How Did Broadcast TV News Cover Environmental Justice Last Year? (Part II)
Media Matters: In their own words, journalists share candid assessments on how national TV news gets it all wrong ... but, can still improve its environmental justice reporting.
Evlondo Cooper | a Media Matters feature
In order to bring relevant, substantively reported environmental justice stories to their audiences, national TV news must understand how environmental justice intersects with multiple different issue areas, connect the dots between what’s driving environmental injustice in different parts of the country, and demand accountability on behalf of marginalized communities. To that end, we’ve included the perspectives of journalists whose work either focuses on or intersects with environmental justice issues to learn how their experiences can help national TV news outlets expand their understanding of what constitutes an environmental justice story and develop a reporting framework to tell it.
Media Matters reached out to Yvette Cabrera, Amber X. Chen, Charles Ellison, and Yessenia Funes for their perspectives on how corporate broadcast news can improve its environmental justice coverage. Although they each have unique approaches to how their work intersects with environmental justice, they are united by a commitment to telling the stories of people who are too often ignored by corporate news media outlets.
Why is corporate broadcast news failing to produce substantive environmental justice stories?
Yvette Cabrera is a senior reporter at the Center for Public Integrity and wrote a seminal series for ThinkProgress in 2017 about the myriad ways lead exposure harms children, including the lead-to-prison pipeline — a story that lies at the intersection of environmental injustice, public health, and crime. For more than two decades, her work has focused on Latino populations and is informed by her keen understanding of the connections between so many seemingly disparate issues.
During our discussion about why broadcast TV news coverage of environmental justice too often lacks necessary context, Cabrera noted that print and online news outlets produce more substantive environmental justice stories because the nature of the television format lends itself to “responding to what’s immediate and in front of you,” while disincentivizing follow-up reporting. Referencing the recent East Palestine train derailment, she continued …
I think unfortunately what happens with television is they respond to the immediate disaster. A lot of people are currently focusing on the train derailment, which obviously causes problems in the first place when it goes off the tracks and a car is exploded. But I don't see as much questioning around why these chemicals are being transported? What are they used for? What is the need? There are communities that are put in danger every day, across the country, because of the transportation of these chemicals. Do we really need those? Which then leads you to the question, “Where are these chemicals being produced?” They're often produced in black and brown communities. We see that in Cancer Alley, in the Gulf region. Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi are often the hardest hit, and these communities have been saying, “We are being polluted on a daily basis.” But their stories don’t receive the same amount of attention.
Amber X. Chen is a freelance journalist whose work has been published by Atmos, The Guardian, and Teen Vogue, among other outlets. Her unique approach to stories about psychedelics and climate activism, community organizers in Texas borderland communities, and Hawaii’s worsening water crisis demonstrate an expansive understanding of how environmental justice intersects with so many other issues, as well as the benefits of understanding a movement before reporting on it. In fact, before becoming a journalist, Chen was an activist involved in movement building and sees her journalism as an extension of that work. “Every environmental story is an environmental justice story,” she told Media Matters.
Her experience in environmental organizing informed her understanding of how corporate TV news shows ignore the voices of marginalized communities because it’s something she has observed in the larger environmental movement …
I was always in rooms with a lot of older, white people. And I was able to witness that the solutions they were coming up with weren't good because they ignored that people of color and low-income people are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. And they were also being disproportionately left out of climate solutions. And so you have people sitting at the decision-making table and proposing incredibly inequitable climate solutions who are very focused on solving whatever is most immediate to them, unaware that these solutions could potentially harm communities of color.
Charles Ellison is the executive producer and host of Reality Check, a daily public affairs program on WURD, which is based in Philadelphia and is one of three African American-owned and -operated talk radio stations in the country. He is also founder and managing editor of ecoWURD.com, an environmental and climate justice journalism initiative. Ellison’s journey toward environmental and climate journalism began with bearing witness to environmental impacts, such as cancer clusters, harming residents in Philadelphia’s mostly Black neighborhoods, and he has turned his journalism into a vehicle for change, being named an Emerson Collective fellow because of his work.
When Media Matters asked Ellison why he was able to produce quality environmental journalism when corporate broadcast news, with all of its resources, does not, he noted …
We have a lot more latitude and flexibility to produce our stories, as opposed to having to package them into soundbites like broadcast and cable news. Plus: we’re accountable to the community, not company interests or advertisers. That's a major flaw in the corporate media industrial complex. It’s this constant pressure to package things in such a way that they're captured within multi-second sound bites or focus on what's the most salacious or dramatic. They’re also under pressure to not report on how climate change and environmental harms are hurting nonwhite communities. WURD is a non-partisan news organization, and we aren't aligned with any specific interest group. That allows us to tell the stories we want to because we’re independent and don’t rely on well-funded lobbying groups who work on behalf of polluting industries.
An environmental journalist who focuses on the intersection of race and environment, Yessenia Funes went to college wanting to produce impactful journalism when the personal toll of Hurricane Sandy informed her professional understanding of the myriad ways climate and environmental justice intersect with our lives. In the years since, she has produced impactful reporting about how environmental exposures are killing migrants in the Arizona desert, how increasingly worse heat waves are killing asylum-seekers trying to cross the border, how the Bolsonaro government in Brazil encouraged and ignored the murder of gay land defender Fernando dos Santos because of his environmental activism and his sexuality, and why climate activists should incorporate the elderly into their understanding of vulnerable populations at risk from extreme weather.
When asked about why online and print news reporters are able to produce deep and substantive environmental stories about vulnerable communities — as contrasted with the dearth of good environmental justice journalism on corporate TV news — Funes replied, “There are big dollars attached to broadcast news. And so I do think that’s a big part of it, right?”
She continued …
Profit is the ultimate decider here, right? You want to have views, you want to have your high ratings, you want to keep the people in charge happy by not pushing their buttons with stories they may not like. I think that's a big part of it. At Atmos, we're really lucky that we’re independently funded through our publisher. And so the only people that we need to really please are ourselves. Having our own goals and metrics may encourage us to do more climate and environmental reporting. But with broadcast outlets, I don’t imagine that's a part of their infrastructure. It's more important to keep the investors or owners or CEOs happy. And, unfortunately, climate has become such a hot button topic in politics that, depending on how you cover it, viewers can have really extreme responses to it. They can be really unhappy, or they can also be really appreciative. And I think that creates a little bit more of an unwillingness or hesitance to talk about climate or environmental justice because it's become so politicized.
How can corporate broadcast news improve its environmental justice journalism?
National TV news shows must overcome multiple challenges to develop a deep understanding of how environmental justice impacts the lives of their viewers, and apply this journalistic framework consistently to a broad range of relevant issues and stories. The journalists who spoke to Media Matters provided some further insights about how those outlets can improve their coverage of environmental justice.
Cabrera suggested that there are a wealth of stories that television journalists can tell if they are willing to keep reporting once the urgency of the breaking news story has subsided. Again referencing the East Palestine train derailment, she continued …
There are just a lot of disparities that can be highlighted as stories. It just takes going beyond the initial breaking news story to explain the environmental impacts from decisions that lead to the production of these types of chemicals and allowing these factories to exist in vulnerable communities. There are consequences that go beyond just the initial explosion. It speaks to decades of decisions that allow these chemicals in our environment, decisions that have led to the pollution of our communities. There's a wealth of stories for television journalists to tap into.
Chen noted the need for national TV news outlets to examine “every dimension of a story” to understand if there is a justice approach. She also suggested the need to hire more journalists of color and build trust with the communities they are reporting on …
I think corporate news channels have a very institutional air about them. So I definitely think they should hire more reporters of color, as they are likely to be aware of and want to report on environmental justice issues. And if television journalists want to understand a community and the issues it faces, to build that trust, they should go back to the roots of what journalism's supposed to be. Go into the community, knock on doors, talk to organizers. I really think corporate TV news is sort of skimming around the work that needs to be done. It's difficult, but it can and should be done.
Ellison also highlighted the exclusion of Black, brown, and Indigenous voices from national TV news stories about the environment and why nonwhite media outlets need to fill in the gaps …
Having someone willing and able to talk to Black people or other marginalized people where they live, you can have conversations that ask them, “Hey, what are you dealing with in your neighborhood? It seems like half the people in the neighborhood have asthma. Well let me tell you about all the methane that's polluting the city. Let me tell you how bad air pollution is in the city.” And you'll start seeing those audiences become more receptive. “Wait a second, I didn't know that. Tell me more.” Instead, we have the corporate mainstream media complex that wants to ignore marginalized voices and exclude them from environmental and climate discussions. We definitely want to get people of color, climate activists on mainstream corporate broadcasts. But we also need to hear them on Black media. They need to be on those shows, too, bringing the same messages.
Although Funes understands the orthodoxy of objectivity that journalism schools seek to instill in students, she encourages journalists to allow their instincts to guide their storytelling, especially with the stakes so high. She noted …
My approach is to consider what is upsetting me? What is exciting to me? What's something that’s sort of riling me up? What's riling up my sources? I don't really think about what story is going to do well. That's not really what I'm worried about. I'm worried about what is feeling urgent, what feels wrong, what are my sources compelling me to cover. What's not being covered? What are people missing? What are people getting wrong? That's really what drives my reporting. And I think that it's hard with broadcast news because you're really trying to sell something in a way. But I do think there's a responsibility that we as journalists have to inform the public about issues, about what's right and what's wrong. And I just think that's a really basic tenant of journalism that has gotten quite lost, especially with social media and the politicization of climate change. I think we've lost sight of what's at stake here.
Many of the challenges and opportunities for improvement expressed by these journalists were echoed by a member of the national media who spoke to Media Matters on background. When asked about the specific challenges faced by national TV news reporters who want to report on environmental justice stories, they said that it is primarily an “information barrier” driven by a lack of diverse voices in the newsroom. They also noted, “The environment is harder to cover because the newsworthy events happen over time, as opposed to coverage of big events like storms or big industrial disasters. As such, coverage of these stories comes down to being aware of what’s happening in communities of color.”
They continued …
Climate change and environmental justice are hard subjects to get people to pay attention to because they feel too big for the average viewer. It’s hard to get people interested unless it's a disaster, which is what drives corporate media coverage of that story. But it’s the media’s job to inform people “before the dam breaks.” A journalist’s job isn’t to fix problems, but they are supposed to inform people when something is wrong. But many people in media are not aware of the long-standing problems facing many vulnerable communities because they are in a bubble.
National TV news would do well to listen to the critiques of print and online climate and environmental reporters, adopt some of their approaches, and amplify their work. This includes developing and implementing a reporting framework that incorporates the experiences and challenges faced by vulnerable communities; understands how environmental justice intersects with people’s everyday lives; connects environmental harms to political and corporate policies and practices; and demands accountability for decisions that degrade the air, land, and water of fenceline communities.
If national TV news outlets committed to better informing the public about the environmental injustice that harms vulnerable communities every day, their reporting could play a pivotal role in shaping public policy responses, ensuring that local, state, and federal officials implement effective and equitable plans to confront environmental harms, and improving the life and well-being of every person — especially the most vulnerable.