Presentation Paper of Japan Accounting IGES Discussion Paper 2001-No. 2. (in Association Annual Meeting in 2003. (in Japanese). Japanese). Saio, K., Kokubu, K., Nashioka, E. and Imai, Further information: Chika Saka and S. (2002) “Current status and Issues of Roger Burritt can be contacted by email as Environmental Accounting Practices” follows: [email protected] and [email protected]

WHERE ARE AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL PARTY VIEWS ON SOCIETY AND THE ENVIRONMENT HEADING?

Australia has, this month, recorded a played out over the next few years in population of 20 million human beings. It Australia at the federal level. remains a country with an exceedingly low population density. Australia is one of the First, a comment on the current federal driest continents in the world. Three levels Liberal Coalition policies is expressed by of government – federal, State and Territory, Susan Brown, a former conservation council and local, look after its political interests. co-ordinator and environment adviser to While local government has considerable leaders responsibility for society and the and Meg Lees – both of who have since left environment (eg policing, development the party. approvals, licensing of business activities such as pollution permits, etc.), the federal Second, is an edited extract from an government sets the national agenda. insightful speech by Clive Hamilton to the National Left ALP/Trade Unions In November 2003 a new Leader was Conference at the Humanities research chosen for the federal Opposition Labor Centre, ANU, Canberra, 11 May 2002. party - the Honourable Mark Latham. The Liberal Coalition has been in government Third, comes a solid reply to Hamilton’s since 1996, headed by the Honourable John challenge by the, now, new leader of the Howard. The next federal election is Labor opposition, Mark Latham. expected in 2004. The Australian Democrats represents a third force in federal politics. This is followed by a plea for control of Others include the ‘One Nation’ party and a media concentration made last month in small group of independent members of Parliament by Kelvin Thompson - as Parliament. reported in the daily Hansard. He feels that the media are too powerful and ignore Opinions expressed below reflect some of environmental issues to follow their own the recent, diverse views about the agenda. environment and society that are likely to be

10 Finally, an alternative perspective on media These Liberals are accidental greenies. They concentration and the environment is knew whatever they did, they would never provided by the Canadian Institutes for be accepted by some of the main Journalism and Natural Resources. conservation groups which, despite their rhetoric, cannot deal ideologically with How a blue-blood Liberal conservative governments. But they headed up a country rapidly outspending its government has quietly environmental bank account. In a green- adapted to greenie ways, tinged Senate, big political packages came By Susan Brown, Australian with an environmental price tag. Democrats. Governance for the environment is difficult in Australia. The legacy of the floundering No one expected a green-tinged Liberal fathers' Constitution of federated states Party under . Not the public, means states have control of water and much which assured most pollsters before the of the land. There are many environmental 1996 election that it trusted the Australian examples of state-federal bunfights Democrats and paralysed by competitiveness, politics and more on the environment. Certainly not finger-pointing. conservation groups, which play footsy with conservatives only when they want to The ALP-established environment policy teach the ALP [Australian Labor Party] a under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser lesson. And not the Liberals, with a followed the trend. But by the Hawke- membership then uninterested in the Keating years, well-organised industry and environment and a policy platform tending some union groups were able to threaten to the minimalist. greenish cabinet ministers intent on wider reform. They effectively turned federal ALP But this month the agreed to start pulling environmental flow environment policy into bone-throwing back to the Murray-Darling rivers. It is the events - a new park here, an inquiry there. latest in unexpected big-ticket On ascension in 1996, the Liberals expected environmental moves by the Liberals. to go no further than the $1billion Natural Cabinet has also moved towards protecting Heritage Trust, a clever political ploy one-third of the Great Barrier Reef. designed to buy votes for the part sale of A muted press release merely announced Telstra [a national telecommunications structural adjustment for the fishing company]. But a GST and diesel deal for the industry, despite Environment Minister Democrats included a fat $1.2 billion David Kemp getting one hell of a cabinet environment package in new and changed win. Liberal environment ministers aren't spending directed to clean air and allowed to gloat because it salts the wounds greenhouse initiatives. of an already outraged National Party and The government was mildly surprised to annoys some industry groups. Yet the record note it was the biggest single amount given shows a Liberal government that has done over to the environment. Perhaps it could more for the environment than any deal with this bothersome portfolio after all. government. In the next deal with the Democrats, the Liberals achieved a complete overhaul of

11 federal environmental legislation, giving fuel subsidies. Some of the government's sweeping new powers to the environment environment spending has been slow or off- minister, and giving the community and target and it slashed environment group conservation groups the right to be funding. And environmental problems informed, to question and to go to court over continue to worsen. The State of the decisions. States, industry and farming Environment report shows we are not groups were furious. But the environment moving fast enough to overtake the rapid announcements kept coming. decline in natural ecosystems. Nearly $2 billion more for the National Still, it's hard to argue there hasn't been Heritage Trust, $1.4 billion for the National increased environmental spending, increased Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality, federal protection for more of Australia and $500 million for the Living Murray plan and more environment laws passed under this hundreds of millions of dollars more for government. And it will keep coming. There oceans, sustainable cities, water quality, land is no guarantee the rest of Telstra will be and marine reserve areas, and so on. There is sold but you can bet full privatisation would even $150 million for Queensland land come with a hefty environmental price. clearing should the Nationals stop helping farmers spoil the process with the same The forests issue is re-emerging. The enthusiasm they are spoiling much of the campaigners are not just ferals but also the land. fed-up middle class - and they are gaining increasing media coverage. Clearly, the ALP The Liberals got over their green shudder by will have to work much harder than it placing environment under the trendy imagined. Tories as greenies? moniker, an aspirational issue. Not everyone Source: Online Opinion, posted Tuesday, wants a week in the wilderness but they like December 02, 2003. to know it's there. They want clean water in http://www.onlineopinion.com.au. This the rivers, fish in the sea and control over article was first published in The the bulldozers. The government knows Australian newspaper on 25 November investors and insurers are telling business 2003. Many thanks to the editor of Online that unless sustainability is up at board level, Opinion and to the author for permission companies are taking considerable risks in to reproduce. the medium-to-long term.

Despite low-profile announcements, the Social democracy under message is getting through. Although for much of the past decade the Liberals have consumer capitalism, lagged behind Labor in polling on the by Clive Hamilton, The environment, recent polls show the main Australia Institute. parties level-pegging, sometimes with the Liberals in front. Since the early 1980s, many of us have been searching for a coherent alternative to neo- Mind you, the Liberals haven't given up liberalism, for a way of reinventing social their day job: keeping the big end of town democracy in an era of global consumer happy. The Howard government still refuses capitalism. We have failed miserably. The to sign the Kyoto Protocol, facilitates left has been wandering in the wilderness, uranium mines and brings in wider fossil-

12 mouthing the old slogans to a world that is real incomes were around $9,000; today no longer interested, distraught at its they are more than $30,000. Average irrelevance, but not knowing where to turn. households today are filled with big-screen TVs and DVDs. When we overfly the The vacuum has been filled by the pallid suburban expanses of , we see apologetics of the so-called Third Way - backyards dotted with swimming pools. It is Thatcherism with a human face. The Third nothing for an average parent to spend Way is the way that no-one can define, a $1,000 on a present for a child or to buy program in search of a rationale, a social them a personal mobile phone. Ordinary analysis in which conflict is conveniently families happily shell out $40,000 for a four- replaced by complexity, and in which any wheel drive play-thing and gamble away a talk of power is taboo. few thousand dollars each year merely for entertainment. They avail themselves of Around the world, we have seen the parties sophisticated healthcare when it’s needed. of the left transformed into their opposite, Almost everyone has access to good quality with the spin doctor elbowing out the policy primary and secondary education. advisor. They have increasingly become parties for politicians who are not sure what In real terms, Australians today are at least they stand for but which employ advertising three times better off than their parents were agencies to convince us that they stand for after the war, and the fact is that the something. The Third Way is essential to the distribution of income is about the same. Of new dispensation of political convergence in course, there is a residual at the bottom who which the historic battle of ideologies has are struggling. We still have poverty (and, been superseded by product differentiation. let’s face it, we probably always will). As a society we have an obligation to attempt The left itself is responsible for this state of ceaselessly to eradicate it. But why does the affairs. It remains wedded to a view of the left continue to base its entire social social order defined by class, exploitation philosophy and political strategy on the and inequality. Difficult as it may be to circumstances of the bottom 10 or 20 per admit, social democrats and democratic cent? Concern for the underprivileged socialists have a psychological should not provide the driving force for a predisposition to believe that the mass of politics of social change in a society where people are suffering from material the daily experience of the great majority is deprivation. We thrive on the imagined occupied not with how to pay the bills but wretchedness of others. When the economy with how to enjoy their unprecedented goes bad we feel secretly vindicated, for our wealth. reason to condemn the system is renewed. The model of society where the dominant But we must face up to the facts – the left’s social evil is want has been rendered "deprivation model" is today the opposite of irrelevant by five decades of sustained the truth. The dominant characteristic of economic growth. It might be argued that contemporary Australia is not deprivation the left is concerned not with material but abundance. wealth but with exploitation. But it is By any standard Australia is an enormously impossible today to argue that the mass of wealthy country. The great majority of its people in industrialised countries is citizens want for nothing. In 1950, average exploited, at least not in the way the left has

13 traditionally understood the term. Both the the richest people in the world are saying structure and nature of classes are that they are miserable, that it’s not worth it, fundamentally different. Liberation itself has and, most disturbingly of all, that the not been denied but co-opted by consumer process of getting rich is the cause of the capitalism. problems. Modern consumer capitalism is wracked by So the issues for the left today are not those a great contradiction – that between the of exploitation, poverty and discrimination. promise of consumer capitalism and the At the dawn of the 21st century, the modern social condition. Despite the sicknesses we face are overwhelmingly the fantastic promises of material progress, and sicknesses of affluence. We see epidemics of the extraordinary success of capitalism in the diseases of boredom and alienation, delivering undreamt of wealth for ordinary especially gambling, television catatonia and people, the people are still not happy. recreational shopping. In the USA, where consistent surveys have We see an epidemic of drug use, both legal been conducted since 1946, real incomes and illegal. Our response to unruly children have increased by 400 per cent, yet there has is to drug them into submission with Ritalin. been no increase in reported levels of well- being. Indeed, the proportion of Americans For all of the hype, the information reporting themselves to be ‘very happy’ has superhighway is principally a conduit for declined from 35 per cent in 1957 to 30 per pornography, and there is an insatiable cent in 1988, while the percentage who said demand for soft-core titillation on television they agreed with the statement that they are and video. ‘pretty well satisfied with your financial Moreover, at a time of unprecedented levels situation’ fell from 42 to 30 per cent. of personal wealth, citizens of rich countries The story is the same in Australia. The are afflicted with an epidemic of growth project has failed; but it is too psychological disorders. According to one threatening for people to admit it. In the study, depression has increased ten-fold USA, there is virtually no difference in among Americans born since World War II. reported levels of life satisfaction between Young people, the principal beneficiaries of people with incomes of $20,000 and super-affluence, are most prone to clinical $80,000. Overall, over half of the population depression, manifested in record rates of of the richest country in the world say they teenage suicide and other social pathologies cannot afford everything that they really such as self-destructive drug taking. need. And it’s not just the poorer half. Today, our greatest afflictions are associated The pursuit of wealth is not making us any not with deprivation but with over- happier. It is not simply that other trends in consumption. We are gorging ourselves and society, occurring in parallel with rising growing fat. The volume of waste we incomes, have offset the benefits of wealth; generate is enormous. We discard and the process of economic growth itself has destroy vast quantities of useful goods. produced a seriously sick society. In a mass Driven to consume more and more, we are of evidence from the USA, mirrored by willing to pour our wastes into the studies in Australia and other rich countries, atmosphere, oceans and landfills, causing

14 severe damage to the natural world that The political implications of all of this are sustains us. profound. The left must discard its old understanding of the world. We must accept In the age of global consumer capitalism that capitalism has moved to a phase of then, the defining predicament is not a lack abundance broadly spread. We must focus of money, but a lack of meaning. From a on the things that really do affect the well- mass of psychological studies, confirmed by being of ordinary people and the processes folk wisdom, there is one factor that stands that condition society. For despite its out as differentiating more happy from less extraordinary successes, and at a time of happy people- a sense of meaning and complete political hegemony, capitalism is purpose in life. more fragile than it has ever been. Why? With more wealth at their disposal than ever Yet a lack of purpose is the hollow centre of before, most people could simply choose not life in modern consumer capitalism. It is the to participate, to no longer notice the hole we try to fill with consumption. As advertisements, to step off the materialist long as we cleave to the deprivation model treadmill, to discard the DVD player, the we validate the belief in the general second house, the luxury car, the holidays populace that the foremost means to social abroad, the meaningless acquisitions. To do and personal betterment is continuously to so would not mean taking to the barricades, raise incomes. The left reinforces the belief or putting themselves on the breadline. by those in government, of whatever party, that everything must be sacrificed on the All it takes is a recognition that personal altar of economic growth. In the interests of contentment is more important than money, more growth we must have privatisation, and that it is possible to find a purpose in free trade, small government, lower taxes, life that is fulfilling and self-expressive. If corporate welfare, competition policy and ordinary people today are exploited, then it reduced welfare payments. We cannot adopt is by common consent. They choose the policies of sustainability because they might gilded cage. We need a politics that will affect growth. point out that the door of the gilded cage is open, so that ordinary people can achieve The left is as much the slave of growth liberation and authentic lives in which fetishism as the right. The deprivation model community and relationships are valued draws the power from progressive people, above wealth and status. We need a politics not only because it means they share the for a society in which the citizens are fundamental goal of neo-liberalism but, committed to a rich life rather than a life of crucially, because it prevents the left from riches. joining with the most serious political and intellectual challenge to consumer A post-growth politics would deprive capital capitalism: environmentalism. It explains of much of its political power, because the uneasy dissonance between the left’s people would everywhere reject the preoccupation with deprivation and assumption that everything – including our environmentalists’ emphasis on the perils of communities, the natural world and our abundance. Put crudely, one wants more dignity – should be sacrificed on the altar of growth and one wants less. growth.

15 Clive Hamilton is Executive Director of The concern of the Third Way – the Australia Institute. The Australia Institute is disconnection between GDP growth and an independent public policy research human happiness. This is the central centre funded by grants from philanthropic paradox of modern capitalism. We live in a trusts, memberships and commissioned society with record levels of financial capital research. but declining levels of social capital. Hamilton has identified an important issue Source: Online Opinion, posted 15.6.02 but advocated the wrong solution. The http://www.onlineopinion.com.au. deterioration in social capital should not be Many thanks to the editor of Online Opinion used as an excuse for giving up on the and to the author for permission to problems of social disadvantage. Far from it, reproduce. these two goals are highly compatible. Only by creating stronger communities, where Let them eat lentils, people trust in each other and work together by Mark Latham, Leader of cooperatively, can we hope to address the the Opposition, Parliament of problems of poverty and discrimination. Australia Instead of repairing social capital at its core through community-building initiatives, Question: which Australian think tank Hamilton advocates an extreme, anti- recently declared that, "the issues of the Left materialist agenda. In his world, working today are not those of exploitation, poverty families should be able to "step off the and discrimination?" materialist treadmill, to discard the DVD If you are thinking of the neo-liberal IPA or player, the second house, the luxury car, the HR Nicholls Society, think again. These are holidays abroad, the meaningless the words of Clive Hamilton from the acquisitions." Australia Institute in a speech to Left-wing If only this were true. In the real world, union officials in Canberra. economic insecurity and poverty remain. I cannot imagine Left-of-Centre politics in The purpose of Left-wing politics must be to this country without a passionate ensure that all Australians can access commitment to the elimination of poverty material goods – economic assets, decent and discrimination. Indeed, this should be a incomes and the comforts of the consumer unifying theme on our side of politics. age. Unless we win the war against poverty our This highlights the burning contradiction in hopes for social justice will be just a Hamilton’s agenda. He wants working class pipedream. people to hold middle class, environmental The Hamilton thesis, in fact, reveals the values without the benefits of middle class poverty of Green Left thinking. His incomes and assets. argument is riddled with confusion and This is the ultimate betrayal of the Green contradictions. Left: post-materialist basket weaving for Hamilton claims to be an opponent of Third gentrified inner-city types like Hamilton, Way politics, yet his paper mimics the chief while those of us in the suburbs should simply forget about the public housing

16 estates nearby, with their 40 percent people. This is a vital strategy for combating unemployment rates and 80 percent welfare individualism and restoring social capital. dependency. "Let them eat lentils" is the Hamilton mantra. Ultimately, the choice between government bureaucracies and market forces is flawed. It In practice, the first challenge for Left-of- neglects the space in the middle where Centre politics is to re-engage the public in a people come together in voluntary action. It dialogue about a good society. During a time ignores the mutual interests and associations of constant change and uncertainty, most that make up civil society. people now glaze over at the thought of "big picture" politics. Their primary interests are The new role for government is to create the at a neighbourhood level – the small nuggets space and opportunities within which of public policy that can improve local neighbourhood politics can thrive. schools, clean up the streets and rebuild a Communities should not be campaigning for sense of community and place. better services. They should be running them. In the era of globalisation, the politics of community matters more, not less. It is in Answers are available for Left-of-Centre this local realm that people first learn the politics. If we are to create a good society, it habits of trust and cooperation. If this inner must come from the inside out. With a solid, core of social capital is weak then people are inner core of trust and cooperation, we can unlikely to meet the broader challenges of then rid our society of the curse of poverty social justice. and discrimination. Globalisation is calling on society to trust in Hamilton can keep his wickerwork and strangers, to understand the needs of people rabbit food. I’ll stick with economic and we are never likely to know or to meet first- social justice as frontline issues for the hand. At the moment, Australians are Labor Party. struggling to trust in asylum seekers, the Source: Online Opinion, posted 15.6.02 Third World poor and even our own http://www.onlineopinion.com.au. indigenous communities. This represents a Many thanks to the editor of Online Opinion major breakdown in the strategies and and to the author for permission to engagement of the Left. reproduce.

For whatever reason, Left-wing politics in Australia has lacked a strong tradition of Media’s Role in Promoting mutualism and community-building. It has Environmental Issues is relied heavily on state-led strategies and Lacking! neglected the importance of neighbourhood politics. As the Left now seeks to redefine comments made by Kelvin itself and cope with a new politics, it must Thompson, Labor Member. overcome this deficiency. The following extract is taken from A solution lies in communitarianism – Hansard, the House of Representatives, governments facilitating the rules of Parliament of Australia, 1 December 2003, community engagement, acting as brokers in p.23052 ff. during a discussion of media the relationships and connections between power and how the current federal

17 government is helping to increase the is not correct; we have taken a position of powers of media organizations. principle on this bill—and, indeed, we are Environmental issues, it seems, are just not paying a price for it. I will talk a little newsworthy….when money and power are further about the sort of price you pay in at stake. these circumstances. In my own portfolio area, we release policies but none of the Mr KELVIN THOMSON (Member of commercial media take the slightest interest Parliament for Wills – Australian Labor in them. Given that polling frequently shows Party) (6.26 p.m.) — I was not going to that the environment rates in third place in speak on the Broadcasting Services issues of public concern behind only health Amendment (Media Ownership) Bill 2002 and education—that is, it is the third-largest [No. 2] but the dramatic political events of issue of public concern—you would think the last few days [Ed. The standing down of that perhaps the views of the federal the previous Labor leader, Simon Crean, parliamentary Labor Party were worth and election of a new leader, Mark Latham, mentioning. We have been putting those in the federal Parliament] have caused me views forward. Whether it is on land to decide that I ought to speak up and tell a clearing, climate change, water for the few home truths to that small, hardy political Murray River or protecting the Great Barrier band out there who listen to the broadcasts Reef, we have been putting policies forward. of parliament. Generally, most of us remain But the commercial TV stations and silent about the issue of media concentration newspapers never touch federal Labor’s in this country. I think those of us in politics positions. do so sometimes out of fear or out of the hope of political advancement but, from my We have an environment reporter for the point of view, it is time that I stated some of Australian [Ed. A national daily the things that I have learnt in my 15 years newspaper], Amanda Hodge, who would in state and federal parliaments about this sooner die than publish anything concerning issue of media ownership and federal Labor’s position on these issues. The concentration…. Age [Ed. A daily newspaper in the State of Victoria] is about the same: Point Nepean is My personal experience, having put out an issue that the Age has pursued with some what must amount to hundreds of press vigour but there was not a word about things releases during the past couple of years in like the visit by Simon Crean to Point my environment portfolio, has been that the Nepean and his declaration that federal commercial media take no interest in these Labor would hand over that land to Victoria press releases at all, yet I field any number to be incorporated in the national park. [Ed. of calls and requests for interview on the Point Nepean is an area of land in the hands question of leadership of the federal of the federal Department of Defence, which parliamentary Labor Party. The media has was made available for a 50 year lease, used that question as a means of which community groups worried would be undermining and attacking the federal Labor a form of private ownership, reducing public Party. access and opening the site to development as State planning laws would not apply. The We have taken a position of principle on this Victorian government (a Labor government) bill. Occasionally people say that the Labor wishes to have the area made into a national Party fail to take positions of principle. That park, (see The Age

18 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/ Institutes for Journalism and Natural 25/1061663734217.html?from=storyrhs, Resources (IJNR) (Matching the Scenery: accessed on 8 December 2003]. There was Journalism's Duty to the American West, not a word about the private member’s bill August 2003, IJNR). Since 1995, IJNR has which I introduced into the House to transfer been helping to increase the competence of Point Nepean to the Victorian government to individual journalists all across North be used as a national park. any commercial America - the reporters, assignment editors, reporting of them, the issues they raise or bureau chiefs, story editors and newsroom what they say about Labor policy. We have managers who determine, shape and produce a commercial media whose intention is to coverage of natural resources, economic keep marginalising Labor until we capitulate development, population growth and on this bill. They want this bill through environment. Criteria for reporting that were because it means more power to them and shaped by the Board of Governors of IJNR's more money in the bank. Wallace Stegner Initiative include:

I do not know how to solve the problem of • Accuracy and Clarity the way the commercial media uses its Reporting clearly, factually and without political power to seek commercial serious omissions about events, trends objectives but I do know that we cannot and issues of growth, development and capitulate. We cannot support this bill. It the environment. would be a betrayal of political principle for political expediency, and we cannot expect • Significance and Relevance our supporters to support us on that basis. Choosing to emphasize those events, Furthermore, if we say yes now, the media trends and issues that clearly stand out as barons will just get even more powerful and significant and relevant to the it will become even harder to say no to them community and the region. the next time around.

• Frequency and Persistence I just hope that maybe there are a few Examining regularly and often the ordinary Australians out there who are significant and relevant events, trends interested in and thinking about this issue ands issues of growth, development and and who will demand that the Howard the environment. Making a sustained government withdraws this bill and backs effort to pursue this coverage as off—some people out there who will important stories continue to evolve. demand that we keep some media concentration laws in place and that we make an effort to protect media diversity. • Prominence and Proportionality Ultimately the health of our democracy Demonstrating consistently sound depends on it. judgment by reporting and displaying stories about growth, development and the environment in proportion to their A CANADIAN SOLUTION TO MEDIA significance and relevance. Refraining POWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT? from sensational or trivial treatments of One way to overcome this lack of media trends and issues. interest in environmental press statements has been suggested in Canada, by the

19 • Credibility and Context When industry, government or an Providing a consistent and credible environmental group puts out a press release range of viewpoints in coverage of on a topic, let’s say PCBs, they do not growth, development and the provide an entire description of what PCBs environment. Incorporating sufficient are, where they come from, and in what way context in coverage, thus helping they are harmful to humans and the audiences to increase their awareness environment. A press release is normally no and to reach responsible conclusions. longer than a page or two, far short of the whole book needed to educate the general According to the Canadian Institute for reporter on the background of PCBs and Business and the Environment (Vol. 8, No. their particular form of adverse 9, December 1, 2003) [Colin Issacs, Editor], environmental impact. The deadline a recent report on journalism’s duty to the pressure on journalists to write stories for North American West states that the current publication makes it impossible for the performance of most daily newspapers with general reporter to research a topic like respect to reporting on growth, development PCBs in any depth, so the story becomes and the environment “needs to improve a one about the confrontation rather than a lot”. That is the assessment of a well much more informative and useful one about qualified Montana-based journalism the effects of the PCBs and what industry, education foundation, Institutes for government and environmental groups are Journalism and Natural Resources, about doing to eliminate their release. Increasingly newspapers in an area where at least some the public sees environmental issues as newspapers actually try to cover being about battles between industry or environment in an informative way. government and environmentalists rather than about the transition to a more

environmentally responsible society. Some fifteen or so years ago one of Canada’s national newspapers decided that it was wrong to have a specialist The IJNR report addresses these concerns in environment reporter on staff. As I a well-researched manner. It recommends understand it, the argument was that a that there should be specialist environment specialist reporter may develop a bias which and development reporters, it recommends may detract from his or her ability to write a increasing training for environmental balanced story. A generalist reporter, on the reporters, and it urges newspapers to take other hand, was supposed to be less inclined more risks by exploring and testing other to bias, reporting only on the information formats and approaches to gathering and provided by the various parties to the news telling complicated stories about growth, story. Today most papers seem to have development and the environment. These followed this lead: there are virtually no conclusions are extremely relevant not just specialist environment reporters in any of in the west but across North America. IJNR Canada’s print or electronic media. urge all those interested in the media, and particularly those who are newspaper

publishers, to give this report the very The theory behind abolition of the specialist serious consideration that it deserves. environment reporter position superficially appears to have merit but in fact ignores the complexity of environmental reporting. Content analysts take note!

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