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Show 32 more environmentalist thanjoumalist." 84 I low this debate is decided in contemporary journalism has implications for how to approach historical research. From the 1960s, scholars and professionals outside the specialized field of environmental reporting were debating this issue in relation to other types of journalism. Gaye Tuchman called the journalists' efforts at objectivity a "strategic ritual" that allowed reporters to escape responsibility for the subjectivity in their writing.85 Todd Gitlin asserted that norms of objectivity reinforced the dominant hegemony.st> Other scholars have argued that objectivity docs not exist.&? John Palen noted: "The founding and early development of SEJ is situated at the intersection of two areas of scholarly research: {l) the rise of environmental journalism as a specialty field and (2) the development of the ideal of objectivity in American joumalism.'.s8 Teya Ryan, a founding director of SEJ, argued that advocacy journalism was necessary for environmental coverage because it empowers people. "Moreover the environment may be the one area where the issues arc so crucial and so complex that it is imperative reporters offer the public some guidance," she wrote. 89 She blamed the ~ Joann Myer Valenti, "Ethical Decision Making in Environmental Communication," Jo11ma/o/Mass Media Ethics 13 (1998): 219. uGayc Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An E:,,.:arnination of Newsmen's Notions of Objectivity," The American Journal ofSociology 77, no. 4 (January 1972): 660-679. "Todd Gitlin, The Whole World ls Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking ofthe New Left ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). Dorothy Nelkin, Selling Science: How the Press Co1·ers Science and Technology, re\/. ed. (New York Freeman, 1995),87-88. •1 sA Palen, ·-Objec1ivi1y as hidepcndence," Science Communication, 157. 89 Tcya Ryan, "Network Earth: Advocacy, Journalism and the Environment." in Mediaa,1d rhe £11vironmen1, eds. Craig L. LaMay and Everell E. Dennis (Washington, DC: Island Press. 1991 ), 85. |
