Times of Environmental Activism in Journalism are Over
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In his interview for EkoForum, Michael Schweres, President of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), stressed the access to good and trustworthy information remains the biggest problem for journalists reporting on environmental issues. This interview was made in late September 2005, in Pozega (Croatia), during the First International Forum of Environmental Journalists, organized by the Croatian Environmental Press Centre.
When was your organization founded and how does it function?
The first aim IFEJ was to create a strong network of journalists that could enable them to improve their work through exchange of information, resources, knowledge and mutual assistance. We always say that we are as efficient and good as the network is strong. The strength lies in the journalists, but the network itself offers new possibilities. We didn’t receive big funds from other organizations. It wasn’t easy to locate and secure funds to finance our daily operations and administrative structure, which was the main reason why we decided to install a rather “loose” set-up. IFEJ maintains contacts with 117 countries. When I say contacts, I think of individual and institutional members. We also have people who work for us that are not formal members, and we also have “correspondents” who exchange information with us on regular basis. How many members do you have? We have two categories of membership – individual and institutional, for instance, the U.S. Association of Environmental Journalists has about 200 members. Realistically, I would say that we have about 7,000 members all over the world. We list among our members the French Association of Environmental Journalists, which is the oldest such association in Europe, and the Danish association. What is your relationship with journalists from Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro (SCG)? We do have some addresses, but no formal members, i.e. members that would pay the membership fee. That is not all that important, actually. We have the contact information for those journalists, especially in view of our regular contacts with the Regional Environmental Centre (REC), although these contacts are not all that intensive. What is the overall status of the environmental journalists and do you believe that they are as respected as the journalists covering politics or economics? It depends on us, really, for we are journalists that write about the environment, which makes it an imperative to give that aspect to every single story we produce. When you write about sports, say golf, you can put the fact that golf terrains use a lot of water in your story. If you use the environmental aspects of a story in an intelligent fashion, I don’t think that the editors will ever refuse a story. You can write about the environment when you cover the issue of land-mines. To what extent has ecology become ideology of the present times? How can the journalists covering the environment avoid proselytizing? I believe that the times of environmental activism, which has taken a lot of space in the media, have passed. I also think that we should be aware the both sides wish to use the journalists: the politics that wishes to prove that whatever is done is very positive and, on the other hand, the NGOs that wish to show that whatever politicians do is bad. It is upon us to find the middle ground. What is the difference between between environmental journalists in Western and Eastern Europe? The difference is that in the East, the distinction between activists and journalists is less visible than in the Western countries. There is less activism in the West, while in the East, what we have in place is a much greater personal involvement, which makes the journalists much more emotionally involved in the issue they believe is fundamentally unjust. It is harder to maintain objectivity if one is personally involved, looking at a country that suffered through a war, difficulties, a country with its nouveau riche, while the journalist can’t follow an issue to the end because of incomplete infrastructure. What kind of pressure do the journalists suffer from the business sector? Are there differences in that regard between the West and the East? One of the most important problems, here as well as in the West, is the access to valid and relevant information, and sometimes the availability of means to make the companies and other institutions to provide you with such an information. After the Chernobyl, you couldn’t access the university measurements in Germany, because the local authorities didn’t want to provide you with information you could publish, claiming that the results were not independently confirmed. One year after the radioactive cloud passed the French Alps, a Minister in the government lied that there was no danger and that the results of the measurements were incorrect. Another problem lies in the fact that everybody would want to “buy” the good opinion of the press – sometimes with invitations to receptions and other celebrations, sometimes with small gifts, sometimes other things. The press has been “infected” with that problem, which creates increased dependency. Then again, it all depends on the journalist. What can you do to help journalists under pressure? Can IFEJ offer some form of protection? We try to do that. What we can do is create a public opinion. If, for example, a journalist from SCG was fired from his job because of a story he/she published, or is threatened with prison, we can report that to the whole world. A Saudi journalist wrote about a sheik who used falcons to hunt endangered species of birds, and we published his stories on the web and in France. We can’t, however, have “eyes and ears” all over the world, which makes the national networks all that important, networks that would be strong and capable of informing IFEJ about the problems in individual countries. Which are the main trends in environmental journalism and where do you see its future? The general trend is that you can’t offer purely environmental stories, but stories that also include environmental aspects. The global rule is that bad news are good news; the best case scenario for an environmental journalist would be a nuclear disaster, but that is not what we would like to see. We have to seek environmental approach to every story. Some scientific experience or knowledge is always helpful, in order to understand the subject you cover – some environmental problems are increasingly complex, but as always, the feeling to recognize a story is still the most important thing for a journalist. One needs to cooperate with people that could explain the core of a problem to the readers. You can’t be expert o everything; cross-border environmental problems, for instance, may include issues of international law, national legislation and other areas. What is the greatest environmental problem today? It is us, the people. I once saw a poster with a nuclear mushroom over a city, with the text “No mouse would ever think of building a mousetrap”. |
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