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The Press Gazette have announced the winners of their inaugural Environmental Journalism awards, and illustrated in one move what a strange and contradictory thing such events can be. First of all, what the judges got right before what they got totally wrong.

Most importantly, the special commendation for Newcastle’s Evening Chronicle and it’s Go Green initiatives over the course of a year. The relationship between regional living, local media and environmental sustainability may be one of circumstance as much as anything, but initiatives such as the Transition Town movement over here and the Locavores in the US provide a hint that regional media can both survive the industry downturn and develop ecological living patterns through such environmentally-focused editorial. The Chronicle are running their own awards for local environmental champions.

Scoring a couple of half-points for nearly right decisions, the judges (BBC Newsnight’s Justin Rowlatt, former Gloucestershire Echo editor Anita Syvret, Co-op Environment manager Chris Shearlock, Greenpeace communications director Ben Stewart and Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford) also gave a highly commended certificate to Fiona Harvey of the Financial Times and to The Independent’s Johann Hari for Story of the Year: The Cruel Sea, his investigation into the possible effects of climate change on Bangladesh.

Only half right, because

a) Fiona is a much better journalist than the winner, Richard Girling of the Sunday Times Magazine.

Of Girling, the judges said this:

“He argues complex issues with clarity, an unassailable knowledge of his subject, intelligence, and humour, offering all sides of the debate without preaching. His writing style is captivating, keeping even the most hardened eco-sceptic turning the pages through more than 2,000 words.”

So, did the judges read the article? I read it when it was first published, how eco-towns will be the ’slums of the future’, and I just re-read it this morning, and it has left me considering what exact definition the judges used to define the term ‘environmental journalism” - definitions are always a problem.

Girling is a clever, subtle, intelligent and notable writer–even captivating. I don’t often read the Sunday Times, but I read this article. But environmental…? What does that mean. His writing is no doubt conservative, with a small c, but the tone and tenor of this article, to which the judges refer, is one of scathing poltiical failure on behalf of the government–it is almost secondary that it is about the environment at all. “His writing style is captivating, keeping even the most hardened eco-sceptic turning the pages.” Not a surprise, really, when the article is so clearly set out to play to eco-sceptic viewpoints, e.g.:

All this reinforces the obvious argument that the only genuine eco-communities are the existing towns and cities, which have infrastructure already in place, and that the most sustainable form of development, exemplified around Cambridge, is the “densification” of the urban fringe.

Really? So what about the Transition Town initiative then? What about looking beyond the ‘obvious’ to reinvigorate potential forms of living that we don’t as yet enjoy. Again, no surprise Girling’s article is picked up and amplified by a number of right wing sites. But more relevant, the eco-town story has been picked up and rubbished everywhere, from the Guardian to Student Beans. Where was the eco-town article that revolutionised the idea and reported what it should or could be? How about Sarah Lewis’s article on Transition Towns in the Guardian?

Girling’s article is eloquent and no doubt factual, but the issue of eco-towns should at least offer a writer the opportunity to envision some future, rather than simply criticising the present. This would be ‘environmental journalism’ as I would like it defined.

And b) because Johann Hari is good…

But nowhere near contributing to the dialogue of environmental action as much as Mainstream Media (MSM) writers such as Rob Edwards of the Sunday Herald, George Monbiot of the Guardian, or Mark Lynas in the New Statesman, or even Girling’s colleague Lewis Smith, of the Times, or Hari’s own colleague Michael McCarthy.

And that raises the point as well: what about the environmental awards for the non-MSM? The bloggers and media watchers who are, most probably, contributing more to a realistic dialogue over climate change and environmental issues. The last two alerts from Media Lens are essential reading, and you could pick many from their archive that would vie for story of the year, such as their Notes from a Dying Planet.

And if you’re talking non-MSM, how about Shaun Milne’s new zero carbon magazine, Eco4You, or Environmental Graffiti, or Treehugger, or The Ecologist, all of which deliver news, and can be considered part of the ‘press’.

But the coup de grace is…

In a result that would compare with Boris Johnson winning GQ’s Man of the Year for his “undisputed elan”, the Press Gazette has forever sullied the future of its environmental awards by picking the Daily Mail’s “Ban the Bags” initiative as its campaign of the year. Well, I say ‘their’ initiative, although as I wrote in an earlier piece for Journalism.co.uk, yes it’s theirs if you consider co-opting an already successful and growing campaign as proof of ownership.

This is what the judges said about the Mail:

“This campaign was executed brilliantly, the editor got behind and they were brave enough to put it on the front page consistently. The objectives were simple and achievable.”

Brave? What I’d like the judges to explain is how running a handful of stories about plastic bags in 2008–the world is overheating, people–long after the much broader, grass-roots campaign for banning plastic bags was already underway. Let’s look at some of the coverage that the Daily Mail (and Mail on Sunday) has given to environmental issues over the past five years:

Between Jan 2004 and July 2008, the Daily Mail ran five (yes, five) stories about the Kyoto Protocol. Compare this to The Guardian over the same period (227), The Independent (174) or even The Sun (18). And of those five, how many were positive that the Protocol was, as flawed as we all know it to be, contributing in some way to helping combat climate change? One. One article in 43 months.

Now, from January 2006 through to July 2008, how many stories did the Daily Mail run about the Climate Change Bill? 45. Big improvement, even if small compared to The Guardian (145) or even the Times (68). Until you recognise that the DM’s coverage of this world-leading (yes, flawed, but still hugely important) piece of legislation was mostly dominated by it’s ‘Great Bin Revolt’ campaign that rejected the Climate Change Bill with barely a mention of the threats of climate change. Far more important was the potential £100 extra charge for over-polluters in middle-England. Of those 45 articles, 31 (that’s 70%) outright rejected or cast the Bill in an ambiguous light. These stories were running at the same time as the Mail’s ‘ban the bags’ campaign which, as noted elsewhere, it co-opted from The Marine Conservation Society.

Brave?

That’s a question for one of the judges in particular. Ben Stewart, communications director for Greenpeace, who was recently one of the six defendents who used climate change as a defence against public damage at the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station towers. I met Ben seven or eight years ago. He was just off for a six-month stint on the Greenpeace flotilla. Ben is brave, dealing with the ire of heavyweights such as Ian Dale and The Devil’s Kitchen. But nowhere near as brave, if that’s even the right word, as the Bangladeshi people that Johann Hari writes about.

And by brave, of course, the judges mean ‘economically’ brave to put it on their front page consistently… That is, to suffer lower sales. Sterling effort, DM.

Journalism doesn’t have to be jingoistic

What about giving the award to the Sunday Herald in Scotland, who worked with the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition to put positive and constructive pressure on the parliament to pass the bill in its strongest form. There were many constructively critical articles written over the same 2006-8 period, but NONE that rejected the need for a climate bill.

The Daily Mail? Brave? Brave to devote its front-page to a populist campaign with momentum? As I’ve already writren, as environmental group Friends of the Earth have been quick to point out, in the context of climate change and biodiversity threats, plastic bags account for only 0.3 per cent of domestic waste and are not a top priority.

No. As commendable as a new set of environmental awards are, paricularly in this hard time for journalism, where it seems every over question is about whether or not environmental principles will survive the credit crisis, and the other half of questions are about the next round of job losses… commendable as it is, the judges got this one very, very wrong.

(x-posted from The Current Climate)