If ever there was a story to lift the morale of demoralized environmental journalists, it was Elizabeth Shogren's account of how a little press coverage caused the Pentagon to rescind and reverse, sorry, "clarify" its directive to base commanders that they cut back on environmental spending. The idea that journalism, or at least publicity, has no impact on government can be safely put to rest. The original May 11, 2004, e-mail memo from Maj. Gen. Anders Aadland called for "severe measures" to cut environmental budgets and delay environmental compliance to free up funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That story was broken by the AP's John Heilprin. But after Pentagon officials faced press questioning on May 27, the Army found the money and in a followup memo called on base commanders to avoid taking environmental risks. In explaining the change of position, Aadland told reporters: "It was the Army's own conscience, not the media conscience, that caused us to get this back on track." (See http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-enviro28may28,1,5014401.story.)