Get a glimpse of journalists’ and news executives’ looks at themselves and their line of work in Striking the Balance: Audience Interests, Business Pressures and Journalists’ Values, a recent report from The Pew Research Center for The People & The Press.

A sampling, from among many valuable nuggets in the report:

• Journalists and news media executives across mediums and markets are united in what they think defines journalism, saying accuracy and balance in reporting represent the essence of journalism … many in the profession agree that journalism is distinguished because of its contributions to the public and its impact on society.
• The news media overwhelmingly see journalism as a watchdog against corruption and abuse.
• … what distinguishes journalism … providing the public with information.
• … core principles of journalism, which include getting the facts right, getting both sides of the story, and not publishing rumors.
• Maintaining some distance from the people they cover and keeping business out of the newsroom are more important to the national media than the local media.
• … widespread agreement that journalism is simultaneously a business, a public service, and a watchdog.
• 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.
• More than nine-in-ten journalists and news media executives say they feel proud when they meet someone for the first time and tell them where they work.
• The overall quality of news coverage … remains the most important problem area in journalism today …. quality, such as sloppy reporting, an erosion of standards, and the trend toward sensationalism …. plenty of room for improvement in the press …. distinction between reporting and commentary has seriously eroded ….
• … pressure to attract audiences is pushing their industry too far in the direction of infotainment … efforts to attract readers or viewers take them too far in this direction ….
• …feel caught in a pressure cycle. Working journalists say that business pressures undermine quality, which hurts credibility, which in turn causes lost audiences …..
• … national executives say increased financial pressures are just changing newsroom habits, not harming news coverage …. In contrast, senior news managers and reporters see increasing business pressures in the newsroom as damaging to the quality of their product.
• Solid majorities of those in the national and local news media view buyouts of news organizations by diversified corporations as negatively influencing the profession …. More news managers and staff than executives see corporate takeovers as pernicious …. the overwhelming consensus across all groups is that this has been a negative phenomenon.
• Those working in national television outlets express the harshest criticism of their profession.

There’s more, lots more. See it at http://www.people-press.org/press99rpt.htm.

A New York-based public policy research and education organization, Public Agenda, is providing online background information on environmental issues for journalists and other communicators and policy leaders.

The group, founded in 1975 by social scientist and author Daniel Yankelovich and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, describes itself as “a nonpartisan, nonprofit public opinion research and citizen education organization. Through “in-depth analyses and opinion studies,” the group says it offers “a unique opportunity to discover what Americans are really thinking.” It says its goal is to help leaders “better understand the public’s point of view on major policy issues” and help citizens “better understand critical policy issues so they can make their own more informed and thoughtful decisions.”

The group says its educational materials address issues, such as the environment, “in a balanced and easy-to-understand way,” and it says its products “have won praise for their credibility and fairness from elected officials from both political parties and experts and decision-makers across the political spectrum.”

Public Agenda, which currently is advertising through a link on the Columbia Journalism Review home page, cites among recent funders: AT&T, Bell South, The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Business Roundtable, GE Fund, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and the Charles Stewart Mott, W.K. Kellogg, Henry J. Kaiser, William & Flora Hewlett, Rockefeller, Surdna, John S. & James L. Knight, Markle, and IBM International Foundations.

In an online letter from Public Agenda Executive Director Deborah Wadsworth (http://www.publicagenda.org), the group says “Inaccurate reporting has been a contentious issue in news coverage since the invention of the printing press, and some errors are, of course, inevitable given the nature of news.” With support from the Markle Foundation, Public Agenda says it now is working “to help news organizations improve the accuracy of their coverage and their accountability for correcting mistakes.”

Some of its efforts, Wadsworth writes, “will help reporters anticipate and avoid errors, omissions, and distortions that routinely plague news coverage …. Other features will invite journalists and their ‘subjects’ to trade views about how specific issues are reported. Still others will attempt to generate more discussion among journalists themselves about the problem of inaccuracy itself and existing corrections policies.”

Wadsworth notes that journalism generally “has taken some hard knocks in recent months,” and says “some soul-searching is clearly in order.” She says the group hopes to address these problems in an online environment free of “polemics and posturing.”

	The Perspectives in Brief
Perspective #1: Balancing act: Curb pollution through sensible regulations The United States has made progress on environmental protection, but the situation needs ongoing attention. Growing environmental awareness has led to sensible limits on our use of natural resources and pollutants that are side-effects of industrial society. Through the activities of the Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators, government plays an important role in protecting water, air, and other natural resources. What's needed now are more stringent guidelines on pollution, and stepped-up enforcement of the laws. Through prudent regulation, we can achieve a balance between environmental protection, economic growth, and other social goods.	Perspective #2: Wise use: Putting environmental protection in perspective The measures needed to protect natural resources are already in place, and there's no compelling reason to go much further. Human activities inevitably affect the environment. That's all right so long as harmful pollution is controlled. The problem is that many people act as if environmental protection is our only concern. Environmentalists have become a special interest group who insist on unreasonable and enormously costly measures, and insist on measures that infringe on private property rights. Environmental protection has become an elite movement that protects the "haves" and harms the "have-nots," both in the United States and abroad.	Perspective #3: Sustainable future: Preventing further environmental destruction Because a safe and sound environment is the precondition for everything else we do, environmental protection must take precedence over other public goals. Despite success in limiting some pollutants, we're still making an unprecedented assault on the environment, leading to irreversible and perhaps catastrophic effects. The only moral option is to move toward a sustainable society in which decisions about the use of natural resources are reckoned in terms of their impact on future generations. Government has to go much further in reducing pollution. Radical changes are necessary to change environmentally unsafe practices, products, and lifestyles.
	Source: Public Agenda Online, http://www.publicagenda.org/	©Public Agenda

Public Agenda’s online environmental information, in particular, provides helpful background information on environmental and pollution control issues generally. While the material may be of greatest use to reporters without substantial personal experience in covering environmental issues, it may prove useful also, at least as a refresher and an ongoing update, for more experienced environmental journalists.

The information appears generally to succeed in carefully walking the narrow line between education and advocacy, and it appears generally free of the ideological and partisan tilt of so many self-professed environmental education organizations.

“Although relatively few people regard the environment as one of the nation’s most pressing issues, most regard it as an important one,” Public Agenda says at one point. “There is, however, no consensus about the tradeoffs people are willing to accept to protect the environment. Most Americans also say they don’t believe the nation has to choose between economic growth and environmental protection. Most Americans say they feel good about environmental quality where they live and haven’t been personally harmed by environmental problems.”

On the highly contentious issue of global climate change, Public Agenda says: “Global warming is perhaps the most prominent example of a potentially catastrophic problem that so far has few tangible manifestations. Despite mounting evidence that the climate is changing and global temperatures rising as a result of carbon emissions, deep differences exist about the urgency of climate change and who should bear the burden of addressing it.”

Perhaps broadly indicative of how Public Agenda addresses sometimes thorny environmental issues is its Web page illustration of “The Perspectives in Brief.” Supplemented on its Web page by more detailed and more current discussions of timely environmental issues, the “Brief” segment, printed as a sidebar to this article, provides a broad overview of differing philosophical approaches to environmental protection.

Reporters might do well to visit Public Agenda Online them-selves and determine whether it warrants a “bookmark” on their own Web browser. For more information, contact the Public Agenda communications department at (212) 686-6610.

The news hole for environmental stories may still be pretty tight at many newspapers and broadcast outlets, but it appears to be a different story for many online news organizations.

MSNBC, the Microsoft/National Broadcasting Corporation collaboration, last month opened a new environment section as part of its MSNBC Web page.

The MSNBC page — http://www.msnbc.com /news/environment_front.asp — provides updates on major environmental stories and includes a regular “Your Environment” health column. Visitors to the site can download free plug-ins allowing them to “quickly and easily browse through the hundreds of news stories at MSNBC,” the Web site says. Downloading the setup is easy and fast, following on-screen guidance.

Launched on Earth Day, April 22, the site on recent visits included pieces on a nuclear waste shipment from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), in southeastern New Mexico; on oceanographer Sylvia Earle’s “Sustainable Seas Expeditions”; on global warming and weather circulation patterns; on the Clinton Administration’s efforts to tighten controls on emissions from sports utility vehicles; and on fishery and poaching issues in the Bering Sea.

MSNBC columnist Francesca Lyman, known to many environmental journalists as an environmental author and as former editor of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Amicus Journal, contributes a regular “Your Environment” column probing health issues. Her initial columns have probed a number of issues not frequently addressed by other mainstream media.

Lyman has written, for instance, on environmental aspects of feminine hygiene pads and tampons; on research findings of formaldehyde in household products ranging from shirts to bed linens; on environmental chemicals in breast milk; and on potential risks posed by some synthetic chemicals to fetuses and infants.

Lyman’s columns have not gone un-noticed, and certainly not by critics.

“Since I’ve been doing these pieces for MSNBC, I have really become a target for these questionable, right-wing, corporate-funded groups,” Lyman says. “It’s really getting to me,” she said, suggesting such efforts clearly seek to “undermine journalists.”

The ideologically iconoclastic “Junk Science” Web page, for instance, sponsored by something called the “Citizens for the Integrity of Science,” blasts both Lyman and her work and links visitors directly to her and to her boss so they can “let Francesca’s boss know what you think.”

The work of Cato Institute “adjunct scholar” Stephen Milloy, the Junk Science page (http://junkscience.com) recently led a piece by saying Lyman “either needs reading glasses — or a course in journalism ethics.”

“In either event, she should be ashamed for recklessly scaring tampon users,” Milloy’s page opined, suggesting that Lyman disregarded the views of the Food and Drug Administration because they “completely undermined her story.”

“Can Francesca’s journalistic ethic be questioned?,” the page asked rhetorically.

Lyman, in a phone interview, defended the scientific rigor of her reporting and said such criticisms, while aimed at “chilling” reporting, cannot be allowed to deter journalists’ reporting on sensitive issues.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 polluted some of Alaska’s most pristine waters and shores, killed thousands of birds and marine animals — and spawned what have become the 10 CERES Principles, an environmental commitment for industry.

Like the legacy of the spill itself, the progress of the CERES Principles is worth assessing.

Ten years ago, in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill, several environmentally conscious business and investment leaders developed what were then called the “Valdez Principles” — “a commitment for business to make continuous environmental improvement and to become publicly accountable for the environmental impact of all its activities.”

In 1992, the Valdez Principles became the “CERES Principles” (see sidebar) with CERES being an acronym for the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies. The Coalition’s mission is “to encourage companies, in cooperation and collaboration with CERES, to endorse and practice the CERES Principles.”

But more ambitiously, in the words of CERES Executive Director Robert Massie, “We would like to transform the whole American economy.”

How extensively has that transformation occurred across the country? How many companies have endorsed the principles? Do those companies represent a range of industries and geographical areas?

The CERES Tally

CERES seeks members to join the coalition and endorsers to sign the CERES Principles. Members are primarily environmental organizations, socially responsible investment groups, and religious orders affiliated with Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. The coalition now has 55 members, who pay dues and whose representatives are eligible to serve on the 19-member board of directors. Some members are also endorsers of the principles.

Endorsers of the principles are institutions and corporations, including publicly traded companies. Of the 51 endorsers of the principles, 20 are publicly traded companies, 13 of which have more than $1 billion in annual sales. The 20 publicly traded companies are (in order of their endorsement):

• Ben and Jerry’s Premium Ice Cream
• Sunoco, Inc.
• The Timberland Co.
• The Body Shop International
• Real Goods Trading Corp.
• H.B. Fuller Co.
• General Motors Corp.
• Polaroid Corp.
• Arizona Public Service Company
• Bethlehem Steel Corp.
• Green Mountain Power Corp.
• BankAmerica Corp.
• ITT Industries
• PP&L Resources (Pennsylvania Power & Light)
• Baxter International
• Wainwright Bank
• Coca-Cola
• BankBoston Corp.
• Interface Inc.
• Northeast Utilities

The Role of Shareholder Resolutions

When corporate annual meetings mark the calendar each spring, many include shareholder resolutions to adopt the CERES Principles. Since 1990, CERES has used the shareholder arena to draw companies’ attention to its 10-point environmental code, according to Doug Cogan of the Investor Responsibility Research Center, which tracks environmental shareholder resolutions.

“During the early years, 1992 to 1994, many companies had their first introduction to the CERES Principles through shareholder resolutions,” he said. “The resolutions got them to focus intently on the principles, and for several companies — Bethlehem Steel, General Motors, and Sun — it was an important factor in their endorsement.”

This year, endorsement of the CERES Principles is on the agenda at the annual meetings of 14 corporations: AMR, Abbott Laboratories, Aetna, Dana, Delta Air Lines, Gillette, Eli Lilly, Nalco Chemical, Niagara Mohawk Power, Raytheon, Reynolds Metals, Sears Roebuck, Thermo Electron, and Wal-Mart Stores. Some meetings took place in late April, and others are taking place this month.

Moving Beyond the Principles

In addition to signing up endorsers of the CERES Principles, CERES continues to work on signing up coalition members. “We want to keep increasing our size and effectiveness,” according to Massie. “We will deepen our engagement in the coalition as it grows bigger, and make more effective use of that network,” including working with individual member organizations and companies on specific projects.

In late 1997, CERES launched the Global Reporting Initiative, an attempt to standardize the structure and content of corporate sustainability reporting with voluntary guidelines. According to CERES, the Global Reporting Initiative seeks to gain acceptance for sustainability reporting practices; promote standardized reporting guidelines that reflect environmental, economic, and social dimensions; and ensure a permanent institution to support the practices.

Though there is some overlap between the reporting initiative and the CERES Principles, according to Massie, the Global Reporting Initiative is a standard of disclosure, and the principles are the broader goals that include disclosure, which is made possible by the reporting.

“The Global Reporting Initiative was designed to create harmony” with the CERES Principles, he said, and has been widely accepted by stakeholders around the world. It has also become “a highly respected model of international cooperation,” according to CERES.

Because the reporting initiative is still a work in progress, many questions remain, according to the Investor Responsibility Research Center. “It does not provide guidance on how to create an organizational structure within the reporting entity to collect, analyze, and disseminate the data,” according to an IRRC report.

But it is being field tested this year by major corporations and stakeholder organizations, and CERES expects to have a tested guideline in place by 2000, along with a structure for the project’s permanent institutional home.

According to Massie, CERES is “a forum for conversations, a meeting group, a catalyst for new thinking, and a tireless proponent of information as an engine of accountability.”

And its work is far from over.

The CERES Principles are on corporate agendas not just at stockholder annual meetings, but throughout the year in a variety of ways. Here are some key contacts who can help you track the progress of the CERES campaign:

Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES): Robert Massie, Executive Director; Alyson Schiller, Communications Coordinator, (617) 247-0700; http://www.ceres.org

Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility: Ariane Van Buren, Coordinator, CERES shareholder campaign, (212) 870-2623

Investor Responsibility Research Center: Meg Voorhes, Director, Social Issues Service, (202) 833-0700; Doug Cogan, Deputy Director, Social Issues Service, (603) 675-9274

New York City Pension Fund: Ken Sylvester, New York City Comptroller’s Office, (212) 669-2013

Here is the text of the CERES Principles:

By adopting these Principles, we publicly affirm our belief that corporations have a responsibility for the environment and must conduct all aspects of their business as responsible stewards of the environment by operating in a manner that protects the Earth. We believe that corporations must not compromise the ability of future generations to sustain themselves.

We will update our practices continually in light of advances in technology and new understandings in health and environmental science. In collaboration with CERES, we will promote a dynamic process to ensure that the Principles are interpreted in a way that accommodates changing technologies and environmental realities. We intend to make consistent, measurable progress in implementing these principles and to apply them in all aspects of our operations throughout the world.

1. Protection of the Biosphere

   We will reduce and make continual progress toward eliminating the release of any substance that may cause environmental damage to the air, water, or the Earth or its inhabitants. We will safeguard all habitats affected by our operations and will protect open spaces and wilderness, while preserving biodiversity.

2. Sustainable Use of Natural Resources

   We will make sustainable use of renewable natural resources such as water, soils, and forests. We will conserve nonrenewable natural resources through efficient use and careful planning.

3. Reduction and Disposal of Wastes

   We will reduce and where possible eliminate waste through source reduction and recycling. All waste will be handled and disposed of through safe and responsible methods.

4. Energy Conservation

   We will conserve energy and improve the energy efficiency of our internal operations and of the goods and services we sell. We will make every effort to use environmentally safe and sustainable energy sources.

5. Risk Reduction

   We will strive to minimize the environmental, health and safety risks to our employees and the communities in which we operate through safe technologies, facilities and operating procedures, and by being prepared for emergencies.

6. Safe Products and Services

   We will reduce and where possible eliminate the use, manufacture, or sale of products and services that cause environmental damage or health or safety hazards. We will inform our customers of the environmental impacts of our products or services and try to correct unsafe use.

7. Environmental Restoration

   We will promptly and responsibly correct conditions we have caused that endanger health, safety, or the environment. To the extent feasible, we will redress injuries we have caused to persons or damage we have caused to the environment and will restore the environment.

8. Informing the Public

   We will inform in a timely manner everyone who may be affected by conditions we have caused by our company that might endanger health, safety, or the environment. We will regularly seek advice and counsel through dialogue with persons in communities near our facilities. We will not take any action against employees for reporting dangerous incidents or conditions to management or to appropriate authorities.

9. Management Commitment

   We will implement these principles and sustain a process that ensures that the board of directors and chief executive officer are fully informed about pertinent environmental issues and are fully responsible for environmental policy. In selecting our board of directors, we will consider demonstrated environmental commitment as a factor.

10. Audits and Reports

    We will conduct an annual self-evaluation of our progress in implementing these principles. We will support the timely creation of generally accepted environmental audit procedures. We will annually complete the CERES Report, which will be made available to the public.

CERES Disclaimer:

These Principles establish an environmental ethic with criteria by which investors and others can assess the environmental performance of companies. Companies that sign these Principles pledge to go voluntarily beyond the requirements of the law. The terms may and might in Principles one and eight are not meant to encompass every imaginable consequence, no matter how remote. Rather, these Principles obligate endorsers to behave as prudent persons who are not governed by conflicting interests and who possess a strong commitment to environmental excellence and to human health and safety. These Principles are not intended to create new legal liabilities, expand existing rights or obligations, waive legal defense, or otherwise affect the legal position of any endorsing company, and are not intended to be used against an endorser in any legal proceeding for any purpose.

A deadline is looming.

Experienced environmental reporters with at least three to five years of metro experience and a yen for the Northwest should move quickly if they want to be considered for an opening at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The P-I has an opening to replace veteran environmental journalist Rob Taylor, who is relocating back to the East Coast and to the Washington, D.C., area. But Metro Editor Kathy Best says the position likely won’t remain open for long.

“We’re looking for a clear and graceful writer who can do environmental investigations and cover everything from resources, trees and fish, to toxic pollution,” she said in a phone interview. “We’re looking for Superman,” regardless of the gender of the candidate.

Best declined to specify a salary range for the position, but said the beat “is one of the highest profile beats at the P-I, and the salary goes along with that expectation.”

The P-I is part of the Hearst chain and it faces local competition from the Seattle Times, which is 51 percent owned by the local Blethen family and 49 percent owned by Knight-Ridder. Some view the Seattle daily newspaper situation as a classic old-fashioned newspaper-war, and Hearst at least for the time being has indicated a willingness to add as many as 17 new positions to the P-I. How long that commitment may remain apparently is a matter of some speculation, and for some concern, in the Seattle journalism community.

Taylor had covered environmental and resources issues for the P-I for more than nine years (including a year as a Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University in 1996-1997). He previously had worked in the Washington, D.C., bureau of The Wall Street Journal for a similar period, the last three years covering environment.

He says he considers the P-I beat he is leaving to be particularly attractive because the paper generally gives the issues good play and because it involves covering the environment “where we still have one and where people still care a lot about it.” He points to “constant battles” involving the region’s natural resources and endangered species, running from spotted owls and salmon to toxics and pollution. He says the paper puts a pre-mium on enterprise reporting in the beat.

Taylor says he expects now to begin work on what he says is a long-delayed book on Washington’s 1994 forest fires and the effects of fire suppression on western forests.

Qualified reporters wanting to be considered for the P-I post will know a looming deadline when they see one: Contact Metro Editor Kathy Best at (206) 448-8031.

A new electronic news service is covering the Rocky Mountain region, and it is rich with news on natural resources and the environment.

Headwaters News began publishing February 18. It comes out on the World Wide Web Monday through Friday, and contains typically about 15 stories a day. The stories are really capsulized summaries of stories appearing in newspapers and other media around the region. The summaries, usually around 40 words long, link electronically to the original text in the online edition of whatever newspaper they came from.

The format is a variation on the one used successfully by Greenwire for national environmental stories. Headwaters News, however, focuses on news from the Rockies in both the United States and Canada. It covers Alberta, Arizona, British Columbia, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

Headwaters covers a wide range of regional interests, not just environment and natural resources.

Headwaters is posted to the Web by 9 a.m. Mountain Time. Editor Tracy Stone-Manning must be on the job by 5 a.m. every morning to get it out. She scans the electronic editions of at least 40 newspapers to cull what she thinks are the important stories (no crime or sports). The service includes original commentary in a separate section and hopes eventually to add original reporting.

A recent issue carried stories on dropout rates in Indian schools (Christian Science Monitor), protests against water rights for factory farms (Twin Falls Times News), the Darigold coop’s lifting of its ban on rBGH (AP/Billings Gazette), and a meeting between Montana’s governor and the National Park Service on brucellosis in bison.

The service is run by the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana. It is funded by a 3-year, $200,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation*. Publisher Richard Manning, a journalist and author of four books, founded Tidepool, a similar news service for the Pacific Northwest’s coastal rain forest.

You can find Headwaters by browsing http://www.headwatersnews.org/index.html. E-mail subscriptions are also available.

*Editor’s Note: The Hewlett Foundation also provides financial support to EHC, publisher of this newsletter.

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