American Communications Foundation - Full Report

State of Environment Coverage: Commercial and Cable Television
American Communications Foundation
September 1, 2004

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The American Communications Foundation (ACF) conducted research to investigate the status of environment coverage on commercial broadcast and cable television. Our goal was to ascertain:

How television news organizations and cable channels are currently covering the environment?
Where the environment is situated in the programming priorities of news managers and other television producers.
How environment coverage has changed in recent years?
What barriers to increased coverage of environmental issues in the future may exist?

The research for this report was limited in time and scope, and its purpose is primarily to review and summarize existing literature on the issue and draw on our own interviews with leading observers from environmental organizations, journalists, funders, and academia. We also included observations from our own understanding of the field with over 20 years of experience. Based on this, we are able to provide a brief overview of the state of the field.

As we began our research it became immediately evident that we had to redefine our thinking on this project and reframe our questions. Profound changes in the media in the past five years have had a huge impact on coverage of not only environment issues but social issues in general. The very definition of environment news and coverage has changed. The attitudes of news managers have also changed. No report on the subject of environment coverage in commercial TV could be complete without an examination of what is happening in the journalism business in general. It has a direct bearing on environment reporting today
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Summary of Findings
There has been a decline in the amount and salience of environment coverage in recent years, although it does sometimes spike during environmental crises. Most television outlets from network, to cable, to local TV have almost no coverage at all, although television is still where most Americans get their news. For example, figures from 2003 show that a viewer who watched a commercial television nightly newscast every weeknight for a month would have seen about five minutes on the environment. A viewer watching CNN or FOX or MSNBC cable channels for an entire day would have seen about one minute on the environment. For local TV news, the number is so small it does not show up in research. In 1989, nightly network news coverage of the environment peaked with 774 minutes in that year. In 2003 that number had dropped to 132 minutes.

This situation is the result of a potent combination of several trends. Since it first gained attention in the 1970s, the environment beat has been transformed from exciting news about a new movement, including pollution spills, recycling efforts, rainforest destruction, and endangered charismatic mega fauna with dramatic photos to match. Now environment stories are more complicated and difficult. Reporters are faced with the task of describing the intricacies of how government regulations can quietly be changed to reverse laws protecting the environment, and explaining complex science stories about endocrine disruptors, mercury levels, or bio-engineering.

The stories are multileveled, scientific and global in nature. Rather than stories about immediate crises, the environment stories of today include the long-term effects of global climate change, rising prices of energy and westernization of cultures such as China and India. In a world of alive, local, and late breaking news, environment stories of today lack the qualities that appeal to news managers, newsroom consultants, and advertisers. As many environmental reporters say, environment stories don’t break they ooze. Some call them DBI (dull but important). This is a huge challenge for television, which must use resources, time, and creativity to provide visuals for stories like these. The problem is compounded by the fact that seventy percent of local news stories are less than one minute long.

Since 9/11 TV outlets have less time and money available to cover stories beyond the war on terror, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and related issues. TV outlets have been stretched so far, with fewer reporters and fewer bureaus, that they no longer have the resources to cover the environment. Other social issues are likewise being ignored. Reporter’s workloads have increased 20 percent since 1998. Even more telling, networks have closed so many foreign bureaus that by 2003, when the Pew study was conducted, no network had a bureau in Latin America, South America, Africa, India, or Pakistan.

Reporters often say they want to cover more environment stories, but their news managers prevent them from doing so. Many news managers see the environment beat as being somewhat liberal or as having an agenda, causing them to be resistant to story pitches on the subject. In many parts of the country, when stations say that they cover the environment, they include it primarily as part of stories on health, traffic, growth and sprawl, the economy or housing. Reporters say that this is the only way they can get environment stories on the air.

According to one study, which is currently in progress in New England, the South, and the Mountain West, about 12 percent of commercial TV stations have at least a part-time environment reporter. In the Pacific Northwest, about 19 percent of the stations have one. There are few, if any, full time environment reporters in commercial TV.

Reporters need a great deal of specialized training to cover the environment but they are not given the time or resources to attend the many excellent and often free training programs around the country. TV journalists still cover hard news environmental events. However instances of the enterprise story, where a reporter with knowledge and background comes up with an original story on his/her own, and then ferrets out information and investigates it, are rare.

Environmentalists complain that the coverage of their issues has dried up. They are frustrated that TV is so powerful and is still the place where most Americans get their information, yet it is devoid of coverage of the issues that environment experts feel are important. Some environmentalists have discovered that if they frame the issues within other stories on the economy, traffic, sprawl, health, food and cooking, or gardening, they have a better chance of getting a TV outlet to cover them. A few very savvy and experienced environmental organizations craft their work and research with media coverage in mind from the beginning.

The consolidation of major media outlets into fewer and fewer hands also has had an impact. Some environmentalists think that environmental stories challenge a networks ideology or corporate self-interest, I resulting in outright censorship.

Another significant development is the trend in broadcast and cable TV towards live interviews rather than prepared and edited packaged reports (complete stories with interviews and background information, put together by correspondents, their editors and producers). This allows for several sources and multiple angles or perspectives to be included, resulting in a higher quality story than if there is only one raw interview.

Although the three network newscasts and most local news still do consist primarily of reporters packaged stories, the morning network news and cable TV news have moved to extemporaneous interviews in the field, or anchor interviews of newsmakers or live chat on the set. Sometimes anchors will simply narrate a story over unedited videotape. The power to enterprise a story, check all sides and edit is important and is something that cannot be done in the anchor-interview format that now comprises most of morning news shows and cable TV news.

Cable TV and morning news network shows have a great deal of time available; however, evening network newscasts now have an average of only 18 minutes and 48 seconds per night to devote to news coverage.

Only one percent of all foundations support any media projects of any kind. This includes film, video, journalism, publishing, radio and television. Most of that is to public broadcasting. Funding for media projects declined dramatically between 2000 and 2001.

Conclusions
Many factors have converged in the media to result in a reduction in broadcast and cable television coverage of environmental issues. The reasons for this are complicated and require a deeper investigation than the scope of this report allows.

Much of what we found was that people from various constituencies are busy trying to figure out the formula for what works to get environmental information on TV. What is the secret? What will appeal to TV outlets? How do you get them to pay attention? How do you educate reporters and news managers and make them care about covering the environment? We believe that these are the wrong questions to ask. It is more important to ask questions that would address the actual, current situation in the media business.

All the suggestions we heard, including educating reporters, contacting news managers, producing interesting pieces for television, offering outlets goody stories, will not solve the problem if TV outlets do not have the time, budget or space for environment stories. Networks have no airtime to spare. Local stations have no resources to produce stories and they have a historical disinterest in outside produced pieces. Cable television has a lot of airtime but no resources to produce shows or packages.
Since many environmental issues are global, the impact of networks and cable stations closing many foreign bureaus may be contributing to the lack of coverage of these issues.

We saw a small amount of evidence that the resistance to using externally produced pieces may be lessening, especially in cable television. A partnership between a foundation or a nonprofit and a television outlet might be worth pursuing. This might work if it addresses the realities that the television outlet will not contribute any resources other than the air time, and that television will accept only information that is non-advocacy and non-ideological.

It is crucial for any media project to secure a commitment from the broadcast outlet before the project begins. Without a guarantee that the story will air, production costs are a waste of money.
The lack of depth, context and salience of today’s environment coverage on TV is just as important as the fact that there isn’t much of it. The trend towards live reports and anchor interviews and away from packages means journalists cannot double check what the interviewee is saying or balance it with opposing views or neutral experts. This means environment coverage, which is increasingly complex and difficult, will continue its downward slide and that the audience will get news from ever fewer sources. It is also troubling to think that this inexpensive, easy way to produce news might spread to all media outlets.

Since environmental issues are now covered in the context of other news, if they are covered at all, the complexities and focus are often lost. On the other hand, reporters and news managers are indicating that they understand that environment issues are intertwined with many different subjects.
Although funders feel that media support should function as part of an overall social change strategy, attempts to manipulate the news to include more environment coverage does not resonate positively with journalists and news managers and many are resentful of the implication that they may be used to engage activists or prompt policy change.

Everyone interested in this subject must give the who cares? factor serious consideration. What will make the average viewer care about a story on what is happening either in another country or ten years from now? It is not useful to say they should care. The fact is that Americans have a finite amount of time, energy, money and attention to devote to issues, even to those that have a direct and immediate impact on their lives.

Projects that produce or provide environment stories for television must take into account the size of the audience that will be reached. For example, the cable audience for the top three outlets is tiny compared to local TV news in just the major markets and compared to radio or network TV. Even in prime time, combined cable audiences comprise only 2.3 million people; combined network news audience is 30 million.

Avenues that might be explored to improve the level and quality of environment coverage could include finding ways to pay for programming or even purchasing air time; facilitating a presentation on the subject of environmental coverage to the Environmental Grant makers or the National Council on Foundations; convening a major conference that would include funders, environmental media groups, environment journalists, journalism professors and news managers.

Cynthia Perry
President
American Communications Foundation