Who Speaks For The Environment?

by Dick Brooks and Michael Goldberg, ActionMedia

Environmental issues are in the news everyday. Unfortunately, the coverage often does more harm than good. This is because, whatever the details, the news media predominately portrays environmentalism as a narrow “special interest” pitted against business, landowners, government, etc.

For example, on October 16, 2003, National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” broadcast a story by NPR reporter Elizabeth Arnold, about a proposal for a major natural gas pipeline in Alaska.

ARNOLD: “A recent Natural Petroleum Council study predicts consumers will pay $1 trillion in higher gas prices over the next 20 years unless new sources are rapidly developed. But what may be even more compelling about this project is, there's little in the way of opposition, even from the environmental community, which has finally found a development project it can back.

Dan Becker of the Sierra Club––

BECKER: I think most environmental groups recognize that you won't wean yourself off the filthiest fuel we have––coal––unless we use more natural gas to run our power plants, and there's lots of it in Alaska.

NPR listeners learn that “the environmental community” is usually, perhaps automatically, opposed to any development proposal.

The New York Times editorial board uses the phrase “environmental community” on a fairly regular basis:

“The Bush administration and the environmental community are at odds again, this time over…” (August 21, 2002)

“There are those in the environmental community who fear [President Bush] is plotting to weaken [the Clean Air Act] in fundamental ways…” (Oct. 22, 2002)

“It is too soon for the environmental community or its Senate champions, like Joseph Lieberman, John McCain and James Jeffords, to rest on their laurels.” (March 24, 2003)

New York Times readers learn that members of the “environmental community” are political insiders, specialists whose job it is to protect the environ­ment, pursuing their own interests in opposition to other interests.

These messages come through every day, without requiring conscious thought, based as they are on shared, unexamined assumptions or stereotypes.

In communications terms “the environment” has been framed as a special interest, the province of environmentalists who are ideologically motivated to place this issue above all other competing interests.

Stated so plainly, this frame is absurd. Logically, everyone has a huge stake in the health of our shared environment. But the power of a communication frame doesn’t depend on logic.

The Environmental Community

The assumptions and stereotypes communicated in the “environmental community” frame work stealthfully beneath the level of conscious awareness. The phrase is damaging and dangerous, no matter who uses it, in part because it has no specific meaning. Some­times it’s used to imply everyone who agrees with some (unspecified) set of positions. Or it’s intended to mean the industry of non-profit environmental organizations. Often, it means a group of unnamed organizations, which may be working together on a given issue.

Consider these excerpts from a short national AP news story (March 19, 2003). “Environmental community” is used by the environmentalist, by the journalist, and by the policy maker, each time with a different meaning.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Norm Coleman kept a campaign promise Wednesday and voted against allowing oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"We know that Senator Coleman is under intense pressure to go back on his pledge to protect the Arctic refuge," Josh Buswell-Charkow, a field organizer of the Alaska Coalition of Minnesota. "But we in the environmental community believe that this is an absolutely crucial issue," he said. "We will be watching his vote very closely. We anticipate he will vote the way he promised he will."

"I'm passionate about renewables," Coleman said. "I think it's both an economic development issue for Minnesota farmers and I think it's an environmental issue." Lawmakers were told that within the environmental community, the vote on the drilling issue would be viewed as among the most important of the year.

Coleman said he received much more pressure from the environmental community - 6,000 calls, e-mails and letters opposed to drilling. He said the White House did not lobby him on the proposal.

Senator Coleman uses “environmental community” to lump together everyone who contacted him in opposition. Coleman intentionally chose not to say that he received 6,000 calls, e-mails and letters from farmers, teachers, union members and business owners––all kinds of people in every part of his state. Even while his vote supported the environmental position, his rhetoric did not. Opponents intentionally use this phrase “environmental community” to marginalize the environmental position, and to emphasize the advocates (as in “the radical environmental community”) rather than the issues.

Changing the Frame

Environmental advocates may blame the divisive frame on a hostile opposition or an inadequate or unfair news media, but they are letting themselves off the hook by doing so. For the most part, journalists are not pursuing an anti-environmental agenda or subtly trying to influence public perceptions of environmentalism. Reporters use the phrase “environmental community” because it is readily available short-hand. They are retelling the story supplied by both the environmental advocates and their opponents. Advocates often and proudly refer to the “environmental community” or some other collective noun vaguely meaning “people like me.”

In every case, the phrase functions as a divider, a boundary that separates one group of people from everyone else. As soon as it appears, every reader, listener and viewer is forced to unconsciously and automatically place themselves within––or outside of––this environmental community, and re­ceives the rest of the message accordingly.

Environmental advocates carelessly reinforce the divisive “special interest” frame. If they choose to stop doing it, they must re-examine their language and design new communications strategies to be inclusive of the broadest possible audience. They could start by redefining themselves as part of the broader community. In fact, let’s all agree that there is really no single such thing as “the environmental community” and resolve never to use the phrase again.

Though a good start, banishing the phrase won’t end the problem. What’s needed is for environmental organizations to set a new kind of goal for media coverage. Advocacy organizations can shift the frame in their favor through intentional strategies to rethink and redirect their role and rhetoric within the public discourse, enlisting unexpected messengers and educating key reporters. They can shift coverage of “the environmental debate” to show that the actors and speakers on behalf of the environment are a broad range of Americans, not specialists or a special interest group. Environmentalists will increase their influence over the way the news is presented by decreasing their own prominence as spokespeople.

This does not mean advocacy organizations should keep quiet or reduce their communications. Indeed, pursuing an intentional strategy to reframe the public debate will require more, not less, attention to news media. A comprehensive media strategy also includes an organization’s reports, websites, newsletters, speeches and direct mail––all that media advocates use to tell the story. Developing communications strategies designed to shift the terms away from “environmentalism as a special interest” and toward interests more broadly stated (e.g., in the safety of air, water and food) will require professional environmental advocates to enlist and help others speak, from a wide range of perspectives, about issues of common concern.

New Messengers

Identifying and supporting new and unexpected messengers is a key component of such a campaign. Messengers are critical to the perception of a message. For example, an environmentalist calling for sustainable logging practices will be heard differently than a logger calling for the same practices––the same message, different messengers. Nobody is surprised or much notices the environmentalist, but a logger is news.

Imagine professional environmental organizations setting themselves a rule, never to issue a press release that features quotes from its own staff. Whom would they quote? One immediate pool of messengers is their own board of directors or volunteers. Such unexpected messengers, could be asked to describe the issues in terms of their own actual experience, and the societal perspective (e.g., their vocation or specific interest).

“As a pastor of this church, I believe we all have a responsibility…”

“I own a hardware store downtown, and I know that small businesses are under tremendous pressure already. And now, to have our tax money subsidize this giant business for activity nobody in the community wants…”

“As the principal of the elementary school, I have the privilege of hearing from children every day. They ask me, ‘Why can’t we swim in the river?’ What do you think I should tell them?”

Environmental organizations can go deeper than their own current volunteers in recruiting messengers: they can engage in an intentional process to support grassroots citizen groups, and to find unexpected allies. When professional environmentalists do speak, they should consider bringing others into the conversation by attributing ideas and positions to someone other than environmentalists.

Example:

Question: Why should the State require more renewable energy production?
Answer: Let me tell you what the Mayor of a town in SE Minnesota told me recently about how wind power producers are benefiting the local economy…

Question: The Senator claims the bill would cost too much, what’s your response?
Answer: The former chief of FDA health inspections said last week that that’s not true. He said…

Being able to say what a local mayor, or a farmer, or a sportsman said requires engaging these people, finding out what they think and relating it to the issues. It means seeking out and meeting people, listening and caring about what they have to say, and helping them by connecting environmental issues and resources to their issues and concerns.

Environmental advocates engaged with people in this way are able to explicitly reframe who the messenger is. The collective “we” in the story becomes much more widely shared and allows more people to see themselves in that story. For example, in the first news report cited in this article from NPR, the environmentalist could have better positioned himself with listeners by saying “Americans don’t want to choose between clean air and energy, they want both and can have both …” In this case NPR listeners would consider if they want to be forced into such choice, which keeps them focused on the issue rather than deciding if they are included in some ill-defined “environmental community.”

Similarly, in the story about Senator Coleman’s position on Alaska oil drilling, the environmentalist could have said, “Minnesota voters believe that this is an absolutely crucial issue…We will be watching... We anticipate he will vote the way he promised he will." This construction––defining the “we” as voters rather than environmentalists––would have done much to include readers, and would have isolated Coleman’s comments about the “environmental community” as off-track.

Environmental organizations should use their resources, skills, and access to journalists to re-set the terms of public debate. Advocates can broaden the movement by increasing the opportunities for grassroots activists and concerned citizens to step forward as messengers. It’s time to stop celebrating “the environmental community”, and intentionally speak in ways that identify the issues in terms of the broader community. Such an inclusive communications strategy will make explicit that their work is not on behalf of environmentalists, or of the environment, but on behalf of everyone’s health, food, water and air.

––In 1994, after 15 years of experience as journalists and radio producers, Dick Brooks and Michael Goldberg founded ActionMedia, based In Minneapolis, to provide strategic communications training and services to advocates for positive change.
ActionMedia works with a wide range of grassroots groups, professional advocacy organizations and funders, to help frame the issues and develop communications that make things happen.