Cover the Planet

By David Poulson

You’ve got to love a Web site that advances journalism not so much with dazzling technology but by emphasizing basic journalistic values.

That’s pretty much what they do over at Politifact.com. Journalists there truth-test political statements. And in a nod toward the shades of gray that make such a pursuit so challenging, they use a truth-o-meter with a bottom setting wonderfully titled “pants on fire.”

I’m hardly the only fan of this St. Petersburg Times site. It won the 2009 Pulitzer for national reporting for coverage of the 2008 election.

That’s nice. But checking veracity hardly need be limited to national election coverage. That’s a good function for a journalist covering anything, especially the environment. There are certainly enough extreme claims by a variety of people on a raft of environmental issues.

Maybe too often we get caught up in stitching together complex stories. Perhaps we should focus more on parsing issues for the truth, even dribbling bits of it out over time as we learn more.

Reporting what people say about the environment is easy. Checking out what they say requires time. But it certainly isn’t brain surgery. And it’s the kind of thing sure to drive readership, and emphasize the value that professional reporters bring to information-gathering’s wild west.

Now the folks at Politifact give you a headstart. Check out this YouTube primer on how they do it:

By David Poulson

So Al Gore is backing a move to create a new top level .eco domain name.

This strikes me as an environmental communications disaster - and an excellent example of why we need journalists who report on the environment.

The folks pushing for the annointing of .eco say it should be

“…established for individuals to express their support for environmental causes, for companies to promote their environmental initiatives, and for environmental organizations to maintain their websites in a namespace that is more relevant to their core missions.”

They say their goal is to  “…increase awareness of ecological issues and to fund scientific initiatives and research related to the environment.”

Maybe. But here’s my gripe: Just whose awareness are we increasing? This sounds an awful lot like preaching to the choir. Like it or not, you slap “eco” on anything - let alone something as high profile as a top level domain - and you’ve immediately polarized your audience.

It has a tremendous appeal to certain consumers of news and information. For others, it inspires eye-rolling disdain for yet another “greenie” initiative - one now linked to the even more polarizing Al Gore.

How many people suspicious of the legitimacy of environmental issues will turn to a .eco domain for information?

That’s why journalists who cover the environment are needed more than ever.

I’ve chosen my words carefully here. We need journalists who cover the environment, not environmental journalists. The environment is too important to leave to a dwindling caste of environmental reporters, regardless of their significant skills. The environment transcends society. It should also transcend beat structure.

If you’re a reporter of any kind, you need to include the environmental angle of what you cover. It is too important not to.

Journalists of all stripes work at the interface of advocates and eye-rollers. We evaluate information and stitch together our best shot at truth, accuracy and a full accounting of what’s at stake.

Heaven knows we fail. And certainly there are well-documented cases of the dangers of attempting to inject a false and misleading balance into what we do. I don’t endorse that.

But if the environment is as important of a beat as knowledgeable people claim, then news of it can’t be confined to those who already get it.

The role of the journalist is to chisel away at barriers to understanding. The Internet wonderfully makes available a tremendous amount of information which should enhance that understanding. But it also allows us to select news and information that comfortably reinforces our pre-conceived notions.

Journalists afflict the comfortable.

Creation of a .eco domain strikes me as yet another exercise in comfortable high-profile silo building.

Journalists should be in the business of tearing those down.