Environmental Journalism

Origins

Among the first true writers about the environment were the geographers or explorers who at the completion of their journeys described what they had [Page 530]seen. But as journalism developed in the nineteenth century it was slow to embrace environmental coverage. An exception was William Cullen Bryant, editor of the New York Evening Post, who led a movement to establish a public park and is credited with writing editorials in 1844 that led to the creation of New York's Central Park. Beginning in 1876, George Bird Grinnell championed the establishment of both the national park system and the national forests in Field and Stream. Nature writer John Muir and Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of The Century Magazine, led campaigns to preserve such national treasures as the Yosemite Valley in California. The muckrakers of the early twentieth century at times touched on environmental issues. Lincoln Steffens, writing for McClure's and American Magazine, exposed timber frauds in the Pacific Northwest forests. Ida Tarbell uncovered the ruthless practices of the Standard Oil Company and John D. Rockefeller. Still, the first major journalism award for an environmental story did not occur until 1941 when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch led an editorial campaign against industrial soot and smoke that was so thick that it could turn day into night. The newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize, and the air grew cleaner.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962, helped change society's thinking about the environment. A biologist, Carson criticized the widespread use of DDT, an insecticide that had wiped out malaria in the developed world and drastically reduced it globally. DDT was so popular that in the 1950s American communities were using it to spray entire neighbourhoods to kill unwanted pests. The problem was that it also killed wildlife, including birds ranging from robins to eagles. Carson called the use of such chemicals a sinister force that could not only wipe out many species but also threaten humans. The chemical industry responded with a major marketing campaign questioning the book's premise. Yet Silent Spring became a best-seller and prompted the U.S. government to review and eventually ban the use of DDT. Carson set the stage for a new era by encouraging readers to question, rather than to accept, what industry was doing to the environment and to human health.

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