Environmental debates played out through: formal political processes (e.g. Environmental Impact Assessments); informal political processes (e.g. lobbying, bribery); legal processes (e.g. injunctions, e.g. "SLAPPs" (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation); corporate channels (board-rooms, note also that some environmentalists are putting more effort into direct lobbying of, or campaigning against, corporations); public fora.

Media of greatest importance to public debate, public opinion. Participants in environmental debates - e.g. corporations, environmentalists - often try to use the media to win public support.

Corporations (sometimes with the help of public relations firms) use media reporting as one component of broader campaigns which can also involve advertising, corporate front groups, conservative think-tanks, sponsorships, etc. Environmentalists also aim to get sympathetic coverage in the media, but usually don’t have the resources for multi-faceted public relations campaigns - so other strategies used by environmentalists to win public and political attention/support include rallies/protests, non-commercial media, postering, petitions etc.

Media includes newspapers, magazines, TV, radio; the importance of each source varies over time.

Commercial media structure: corporate conglomerates --> media corporations / owners --> management/editors --> journalists --> media output. Other media "players": advertisers; information sources; consumers / public.

"Most media organizations are owned by multinational multi-billion dollar corporations that are involved in a number of businesses apart from the media, such as forestry, pulp and paper mills, defence, real estate, oil wells, agriculture, steel production, railways, water and power utilities." For example, Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd. controls 2/3 of the newspaper market in Australia; 1/3 of the newspaper market in the UK; extensive satellite broadcasting in dozens of countries (his Star satellite service reaches 220 million people in Asia); Fox network in the US (free-to-air TV and cable TV); book publishing companies in the USA and Australia; Festival Records; 20th Century Fox; interests in computer software, offshore oil and gas, air transport. (Beder, 1997, Global Spin.)

Australian print media (journals and magazines) nearly all controlled by News Ltd (Murdoch), Kerry Packer's Australian Consolidated Press, and Fairfax group. Packer controls 52.3% of magazine circulation, Murdoch controls 37.7%. Packer also owned (as at 1992) Channel Nine and eight radio stations. (Boyle, 1992.)

NBC (based in USA): broadcasts to over 200 affiliated stations, reaching almost all homes in the USA; owns and operates six TV stations and was (in 1997) in the process of purchasing three more; owns two cable TV stations and has ownership stakes in 17 other cable TV stations; owns Super Channel which reaches 44 countries in Europe, and a Spanish language service reaching 21 countries in Latin America; as at 1997, NBC was about to launch an Asian service. NBC owned by General Electric (GE). GE revenue in 1996 was almost US$80 billion, products include light-bulbs, locomotives, jet engines, nuclear power plants, much more. (Lee and Solomon, 1990).

Concentration of ownership and lack of diversity are key issues. USA, Australia & elsewhere: only one daily newspaper in most cities. Former US Vice President Dan Quayle claims, "One of the strengths of democracy is diversity, but there is an amazing lack of it at the top levels of the national media."

"The media's frequently homogenous behaviour arises 'naturally' out of industry structure, common sources, ideology, patriotism and the power of the government and opt media sources to define newsworthiness and frameworks of discourse. Self-censorship, market forces, and the norms of news practices may produce and maintain a particular viewpoint as effectively as formal state censorship." (Edward Herman.)

Example: Murdoch’s Fox network dropped a story linking bovine growth hormone (BGH) in milk to human cancer. (Jason Wallace, "Monsanto, Fox TV and censorship", Green Left Weekly, #400, 5/4/00,
<www.greenleft.org.au> See also <www.foxBGHsuit.com>.

The average US resident is exposed to about 3 000 advertisements each day. More money is spent persuading US residents to consume than is spent on higher education or Medicare.

Commercial TV stations and radio stations receive most or all of their income from advertisers. The media creates a product that suits advertisers; programs are a means of exposing audiences to advertising; programs "deliver" audiences to advertisers; media corporations sell a product (audiences) to buyers (advertisers).

"TV works like a Trojan horse: it gains entry into our homes with promises of entertainment and novelty, then delivers its true cargo of commercial messages." (Jacobsen and Mazur, 1995.)

Boundaries between programs and advertising have become increasingly blurred - e.g. sponsorship of programs (including news and current affairs), advertising flashed on screen, infomercials.

Corporate influence on news content can be direct (e.g. editing or censoring material likely to offend advertisers) or indirect (media shapes its content to attract an audience that will suit its advertisers).

A 1992 study of 150 newspaper editors in the USA found that 90% said that advertisers tried to interfere with newspaper content and 70% said that advertisers tried to stop news stories altogether.

"The indirect influence of advertising on media content is more pervasive. Since the media depend on advertisers and sponsors for revenue, they seek to maximize those audiences that will attract advertisers - not just any audience will do. Papers that attract large numbers of low-consuming working-class people have often failed through lack of advertiser support." (Beder, 1997, Global Spin.)

"Television shows tend to promote consumerism, portray a positive image of business in general - with bad business people being an obvious deviation from the norm - attract affluent audiences, and aim at light entertainment rather than examination of complex and controversial subjects." (Beder, 1997, Global Spin.)

- public relations firms provide pre-packaged news. Stauber and Rampton (1995) say that about 40% of all "news" in the US flows virtually unedited from PR firms.
- revolving door between media, PR firms, government.
- industry-funded scientists often appear in media as independent experts.
- corporate front groups tend not to be exposed in/by media.
- journalists tend to quote "authoritative" sources, which often means political or corporate élites who share common ideologies. United States ABC TV current affairs show "Nightline", 1989: 80% of US guests were professionals, corporate representatives or government officials; 89% male; 92% white.

"Professional codes ensure that what is considered important is that which is said and done by important people. And important people are people in power. TV news thus privileges holders of power. ... Its focus on individual authority figures as privileged spokespersons reflects the ideologies of individualism and elite authority." (Kellner, 1990.)

"Mainstream environmental reporting took its cue not from press-hungry environmentalists but from the government, corporate and (often non-science) academic establishments. ... (The) only widely circulated "doomsday scenarios" emanated from the economists and CEOs who cried wolf at every new environmental initiative." (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (cited in Spencer, 1992).)

"News is defined firstly by those who have privileged access to the media as sources and interpreters - public relations people, government officials and accredited experts. It is then shaped according to journalistic conventions, aimed at attracting and entertaining an audience for advertisers, and fitted into a general framework and approach that suits corporate owners. All these influences determine the news output that most people depend on for information about the world beyond their personal experience." (Beder, 1997, Global Spin.)

Journalists often claim that their own biases and pressures from advertisers and media owners do not affect their work because of the professional norm of objectivity. Several interlinking aspects to this "ideology of journalistic objectivity": balance; depersonalisation; quoting authoritative sources; separating fact from opinion & separating "hard" news from opinion pieces.

Balance. Getting opinions from "both sides" - but not necessarily covering the spectrum of opinion. Typically, conservative and centrist/reformist/liberal positions are given coverage but not radical positions. The ideology of journalistic objectivity discourages a search for evidence - the "balancing" of opinions often replaces journalistic investigation altogether. Comments made by critics of the political and economic "establishment" are almost certain to be "balanced" by establishment views, but the reverse doesn't apply to nearly the same extent. For example, despite claims by the nuclear industry of anti-nuclear media bias, a FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) study of news clippings collected by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission over a five-month period found that no news articles cited anti-nuclear views without also citing a pro-nuclear response, whereas 27% of articles cited only pro-nuclear views. It also found that 72% of editorials and 56% of opinion columns were pro-nuclear. (Beder, 1997, Global Spin.)

Depersonalisation. By quoting other people's opinions, but refraining from explicitly offering analysis themselves, journalists construct an appearance of objectivity which gives the profession legitimacy.

Separating "fact" from "opinion"; separating "hard" news from "opinion" pieces: but "hard" factual news stories are also shaped by a myriad of values and interests.

"The rhetoric of journalistic objectivity supplies a mask for the inevitable subjectivity that is involved in news reporting, and reassures audiences who might otherwise be wary of the power of the media. It also ensures a certain degree of autonomy to journalists, and freedom from regulation to media corporations. However, news reporting involves judgements about what is a good story, who will be interviewed for it, what questions will be asked, which parts of those interviews  will be printed or broadcast, what facts are relevant and how the story is written." (Beder, 1997, Global Spin.)

"The conventions of objectivity, depersonalisation and balance tend to transform the news into a series of quotes and comments from a remarkably small number of sources." (Beder, 1997, Global Spin.)

"Journalists who try to expose these deeper societal maladies soon learn that it is the editor who decides which stories get aired or printed and how these are to be cut. Editors represent the owners in the news room. Journalists quickly learn which stories are likely to be run and internalize this message as a form of self-censorship - a helpful lesson in climbing the career ladder." (Sharon Beder, "Best coverage money can buy", New Internationalist, July 1999, p. 30.)

Jeff Cohen , "Propaganda from the Middle of the Road: The Centrist Ideology of the News Media", Extra!, October/November 1989, <www.fair.org/extra>:

"When mainstream journalists tell me during debates that "our news doesn't reflect bias of the left or the right," I ask them if they therefore admit to reflecting bias of the center. Journalists react as if I've uttered an absurdity: "Bias of the center! What's that?" "

"It is a strange concept to many in the media. They can accept that conservatism or rightism is an ideology that carries with it certain values and opinions, beliefs about the past, goals for the future. They can accept that leftism carries with it values, opinions, beliefs. But being in the center -- being a centrist -- is somehow not having an ideology at all. Somehow centrism is not an "ism" carrying with it values, opinions and beliefs."

"If, for simplicity's sake, we define the left as seeking substantial social reform toward a more equitable distribution of wealth and power, and we define the right as seeking to undo social reform and regulation toward a free marketplace that allows wide disparities in wealth and power, then we can define the political center as seeking to preserve the status quo, tinkering with the system only very prudently to work out what are seen as minor glitches, problems or inequities."

Media content can be seen as reflecting tensions such as:
- the ideology of balance/neutrality vs. the reality of corporate control over the commercial media
- objectivity / subjectivity
- blandness ( so as not to offend advertisers) vs. excitement (to attract audiences)

The media are reluctant to deal with controversial issues that might alienate consumers and advertisers. Thus there is a tendency for blandness. The threat of legal action also limits media coverage - especially coverage of well-resourced institutions which can afford to pursue matters through the courts. But of course if media content is too bland it will not attract audiences.

Some of the recurring features of media content, reflecting the tensions listed above: disaster ("if it bleeds, it leads"); crime; dramas, soaps, escapism; oddities ("quirks"); "freaks"; jingoism, feel-good stories, "human interest" stories, celebrity; parochialism (local, state, country); people rather than issues; individuals rather than groups (e.g. classes); sporadic coverage of issues; the "illustration imperative" (no pictures, no story); infotainment (decreasing length of sound bite over the years); political "hooks" (people are generally interested in policies and how they will be affected by them, whereas reporters focus on political strategies and power-plays); economic "hooks" (see later); reactive (focussing on events, disasters, announcements, etc.) rather than proactive; technological determinism (e.g. technology is blamed for environmental destruction and is also seen to offer the solutions); events (e.g. Earth Day, disasters, official announcements) not processes (e.g. salinity); impacts/effects get more media coverage than causes; simplification / decontextualisation / neglect of systemic or structural issues.

"By treating business wrongdoings as isolated deviations from the socially beneficial system of 'responsible capitalism', the media overlook the systemic features that produce such abuses and the regularity with which they occur. Business 'abuse' is presented in the national press as an occasional aberration, rather than as a predictable and common outcome of corporate power and the business system. The exposé that treats the event as an isolated and atypical incident implicitly affirms the legitimacy of the system ..." (Parenti, 1986.)

"Reporting of environmental problems tends to be superficial, narrowing the focus to specific events in isolation rather than looking at systemic problems that caused them, such as the international monetary system or the unregulated power of corporations, and concentrating on the costs of environmental measures. Environmental problems become a series of events that emphasize individual action rather than social forces and issues." (Beder, 1997, Global Spin.)

"Coverage of former communist countries at this time concentrated on the pollution and environmental degradation in these countries, implying it was far worse than anything in the West and "an inevitable product of a centralized, totalitarian system". This treatment of environmental degradation as being the result of the prevailing political system contrasted with the way it is usually  treated in the West, where rather than being the inevitable result of a capitalist system which puts profit before environmental protection it tends to be treated as the result of isolated accidents and misdemeanours of individual companies." (Beder, 1997, Global Spin.)

"Setting the agenda means deciding not only what will be discussed but also what won't be. Covert power covers the area of 'non-decisions' as well as decisions. For example, environmental issues can be debated so long as the system of decision-making that gives autonomy to corporations to decide what they produce and how they produce it is maintained. Decision-making and political debate is therefore confined to the relatively safe areas of waste discharge, packaging, and product safety." (Beder, 1997, Global Spin.)

In the late 1980s, issues such as ozone depletion and global warming attracted considerable media attention. Environmental reporting has dropped off in 1990s, partly because of the corporate assault on environmentalism. The treatment of environmental issues has also changed. In the 1990s, environmental issues are frequently reported in economic terms - part of a broader social trend to view society through an economic prism.

Sources. Spencer (1992): "Most quoted sources, including the environmentalists, were from groups the media carefully identified as "mainstream". These included federal entities such as the Office of Technology Assessment to the Coast Guard. The US EPA was the most prominent. and played the role of switch-hitter. Other most cited sources included industry coalitions and any government or company spokesperson with "environmental" in its title. These included groups with pro-environment names but pro-business agendas ..."

According to a study conducted by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, newspapers devoted about 2% of their coverage to environmental issues. Pollution on a local level received regular coverage in the local press.

Beder (1997) mentions three new environment-oriented TV stations which were being set up in 1995 in the USA; however they were/are commercialised, noncontroversial, feel-good stations, "dumbing" down the product to suit corporate sponsors.

Commercial media treatment of environmentalists:
- ignore them
- tend to favour "mainstream" environmentalists, occasionally create "eco-heroes"
- stereotyping of environmentalists, e.g. "granola-crunching purveyors of doomsday dogma"

Many of the media characteristics described earlier apply to environmental reporting - e.g. sporadic coverage, disaster, emotion, people rather than issues, superficial, reactive etc.

Generally conservative assumptions regarding causes of, and solutions to, environmental problems. Spencer (1992): "Sweeping environmental problems remain, most of the press cautioned. But their solution is ‘up to all of us.’ Individual actions by other ordinary people will save the day, as one network put it, ‘one tree at a time.’ The major corporations cutting them down one forest at a time were less in focus."

Establishment media often optimistic about environmentalism. Spencer (1992) quotes the New York Times on Earth Day, 22/4/90: "Twenty years after the first Earth Day, the Cuyahoga River no longer catches fire ... and bald eagles, once threatened by DDT, have increased nearly seven-fold ... Everywhere, it seems, the thinking has changed; many corporations have dropped their old arguments ... (and) are scrambling instead to demonstrate how green they are."

Cliché that environmental issues have moved from the back pages of the newspapers to the front papers and recently to the finance pages.

"One of the most popular frames for stories about the environment was an economic hook." (Includes pollution taxes, costs of environmental control standards, etc.)
"Stories continually pitted a cleaner environment against "jobs"; environmentalists against labour (rather than, more accurately, management; Big Government (whose rules are often said to "force" adjustments) against the Little Guy (small business). Free-market capitalism and traditional theories of cost-benefit analysis were the familiar bed into which a procrustean press tended to thrust all environmental issues. Stories incessantly asked how improving or  preserving the environment would impact the economy. And the consensus seemed to be that new regulations, policies, technologies, etc would cost too much. Most reporting missed the obvious: The enormous pricetags on ecological cleanups are the result of pollution, not 'environmentalism.'"
(Spencer, 1992.)

"When the environment got a second chance for fifteen minutes of fame, we all found ourselves subjected to endless lectures on the new three Rs, reuse, recycle reduce ... we also saw the emergence of green consumer reporting. Any entrepreneur who claimed that his product was environmentally friendly won his fifteen minutes of public acclaim. At times the media's main interest in the environment seemed to be marrying the shopping craze of the eighties with saving the planet. ... Then came the fourth R, the recession. The phrase 'It isn't easy being green' headlined innumerable stories on the high cost of saving the earth. ... In short, environmentalism was being restored to its status as a fringe concern, one that would have to be ignored while the tough decisions were made about the economy." (Doug Green, Canadian Dimension, quoted in Beder, 1997.)

"This cost-benefit framework does not consider who gets the benefits - the public - and who pays the costs - corporations. Nor does it consider that money spent by these corporations in cleaning up their act is paid to other businesses and often provides jobs and promotes economic activity." (Beder, 1997, Global Spin.)

Variety of sources, including commercial and non-commercial sources.

Study of climate change reporting in commercial vs. non-commercial press published in Australian Geographical Studies, late 1999, summarised in Jim Green, "Green Left Weekly blitzes mainstream press in climate change coverage", Green Left Weekly #380, 13/10/1999, <www.greenleft.org.au>

Be a critical consumer. Some questions to ask:
- what does this media report tell you (accurate, biased, sources etc)
- what does it fail to tell you (what’s missing? context? history?)
- how is the story told (assumptions, suggested solutions, whose interests does the story serve, whose
       values does it reflect?)

Should environmentalists aim to be "respectable" in the hope of getting more media attention? What are the costs of this strategy? To what extent will more media attention be gained anyway?

Should environmentalists aim to be sensational/controversial in the hope of attracting more media attention? What are the costs of this strategy? To what extent will more media attention be gained anyway?

Pros and cons of using familiar hooks (politics, economics, disaster, etc.)

How important is it to gain establishment media attention anyway? For example it can be argued that the focus should be on building and broadening campaigns through protests, public meetings, etc. Within this framework, gaining publicity from the establishment media is useful - perhaps even important - but it should not dictate campaign strategies. Campaigns with lots of public support will attract media coverage regardless of tactics. Little control over positive or negative media coverage regardless of efforts to conform to media expectations.

"Political movements feel called upon to rely on large-scale communications in order to matter, to say who they are and what they intend to publics they want to sway; but in the process they become 'newsworthy' only by submitting to the implicit rules of newsmaking, by conforming to journalistic notions ... of what a 'story' is, what an 'event' is, what a 'protest' is. The processed image them tends to become 'the movement' for wider publics." (Gitlin, 1980.)

Achbar, Mark, 1994, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, Montreal: Black Rose Books.

Beder, Sharon, 1997, Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism, Melbourne: Scribe.

Peter Boyle, 8/4/1992, "Stranglehold on the print media", Green Left Weekly, <www.greenleft.org.au>

Chomsky, Noam, 1989, Necessary Illusion: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End Press.

Gitlin, Todd, 1980, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Grossman, Richard, 1989, "Of Time and Tide: media and the environment", Chain Reaction, Winter, pp.18-19.

Jacobsen, Michael F., and Mazur, Laurie Ann, 1995, Marketing Madness, Colorado: Westview Press.

Kellner, Douglas, 1990, Television and the Crisis of Democracy, Colorado: Westview Press.

La May, Craig L., and Dennis, Everette E., eds., 1991, Media and the Environment, Washington: Island Press.

Lee, Martin A., and Solomon, Norman, 1990, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media, New York: Carol Publishing Group.

Parenti, Michael, 1986, Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media, New York: St Martin's Press:

Sandman, Peter M. et al., 1987, Environmental Risk and the Press: An Exploratory Assessment, New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

Spencer, Miranda, 1992, "US Environmental Reporting: The Big Fizzle", Extra!, April/May, pp.12-20.

Stauber, John C., and Rampton, Sheldon, 1995, " 'Democracy' for Hire: Public Relations and Environmental Movements", The Ecologist, Vol. 25, No.5, September/October, pp.173-180.