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Show 30 relationship between the press and the efforts of the government and industry to influence press coverage of conservation issues, including land preservation and the national parks. Perhaps one of the problems surrounding the lack of historical research on environmental journalism is the difficulty in defining environmental journalism. Although environmental issues were covered in the press before the 1960s, they were not referred to as such, and "environmental journalism" was not a term used until later in the twentieth century. Perhaps when some people refer to the 1960s as "the birth of environmental journalism," they arc simply referring to an increase in environmental coverage, or the creation of the environmental beat, not necessarily the origins.80 Michael Frorne, the author of a contemporary textbook on environmental journalism, defines environmental journalism as "writing with a purpose, designed to present the public with sound, accurate data as the basis of informed participation in the process of decision making on environmental issues."81 Under that definition, it is easy to apply the label of environmental journalist to many journalists and nonjournalists before 1he 1960s - from the exploration narratives of Christopher Columbus and the nature w riting of Ralph Waldo Emerson and I lenry David Thoreau to Benjamin Franklin, who used his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1739 to protest against the slaughterhouses and tanneries tha1 were polluting Dock Crcck.82 The definition could also apply to journalists who championed the conservation movement at the turn of the century while promoting AO Sec for example Da11id B. Sachsman, ''The Birth ofEn\•ironmcntal Joumalism," SEJ011rnal 12, no. 2 (Fall2000). 15. Michael Fromc, Green Ink: An ln1rod11c1ion to Eni,ironmental Journalism (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. 1998), ix. 81 12 Kovarik, "Green Crusaders and the News Media." |
