History of environmental journalism

1. History of
Environmental
Journalism
Part 1: Before Earth Day
by Prof. Bill Kovarik

2. Intended for classroom lectures
This slide presentation is intended for use in university
classrooms. Nearly all illustrations are taken from the public
domain, but a few of critical importance are included under
the “fair use” copyright exemption for classroom teaching,
Title 17: 107, “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news
reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom
use), scholarship, or research...”
Please direct comments or questions to Prof. Bill Kovarik,
bill.kovarik at gmail dot com. Thank you.

3. HISTORY of EJ
• It’s not new -- These issues and conflicts have
engaged writers and observers for millennia.
• Climate science deniers like Nigel Calder often say that
environmental journalism just popped up to advance the climate
hoax. This is simply not true, as we will see.
• Past controversies are similar – Centuries ago,
people worried about air and water pollution, preventing
disease, conserving land forests and animals, declining
resources, undue influence by business, just as they do
today.
• The issues were often covered by the media of their
era, as would be expected.

4. EJ main themes
• Human impacts on nature over millennia
– Covering the sciences such as geography, forestry, ecology,
dendrology, glaciology, etc.
• Nature writing and conservation advocacy
– Romantic writers: Thoreau, Emerson, John Muir, Grey Owl
– Wise use versus preservation: T. Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot
– Science writers: Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, many others
• Urban environment and public health
– Vitruvius, Agricola, Ramazzini, Rudolf Carl Virchow, Jane Addams, Alice Hamilton,
Clair Patterson, Joseph Needleman, Ellen Silbergeld, etc.
– Disease, sanitation, smoke, drinking water, parks, chemical pollution etc.
• Technology regulation
– Examples: Steamboats 1850, smoke abatement from 1890s, Leaded gas and
radium 1920s-30s, chemicals and air pollution from the 1940s, pesticides
1960s, water pollution 1970s, nuclear power 1980s, climate change 1990s,
endocrine disruptors 2000s…

5. Science & democracy linked
The democratic process and the
applications of science … are
intimately intertwined, for
science does not operate in a
vacuum… Discussions on the air
or at the corner store revolve
about these two central
Vannevar subjects… (which are always) in
Bush, 1949 the background. They determine
our destiny, and well we know
it.”

6. “The world today is …
powered by science… To
abdicate an interest in
science is to walk with eyes
open toward slavery.”
“If we are anything we must be a democracy of
the intellect. We must not perish by the
distance between people and power, by which
Babylon and Egypt and Rome failed. And that
distance can only be closed if knowledge sits in
the homes and heads of people with no
ambition to control others, and not in isolated
seats of power.”
-- Jacob Bronowski, 1956 and 1973

7. "I have a foreboding of ... a (future)
service and information economy ...
when awesome technological powers
are in the hands of a very few, and no
one representing the public interest
can even grasp the issues; when the
people have lost the ability to set
their own agendas or knowledgeably
question those in authority ...
The dumbing-down of America is most evident in
the slow decay of substantive content in the
enormously influential media … ”
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World, Random House, 1995

8. Science communication
• Pliny the Elder –
– Historia Naturalis 1st C.
• Marcus Vitruvius Polli, Architect 80 – 15 BCE
– Noted occupational diseases of miners
• Galen, Greek Physician
129 – 217 CE
• Marco Polo – Exploration 1254 – 1324
• Columbus – Exploration 1490s
– printing press magnified impact of explorations

9. De Re Mettalica – 1556
An environmentally conscious textbook on mining
Agricola’s book concerns assaying, mining
and smelting metals, and contains strong
warnings about occupational hazards.
"The critics say further that mining is a
perilous occupation to pursue because the
miners are sometimes killed by the
pestilential air which they breathe;
sometimes their lungs rot away...”
Agricola also noted that some Italian city-
states passed laws against mining because
of its effects on woodlands, fields,
vineyards and olive groves

10. Fumifugium 1661
• 1661 -- John Evelyn writes "Fumifugium, or the
Inconvenience of the Aer and Smoake of London
Dissipated" to propose remedies for London's air
pollution problem. These include large public parks and
lots of flowers.
• "The immoderate use of, and indulgence to, sea-coale in
the city of London exposes it to one of the fowlest
inconveniences and reproaches that can possibly befall
so noble and otherwise incomparable City...
• Whilst they are belching it forth their sooty jaws, the
City of London resembles the face rather of Mount
Aetna, the Court of Vulcan... or the suburbs of Hell
[rather] than an assembly of rational creatures..."

11. Occupational
Diseases
Recognized
1712
• Bernardo Ramazzini (1633 - 1714), the father of occupational
medicine, publishes De Morbis Artificum Diatriba
• Ramazzini also noticed that nuns tended to have a higher incidence of
breast cancer and that lead miners and workers often had skin the
same color as the metal. “Demons and ghosts are often found to
disturb the [lead] miners,” he said.

12. Philadelphia 1739
Dock Creed conflict
One of first reported
environmental conflicts in US
• May 15 -- Benjamin Franklin, editor of the
Gazette, and his neighbors petition Pennsylvania
Assembly to stop dumping in Dock Creek and remove
the slaughterhouses and tanneries from Philadelphia's
commercial district.
• William Bradford, editor of the Mercury, responds
in alarm: “A Daring Attempt (attack) on the Liberties of
the Tradesmen of Philadelphia."

13. Franklin writes
"A Petition from a great Number of
the Inhabitants of the City of
Philadelphia, was presented to
the House, and read; setting forth
the great Annoyance arising from
Slaughter-Houses, Tan-Yards,
Skinner Lime-Pits, & c. erected on
the publick Dock, and Streets,
adjacent.”

14. (continued)
Franklin argued for "public rights,"
and said the restraints on the
liberty of the tanners would be
"but a trifle" compared to the
"damage done to others, and the
city, by remaining where they
are."

15. Benjamin Franklin
• 1739 -- Benjamin Franklin and neighbors
petition Pennsylvania Assembly to stop
waste dumping and remove tanneries from
Philadelphia's commercial district. Foul
smell, lower property values, disease and
interference with fire fighting are cited. The
industries complain that their rights are
being violated, but Franklin argues for
"public rights." Franklin and the
environmentalists win a symbolic battle but
the dumping goes on.

16. • The tanners win the argument in 1739 and stage a parade
through city. Andrew Bradford of the Mercury says:
– “They must be fine nos’d (nosed) that can distinguish the smell of
Tannyards from that of the Common sink of near half Philadelphia…”
• Franklin responds in the Gazette: It wasn't an attack on the
liberties of the tanners but rather "only a modest Attempt to
deliver a great Number of Tradesmen from being poisoned by a
few, and restore to them the Liberty of Breathing freely in their
own Houses."

17. The industrial revolution
The Luddites were skilled textile workers who
originally worked at home. They were replaced by
low-skilled workers at steam powered looms in the
early 1800s. Between 1811 and 1814, riots of
starving workers occurred inside and outside the
factories. Frame-breaking (sabotage) was the main
goal. A show trial in York in 1813 led to executions.
Press reaction was not sympathetic.
“London, and many places in the interior of
England, appear to be in a most dreadful
state, from murders, assassinations,
Ned Ludd, the leader, was
robberies and riots, caused, no doubt, by a mythical figure of the
the pressure of the times.” times like Robin Hood
Niles Register (Baltimore, MD) 2:70, March 28, 1812.

18. Byron defends the Luddites
“During the short time I recently passed in
Nottingham, not twelve hours elapsed
without some fresh act of violence…
Whilst these outrages must be admitted
to exist to an alarming extent, it cannot
be denied that they have arisen from
circumstances of the most unparalleled
distress…
“As the sword is the worst argument that
can be used, so should it be the last…
Feb. 27, 1812 House of Lords

19. Reporting the violence
London Times covered the violence and
the trials but not the workers problems
or Byron’s plea for justice.
May 23, 1812
Jan. 12, 1813.

20. Audubon’s 1827
Birds of America
John James Audubon’s book was an
enormous success when it was printed
in Britain in various editions beginning in
1827.
It was a monumental work with large
page sizes featuring 435 hand-colored,
life-size prints of 497 bird species.
The book’s success signaled a new
interest in nature and in the
environment.

21. The moon hoax of 1835
Few standards existed
for science and
environmental reporting
in the new Penny Press
papers of the 1830s …
“We could perceive that their wings possessed great expansion and were
similar in structure of those of the bat, being a semitransparent membrane
expanded in curvilinear divisions by means of straight radii, united at the
back by dorsal integuments…” New York Sun, August 1835.

22. Science was taken far more
seriously in the new publica-
tions emerging in the mid-19th
century. Some (like Scientific
American) were originally for
non-scientists and featured
technology advances (like the
Brush 1887 wind generator).

23. Environmental
Photography
• Bisson brothers were
French photographers
and alpine enthusiasts
whose mid-19th century
photos illuminated
nature.
• "La crevasse,” taken in 1862, during the
ascent of Mont Blanc.
• Ansel Adams will use some of the same
techniques a century later.

24. Social reform
movements
• Reformers awaken in
the late 1700s – mid-
1800s.
• The emerging press is
there to cover the
controversies.
Gin Lane – engraving by
William Hogarth 1750

26. Dickensian London
• "Smoke lowering down from
chimney-pots, making a soft black
drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big
as full-grown snow flakes -- gone into
mourning, one might imagine, for the
death of the sun." -- Bleak House,
1852
• Other authors -- Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, Francis Trollope, Elizabeth
Gaskill -- inundate Victorian England
with grave tales about child workers
and diseased towns …
• Reform spirit is sparked
Fleet Street, c. 1850

27. Reform & Reaction
Alexis de Tocqueville, Journey to England, 1835
"Thirty or forty factories rise on the tops of the hills...six
stories (high). The wretched dwellings of the poor are
scattered haphazard around them. Round them stretches
land uncultivated but without the charm of rustic nature.,,
the fetid, muddy waters stained with a thousand colours
by the factories ... Look up and all around this place and
you will see the huge palaces of industry. You will hear
the noise of furnaces, the whistle of steam. These vast
structures keep air and light out of the human habitations
which they dominate; they envelope them in perpetual
fog; here is the slave, there the master; there is the wealth
of some, here the poverty of most."

28. Reform & Reaction
Frances Trollope, Michael Armstrong: Factory Boy, 1840
"My eye caught the little figures of a multitude of children,
made … visible, even by that dim light, by the strong relief
in which their dark garments showed themselves against
the snow. A few steps farther brought me in full view of
the factory gates, and then I perceived considerably
above two hundred of these miserable little victims to
avarice all huddled together on the ground … I knew full
well what, and how great, was the terror [of beating by mill
foremen] which had brought them there too soon, and in
my heart of hearts I cursed the boasted manufacturing
wealth of England, which … gives power, lawless and
irresistible, to overwhelm and crush the land it pretends to

29. Reform & Reaction
• 1820 -- Child labor reforms
proposed by Jeremy Bentham
• 1830 -- Thomas Southwood Smith publishes his Treatise
on Fever, arguing that the poor are impoverished by fever,
which was preventable.
• 1831 – House of Commons Factory Commission begins
investigating abuses of workers;
•1833 -- Poor laws commission begins inquiry.
•1842 – Royal Commission on Employment of children in
the mines issues report about “cruel slaving revolting to
humanity.”

30. Reform & Reaction
• 1848 -- Public Health Act -- National Board of Health is
formed and leads local boards to regulate water supply,
sewerage, offensive trades and smoke.
Illustrated London
News, October
1849.
Meeting of the
General Board of
Health, Gwydyr
House, Whitehall
Chadwick on right.

31. Despite the obvious need
for reform, the board is a
catastrophic
political failure …
Aug 1, 1854 London Times

32. UK Sanitary reform movement
• Political cycles driven by press
• Overwhelming evidence frequently denied
– “We prefer to take our chance of cholera than be bullied
into public health…” Times of London, Aug. 1, 1854
• Reform agencies empowered 1848, then
disbanded 1854, then reorganized 1862
• Dramatic, symbolic action (John Snow)
catalyzed commitments to reform

33. Punch Magazine, London, 1852

34. Cholera comes back - 1854

35. Sept. 7, 1854 – John Snow breaks the Broad Street pump handle. (Library of Congress)

36. Michael
Faraday
handing his
“card” to
Father Thames
Punch magazine, 1858
(This was an early version of
a Secchi disk test for water
turbidity)

37. Punch July 3, 1858 - Diptheria, scrufula, cholera
Subtitle: A design for a fresci in the new Houses of Parliament

39. Meanwhile ….
Romantic writers rejoice in nature
• Ralph Waldo Emerson: The stars awaken a certain
reverence, because though always present, they are
inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred
impression, when the mind is open to their influence.
Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither
does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his
curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature
never became a toy to a wise spirit...

40. Romantic writers rejoice in nature
• HD Thoreau: "I went to the woods
because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if I
could not learn what it had to
teach, and not, when I came to
die, discover that I had not lived…”

41. Horace Greeley
The New York Tribune publisher and
editor, well-known for his love of the
North American wilderness, visited
Yosemite in the summer of 1859.
"I know of no single wonder of nature on
earth which can claim superiority over
Yosemite." He called on the state of
California to protect "the most beautiful
trees on earth." The mountains "surpass
any other mountains I saw."

42. George Grinnell
• Editor of Forest and Stream
1876 – 1911
• Prominent in Western
conservation movement,
backing exploration, national
parks, conservation of wildlife
• Wrote about wildlife
preservation and hunting with
Teddy Roosevelt

43. “Sport” hunting in Wisconsin

44. John Muir
• Preservation versus “wise use”
• Muir was well-known as a writer,
philosopher and naturalist and an
expert in publicity. Greeley hired him
to write on the Yosemite Glaciers in
the New York Tribune in 1871, the
first of 65 newspaper and magazine
articles he wrote over the next 20
years.
Muir fought the Roosevelt and Taft administrations over the Hetch-
Hetchy dam – a water reservoir for San Francisco that Muir said
wasn’t needed. But Roosevelt had the highest respect for him.

45. Environmental controversy and
Progressive era journalism
• Animal conservation
– “Teddy bear” symbol
– Bird depletion for hats:
“millinery murder”
– Bison extinction:
“crime of the century”
– “Church” of animal rights
• Smoke nuisance
• Water pollution

46. Air pollution –
a constant issue
in the press
Washington DC, USDA, 1920

47. Graphic & research by Prof. Bill Kovarik

48. Graphic & research by Prof. Bill Kovarik

49. Graphic & research by Prof. Bill Kovarik

50. Reform spirit
New York City 1878

51. Muckraking and monopoly
• History of Standard Oil
-- Ida Tarbell
• Railroads on Trial
-- Ray Stannard Baker
• The Jungle
– Upton Sinclair

52. Urban
environmental
issues
• Slum housing / Pulitzer, Jacob Riis
• Child labor / Lewis Hine
• Air and water pollution

53. Why muckrakers needed magazines
• The newspaper is the
mouthpiece of an older stock. It
lags behind the thought of its
times. . . . To us of this younger
generation, our daily press is
speaking, for the most part,
with a dead voice, because …
power resides in … that older
generation.
Will Irwin, 1911

54. Patent medicines

55. Progressive fight
for public health
Samuel Hopkins
Adams
1871 - 1958
• Started in 1891 as a reporter for the
New York Sun
• McClure's Magazine, wrote about
public health
• Famous for Collier's Weekly series in
1905, "The Great American Fraud”
– Led to the passage of the 1906
Pure Food and Drug Act and
1914 Federal Trade Act

56. "Criminal' abortions arise from a
perverted sex relationship under the
stress of economic necessity, and their
greatest frequency is among married
women.” -- The Woman Rebel - No
Gods, No Masters, May 1914, Vol. 1,
No. 3.
"I cannot refrain from saying that
women must come to recognize there
is some function of womanhood other
than being a child-bearing machine.”--
What Every Girl Should Know, by
Margaret Sanger (Max Maisel,
Publisher, 1915)

57. The traditional paradigm:
Science writing was Yellow journalism
• “Magic or miracles, if not mere ridicule.”
– David J. Rhees, historian
• “It was standard practice to assign the staff
humorist to cover local scientific conventions.”
• Favorite topics included the length of beards and the papers
with the longest and least familiar words.
• Pulitzer’s New York World ran a column called “Wonders of
Science.” Favored topic - cures for cancer, especially
by mysterious radiation or colored lights.

58. Science writing as yellow journalism
William Randolph Hearst’s
Journal – American editors
headlined lab tests
showing that oysters, ice
and milk sold throughout
New York city were
contaminated.
– Legitimate public health
issues but hysterical framing
was typical
– The hunt for Typhoid Mary
took place from about 1911
to 1915.

59. Sewage in oysters and ice – 1906 – 1916

60. AP dominance resented
News coverage of coal controversies has always been contested, but
when the Associated Press printed only anti-labor views from
newspapers owned by the coal industry, a socialist magazine called the
Masses protested in 1914 with this cartoon showing AP dripping lies
into the water reservoir of the news. AP sued The Masses for libel, but
later dropped the suit.

61. Fun with science
• If science was even mentioned in a newspaper in the early
1900s, “it was in terms of magic or miracles, if not mere
ridicule,” said historian David J. Rhees.
• “It was standard practice to assign the staff humorist to cover
local scientific conventions.” The humorists would typically
comment either on the length and luxuriousness of the
beards worn by the assembled scientists or on the titles of
papers which contained the longest and least familiar words,
Rhees observed.

62. “Suppose it’s Halley’s Comet.
Well first you have a half-page of
decoration showing the comet, with
historical pictures of previous
appearances.
If you can work a pretty girl into the
decoration, so much the better.
If not, get some good nightmare idea like
the inhabitants of Mars watching it
pass.
Then… a two column boxed ‘freak’
containing a scientific opinion which
nobody will understand, just to give it
class…” 1985 Time Magazine
-- Unnamed NY World editor, around 1912 (Emery, 1972).

63. Carr Van Anda
Worked for a new and more serious approach to
science news
• Well versed in math (said to have once
corrected a poor transcription of one of
Albert Einstein’s equations).
New York Times • Positivistic, pro-industry approach to
editor 1906 - 1932 science coverage
• Relied mostly on industry sources, not
university professors or public health
advocates, in environmental controversies

64. E.W. Scripps
Founder of Scripps newspaper chain
• Founded United Press wire
service to counter AP
monopoly
• Fascinated by science
• Founded Scripps
Oceanographic Institute
• Founded Scripps Science
Service 1922

65. Walter Lippmann
NY World (Pulitzer)
• Relied on university and public
health scientists more than
industry
• Championed the cause of the
“radium girls” in 1928
• Scientific controversy
exemplified the difficulties of
informed democracy;
• Science also represented a
powerful institution that could
stem the tide of totalitarianism

67. Scripps
Science Service
founded 1922
• Detailed
science news
• Tended to
celebrate
science
• Popularization
not debate

69. Ethyl leaded gas conflict 1924-26
• Media reported “mystery gas”
killing workers at Standard Oil
refinery in Oct. 1924
• Standard asked that “nothing
be said about this in the public
interest.”
• Standard claimed there were no
alternatives, blamed the press
for biased and sensational
news coverage

70. Nat’l Coast Anti-Pollution League 1921
Mayors and hotel owners from East Coast beach towns organized to fight oil
pollution, which was ruining their beaches. By the end of the decade, sewage and
garbage was closing beaches from Coney Island to Atlantic City. Extensive press
coverage due to celebrity leaders, eg Gifford Pinchot

72. Ethyl conflict source reliance

73. Pulitzer’s
World
• Environmental
issues are clearly
part of the news
agenda in 1928
•

74. Dust
Bowl
Margaret Bourke-White
writes in The Nation:
By coincidence I was in the same parts of the country where last year I photographed the drought,
As short a time as eight months ago there was an attitude of false optimism. “Things will get
better,” the farmers would say. “We’re not as hard hit as other states. The government will help
out. This can’t go on.” But this year there is an atmosphere of utter, hopelessness. Nothing to do.
No use digging out your chicken coops and pigpens after the last “duster” because the next one
will be coming along soon. No use trying to keep the house clean. No use fighting off that
foreclosure any longer. No use even hoping to give your cattle anything to chew on when their
food crops have literally blown out of the ground. ( “Dust Changes America” The Nation May 22
1935 )

75. Dorothea Lange
The story behind the famous “Migrant
Mother” photo of 1936 is that something
impossible to ignore – a feeling -- drew
Lange to the “pea pickers camp” where
Dust Bowl refugees, like Florence
Thompson, hoped to find work. As Lange
took the photos, Thompson told her that
she had just sold the tires from her car to
feed the children. Lange published the
photos but also ensured that relief
authorities sent help to the camp.

76. Science news goes mainstream
• NASW founded 1934
• 1937 Science pulitzers
– Gobind Lal (Hearst)
– William L. Laurence (NY Times)
– David Dietz (Scripps-Howard)
– Howard W. Blakeslee (AP)
– John J. O’Neill (Herald Tribune)
“We must make science accessible to the people. Otherwise it is dangerous.” --
Gobind Lal

79. Miracles 1951

81. Miracles 1951

82. Wm. Laurence & the atom bomb
• In 2004, journalists Amy Goodman and David Goodman called for
the Pulitzer Board to strip William L. Laurence and The New York
Times of the 1946 Pulitzer Prize. Laurence “had a front-page story in
the Times disputing the notion that radiation sickness was killing
people.” They concluded that "his faithful parroting of the
government line was crucial in launching a half-century of silence
about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb.” Others have
disputed this assessment.
William L. Laurence (left) and J. Robert Oppenheimer
(right), talking at the Trinity Site in September 1945.

83. Air pollution 1939
• St Louis Post Dispatch crusades against “smoke nuisance,” wins 1941 Pulitzer

84. Air Pollution 1940s – 50s
Donora, Pennsylvania
Oct. 30 -- 31 1948 smog
incident. Twenty people
died, 600 hospitalized
and thousands suffering
in this nationally
publicized
environmental disaster.

85. London
1952 -- Dec. 4-8 -- Four
thousand people die
in the worst of the
London "killer fogs."
Vehicles use lamps
in broad daylight,
but smog is so thick
that busses run only
with a guide walking
ahead. By Dec. 8 all
transportation
except the subway
had come to a halt.

86. • 1953 -- New York smog incident kills between 170
and 260 in November.

87. Los Angeles 1954
• Heavy smog
conditions shut
down industry
and schools in Los
Angeles for most
of October.

90. New York, St Louis 1950s

91. Life Magazine info-graphic on
Air pollution, 1963

92. Conservation: The “blister brigade”
• Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas leads the "blister brigade" of Washington Post staffers and
families down the old Chesapeake and Ohio canal from Cumberland, Md. to Washington D.C. in one of
his spring hikes. In March, 1954, Douglas challenged their support of a highway to replace the C&O
Canal. The area became a 12,000 acre national park in 1971 thanks largely to these efforts. (National
Park Service Photo)

93. Rachel Carson
• May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964
• Biologist and writer, author of
award winning books
• Silent Spring published in the
New Yorker in the noisy
summer of 1963
• Said DDT and other pesticides
are killing birds in large
numbers
• Widely reported in press along
with chemical industry counter-
attacks.

94. Robert F. Kennedy 67-68 campaign

95. Earthrise photo: NASA, Apollo 8, Christmas eve, 1968

96. Environmental
photography
Ansel Adams

97. Photography as
environmental journalism
W. Eugene Smith,
Minamata, Japan 1971
Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath -- This photo had an enormous impact when
published June 2, 1972 as the centerpiece of a short Minamata photo essay
in Life Magazine. Smith was severely beaten by thugs hired by the Chisso
Corp., whose Minamata plant discharged the mercury that caused
“Minamata disease.”
At the wishes of Tomoko Uemura's family, and the Smith family,
reproduction of the photo has been discouraged since 1997. However, as
an important artifact of the history of environmental journalism, it has been
reproduced in small low-resolution format here.

98. The Tragedy of the Commons
• 1968 -- Garrett Hardin
publishes his article in Science
• "Every new enclosure of the
commons involves the infringement
of somebody's personal liberty...
cries of "rights" and "freedom" fill
the air. But what does "freedom"
mean? When men mutually agreed
to pass laws against robbing,
mankind became more free, not less
so. Individuals locked into the logic of
the commons are free only to bring
on universal ruin …”

99. Two Pulitzers 1967 for EJ
Milwaukee Journal “For its successful campaign to
stiffen the law against water pollution in
Wisconsin, a notable advance in the national
effort for the conservation of natural resources.”
Louisville Courier-Journal “For its successful
campaign to control the Kentucky strip mining
industry, a notable advance in the national effort
for the conservation of natural resources.”

100. Press begins regular coverage
• 1969 - 2013 New York Times
has formal environment beat.
• Time and Saturday Review began regular
environment sections
• Look Magazine devotes issue to the ecology
crisis
• National Geographic begins regular articles
on environmental problems.

101. Broadcasting
& environmental journalism
CBS Evening News with Walter
Cronkite had an occasional feature
called: "Can the World Be Saved?
AP article left AP, Dec. 9, 1970.

102. River on Fire
Cuyahoga River
June 22,1969
News reporters meet with Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes and utilities director
Ben Stefanski the day after the river caught fire. Stokes was angry that
extensive local efforts to clean up the river had been stymied by state
regulators who were more interested in protecting businesses. (Photos by
Cleveland Plain Dealer)

103. Earth Day 1970
Earth Day 1970 was a symbolic, social,
media event that marked a turning point in
public attitudes toward the environment.
Carter was a Washington Post reporter.
From the WP, Earth Day, April 22, 1970

104. Thank you