verdict is still out on the loon and the black oystercatcher ....

  “Possibly the most painful dislocations occurred in the native villages. First there was the temporary loss of the subsistence resources villagers claim, not just for sustenance but as the crux of their cultural heritage. Even today there is uncertainty among some villagers as to the safety of eating traditional foods harvested from the sea .... And then there was the stress generated by the cleanup itself; the sudden influx of strangers in hard hats with barrels of cash — $16 an hour for grunt labor — was enough to tip more than a few impressionable young village men toward the alcohol and drugs that, in some cases, led to domestic violence.”

• New York Times: “Even now, as the 10th anniversary of one of the nation’s worst environmental disasters approaches, the Exxon Valdez is in many way still here ....

  “Of the 28 species listed in the report, only two — the bald eagle and the river otter — are considered ‘fully recovered’ a decade later. Substantial progress toward recovery has been made by most other species and the ecosystem in general, but ‘there is a long way yet to go,’ the council’s director says.

  “Legally, too, the Valdez incident drags on. Five years after a Federal jury ordered the Exxon Corporation to pay $5 billion in punitive damages to the thousands of native villagers and commercial fishermen affected by the spill, the company has yet to pay any of the judgment, challenging it in an appeals process that may well continue for years ....

  “And the notion that the sound has recovered from the kind of devastation that such a toll implies is bitterly disputed by many of the 20,000 people who live in the areas that were most directly affected by the spill.”

• Orange County Register: “Ten years later, Prince William Sound looks as beautiful as ever from the air, its glacier-fed blue waters broken only by breaching whales or sea otters floating lazily on their backs. Painful as the spill was, life goes on in this vast place, and many animal species are rebounding.

  “But the deep scars, and the unfinished business, of the Exxon Valdez disaster become clearer down on the water, where only two of the 23 most damaged species have fully recovered and an estimated 40 percent of the fishermen suffer depression over their decimated livelihoods ....

  “The grim spectacle of one of North America’s most pristine places turned into an industrial waste site spawned tough new laws that have made oil spills five times more costly to companies, and, as a result, less frequent ....

  “Taken together, these measures have reduced the amount of oil spilled in U.S. waters from at least 4 million gallons each year in the 1980s to only 565,500 gallons in 1997, according to the Oil Spill Intelligence Report.”

• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “On lawyer Charles De Monaco’s desk [at a Pittsburgh law firm] is a framed photograph of an Alaskan brown bear staring down office visitors, its fierce, furry head half blackened by slippery, shiny, oily crude.

  “The bear was one of the lucky ones when, 10 years ago this month, the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound ....

  “The spill killed more wildlife than any other environmental disaster before or since.

  “Even as the oil oozed and reports surfaced that the ship’s captain was super-tanked, De Monaco, then just two weeks into a job as assistant chief in the Department of Justice’s environmental crimes section, was hopping a flight to Anchorage to oversee the government’s investigation ....

  “One benefit of the spill is that much of the $900 million civil settlement has been used to buy and protect 635,000 acres of privately held wildlife habitat, including land on the Kodiak archipelago and along the coastline of Kenai Fjords National Park.

  “Another plus, De Monaco said, was the passage in 1990 of the Oil Pollution Act, which requires that all new supertankers be built with double instead of single hulls, to reduce chances of leakage in future accidents. The act also banned the Exxon Valdez from transporting oil in Alaskan waters.”

• Seattle Times: “The man cast as the villain in the nation’s most notorious environmental disaster is emerging a decade later as a victim and corporate scapegoat in the eyes of some government investigators and regulators.

  “As captain of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez, Joseph Hazelwood was vilified as a drunk who abandoned his post, and thus was to blame for one of the worst oil spills in U.S. history.

  “Ten years later, Hazelwood has never been convicted of anything more than a misdemeanor in the accident, and still holds a valid captain’s license.

  “But the damage to his career has been as enduring as the damage to some of Alaska’s coastline wildlife: No shipping company will risk bad publicity by hiring him.”

• USA Today: “As the 10th anniversary of the nation’s worst oil spill nears, scores of Prince William Sound residents remain in mourning. To most outsiders, the Sound looks as pristine as it did before the spill. Yet scientific debate rages over the extent of damages and the ecosystem’s recovery.

  “Haunted by images of oil-coated sea otters and waterfowl gasping for life, many area residents are still financially strapped and emotionally scarred ....

  “While its appeal is pending, Exxon must pay about 6% interest on the $5.2 billion jury award, roughly $800,000 a day. But that’s a relative bargain, considering Exxon’s double-digit returns on equity as it continues to keep its $5.2 billion at work.

  “Exxon has yet to suffer much financial fallout from the spill. The $3 billion tab has been mitigated by $780 million in insurance reimbursements and hefty tax breaks for spill-related expenses.”

• Wall Street Journal: “Exxon Corp., with no boats of its own, was forced to hire the local fleet for its effort to clean up the spill, hundreds of boats in all. By [trawler Russell] Roetman’s reckoning, he got nine hours of sleep that first week in the service of Exxon, and grossed $100,800. His gross income for the summer was $1.7 million ....

  “Along with hundreds of other boat captains, rock scrubbers, oil-boom tenders, helicopter pilots and such, he became, in the parlance of the day, a ‘spillionaire.’...

  “The easy money didn’t sit well with everyone. Some fishermen in the area refused spill cash on moral grounds. Others squabbled over the pie. An easy rivalry Cordova had maintained for years with Valdez turned cold. Valdez is an oil town, and some people criticized residents there, not just for their perceived links with Exxon and Big Oil, but for hogging cleanup jobs ....

  “[Exxon] also cites the money it poured into the cleanup — and places like Valdez and Cordova — as evidence of its good faith. It notes that it spent $113 million into Cordova alone.”

• The Washington Post: “Just as Houston woke up last summer to a haze of smoke from Mexico’s wild fires, and a tire factory in Ohio can be forced to close because of a bust in the Tokyo real estate market, this corner of Alaska found it is not so removed from the larger world. For while the spill caused cataclysmic upheaval, the oil was just one of many things — from the unexplained warming of ocean waters to the production of farm-raised salmon in Asia — that ended Cordova’s sense of isolation.

  “The sudden change in sea temperature, for example, chased away the shrimp. The low prices for farm-raised fish have left Cordova fishermen in financial ruin ....

  “Researchers now suspect that much of the most costly clean-up in history, the summers spent scrubbing individual beach stones and ‘rehabilitating’ otters, did little, if anything, to restore Prince William Sound — and may have hurt ....

  “What undeniably helped the ecosystem was the $900 million settlement that Exxon paid to the state and federal government. The money not only bought an unprecedented wealth of scientific study, a volume of research that never would have been supported otherwise, but also allowed for the purchase of some 650,000 acres of wilderness, preserving for generations hundreds of miles of shoreline and spawning streams, protecting the waters from mining, logging and development.”

The Freedom Forum’s Newseum asked journalists and scholars to select the 20th century’s top 100 news stories.

New York University’s journalism department asked 36 judges to select the century’s top 100 works of journalism.

Did any environmental stories make those lists? If so, how were they ranked?

The Newseum’s 100 top news stories start with the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and end with the U.S. Surgeon General warning the public about the health hazards of smoking. In between are two environmental milestones:

• No. 57: “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring stimulates environmental protection movement (1962).”
• No. 98: “Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion 1986 results in deaths of an estimated 7,000 (1986).”

On the environmental periphery, the list includes the bane of recyclers as No. 46: Plastic invented; revolutionizes products, packaging (1909). We can trace the beginnings of sprawl to No. 80: Congress passes interstate highway bill (1956).

NYU’s greatest works of journalism includes newspaper and magazine articles, broadcasting reports, and books. The top work, John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” as published in The New Yorker in 1946, is followed by Carson’s Silent Spring, ranking No. 2.

Before this list gets to its No. 100, Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, we find at No. 59 Jonathan Schell’s 1992 book, The Fate of the Earth, a plea for nuclear disarmament and the protection of humanity, the natural world, and its species.

The Newseum’s list is on the Internet at http://www.newseum.org. NYU’s list was published in The New York Times on March 1, 1999.

Note: Formerly published by the National Safety Council. Reprinted with permission.