Exploring the historiography of
science and environmental journalism
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
Washington DC
Aug. 8, 2023
Bill Kovarik, PhD
The “Teddy bear” as a Progressive Era symbol of nature, and the “mind bomb” as a late 20tth century myth-busting trope, are emblematic of themes in the complex history of science and environmental journalism.
These tentative themes help contextualize science and environmental journalism (S&EJ) as part of a new approach to research that is overcoming whiggish assumptions about S&EJ history as following “Silent Spring” in the late 20th century with little history beforehand.
A new approach is assisted by new research tools that have extended our reach into the historical record. They help demonstrate that S&EJ was routine a century or more ago, and that contentious topics were often explained with evidence and multiple perspectives, much like today.
This paper briefly describes the rise of more clearly focused histories of science and environmental journalism and lists some useful resources. It also argues that historians need to go beyond the Silent Spring origin theory of S&EJ. New empirical research efforts and thematic frames of reference are needed.
Reconsidering science & environmental journalism history
The history of science and environmental journalism needs reconsideration, but that’s not an unusual problem in cultural history. For example, journalism historians Barbara Friedman, Carolyn Kitch, Therese Lueck, Amber Roessner and Betty Winfield wrote about the “common sense premise” that until recently “hardly any women were doing anything serious.” But then they noted that more recent researchers were finding exceptions. “If we’ve found this exception, might there be others?” they asked. “Might there be a lot of others?” And finally: “Might common sense be wrong?” (Friedman, 2009).’
The history of science and environmental journalism is in the same position. What were once seen as anomalies and exceptions turn out to be the most visible highlights of a deep and extensive history of S&EJ that is being found in the media record. Tentative thematic labels are suggested in this paper as a way to move deductive research forward, and so these highlights like “Teddy Bears” and “Mind Bombs” help us to navigate new areas. However, to be clear, these labels are general observations of interesting themes, and not intended as ironclad categories.
Teddy bears
The “teddy bear” — a popular toy animal — became the most visible symbol of the Progressive era’s conservation ethic after Teddy Roosevelt went bear hunting in 1902 (NPS, 2023). His guides had tied up a wounded bear, and Roosevelt refused to shoot it, since that would be unsportsmanlike. After the incident was widely reported in the press, a shopkeeper in New York came up with the idea of a stuffed bear, and the idea caught on with people who were, at the time, reading nature-themed books like Black Beauty, Jungle Book, White Fang, and Doctor Doolittle. So, the teddy bear became the conservation movement’s symbol of a transition between an older notion of subduing nature and an emerging ethic of a more humane attitude towards domestic animals and endangered wild species.
As a genre, all kinds of “teddy bear” stories can be found between the late 19th century and the modern era. Thousands of articles about vanishing wildlife pop up in the media record (although in the style of the times, many are not bylined). Many articles give us a hopeful, reassuring take on efforts to avert the extinction of bison, tropical birds, and other species (Kovarik, 2022).
Mind bombs
Another tentative theme in science and environmental journalism history is the “mind bomb” — a term for a myth-busting inversion of old media images through dramatic non-violent action. The idea has roots in the India Independence Movement and the American civil rights movement. Combining non-violence and the media theories of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian activist Robert Hunter saw a stronger role for media images in a 1971 book, Storming of the Mind. Hunter helped form a new Vancouver based organization called Greenpeace that would flip the image of Herman Melville’s mythical whaler into that of the heroic activist shielding whales from harpoons. By 1976, Greenpeace had become famous.
“To create an ecology movement … we had to come up with images that would circulate the globe, images that would inspire people to recognize their fundamental ecological nature, their kinship with every living creature on Earth… Instead of storming the Bastille, we’re storming the minds of millions of people. Instead of lobbing bullets and bombs, were lobbing mind bombs, revolutionary images that will explode in people’s heads…” (Weyler, 2020)
So, to sum up: using a deductive approach in querying the media record, these “teddy bear” themes that tapped emotional connections, and these “mind bombs” that presented heroic images of change, are two significant content categories we might find in science and environmental journalism history.
Historiography of S&EJ
The underlying question is why previous historical theories about science and environmental journalism need to be reconsidered. A simple Wikipedia search serves up a glaring example: The current (August,2023) entry for “Science Journalism” in Wikipedia briefly mentions essay-writing British scientists and a trade publication, then claims that Manchester Guardian reporter James G. Crowther “invented” science journalism in 1928. Possibly this is some sort of Wikipedia joke, but still, the historical field is littered with these chestnuts and traditional errors.
The misperceptions started with media historians whose interest in yellow journalism skewed their perceptions. Edwin Emery, for example, viewed the typical newspaper science story as an anti-intellectual exercise. The news about the 1910 return of Halley’s Comet, for example, would be displayed with pictures of scientists and a “good nightmare idea like the inhabitants of Mars watching (the comet) pass,” along with “a two-column boxed ‘freak’ containing a scientific opinion that nobody will understand, just to give it class.” (Emery, 1972).
By portraying a weak version of science and environmental journalism, Emery and others reinforced the historically “whiggish” notion that the press was improving over time. Whig history, of course, is a use of history “to emphasize certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present.” (Cronin, 2012).
This traditional error was widespread. For instance, one historian noted an “historical void” characterized histories of environmental awareness (Pratt, 1980). Another asserted that science and public health issues went “largely unquestioned” (Nelkin, 1979) until Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring began the controversy (Smith, 1983).
A similar source of historical misperception involves the many analytical articles about science and environmental communication that brush past historical questions to arrive at current problems. Jon Franklin, for example, put it this way: “Until World War II, science was a private and privileged business… When writers of that day wrote about science, they usually focused on the weird. The Wizard of Menlo Park, the newspapers announced, had performed another miracle.” It didn’t matter until the war because science didn’t affect the folks down on the farm. (Franklin,1986).
Similarly, historian John Burnham noted that a science press corps emerged after World War I (not II) and tended to be uncritical popularizers who simply reflected the funding and publicity efforts of the research establishment. (Burnham, 1992).
Serious books about science and environmental journalism usually took an analytical approach and mentioned history in passing, if at all. These include Science and the Mass Media by Hillier Krieghbaum (1967); Scientists and Journalists by Sharon Friedman, Sharon Dunwoody and Carol Rogers (1986); Media and the Environment edited by Craig LaMay and Everett Dennis (1992); and A Fierce Green Fire by Phil Shabecoff (1992). Michael Keating’s Covering the Environment (1993) provides a Canadian perspective with similar historical gaps.
The idea that more empirical research was needed in the history of science and environment journalism came up at an AEJMC conference on media and the environment in Reno, NV in 1994. One project that emerged was Mass Media and Environmental Conflict, an award-winning book that took a deeper look at the vital role media played in Progressive era controversies over dams, smog, radium, extinctions, forestry, and leaded gasoline. (Neuzil & Kovarik, 1996).
A more comprehensive approach is found in Neuzil’s 2009 book The Environment and the Press, which located ancient origins of science and environmental communication in the Bible and Pliny the Elder’s Historia Naturalis. In a chapter on mainstream media, Neuzil noted “regular reports about nature, wildlife, pollution, land use and water from the late 19th century on.” Two important events in the 1930s – the Gauley River tunnel disaster in West Virginia and the St. Louis smoke pollution problem – were widely covered. The first Pulitzer Prize for what was later called environmental journalism was awarded to Sam J. Shelton and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1940.
While some researchers have moved the study of history forward, others have pushed it back. For example, New Scientist editor Nigel Calder claimed that the “climate change swindle” had spawned the “entirely new” field of environmental journalism. (Durkin, 2007). Fortunately, such claims are increasingly rare.
A very different work, also published in 2007, was Bob Wyss’ Covering the Environment. It provided closeups on working the green beat but located the origins of environmental journalism around the Silent Spring controversy. In a second edition published in 2018, Wyss spent more time on precursors to Rachel Carson, mentioning John Muir and George Bird Grinnell as well as well-known muckrakers of the early 20th century.
International publications about environmental journalism still begin the S&EJ origin story at Silent Spring (Bødker, 2013; Mocata, 2015). But a 2018 book, The Myth of Silent Spring, challenges the canonical “songbirds and suburbs” interpretation associated with Carson and her work, and gives readers a more accurate portrait.
So, while we may say that a history of serious science and environmental journalism is well established, questions about its depths and perceptions are still contested.
S&EJ grows up?
In a 2021 Science article entitled “Science Journalism Grows Up,” historian Deborah Blum opens with a note about the Scripps Science Service (established in 1921) and characterizes the1930s alliance between scientists and journalists as the beginning of the “Gee Whiz” period of science journalism. This led, as Boyce Rensberger also noted, to “embarrassing fan-boy coverage” of the development of nuclear weapons and the post–World War II arms race. (Blum, 2021).
Radiation is an old controversy with recent twists. We know that William L. Laurence of the New York Times (“Atomic Bill”) wrote deceptive articles about the radiation safety after the bomb was dropped in Japan. (Kiernan, 2022; Wellerstein, 2021; Rhodes, 1986). “The blast, and not radiation, took (the) toll,” Laurence wrote in the Times, claiming that adverse effects from radiation were merely “Japanese propaganda.” (Laurence, Sept. 12, 1945). A few days later, veteran Times science writer Waldemar Kaempffert joined Laurence in straight-faced reporting that radiation was not a problem. (Kaempffert, Sept 16, 1945.)
However, it’s a mistake to narrowly construe the issue. The controversy about radiation damage didn’t end with Laurence’s propaganda but continued to boil over that fall and well into the future. In something of a mea culpa, Kaempffert wrote in March, 1946: “By this time, every newspaper reader knows that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced radioactive after-effects on some of the surviving residents.” And by August, 1946, readers were given a vivid, up-close portrait of radiation damage in John Hersey’s New Yorker article “Hiroshima,” which is a widely recognized as a masterpiece of both literary journalism and science writing.
The same controversy continues to this day. The movie “Oppenheimer,” released in July 2023, has been sharply criticized for glossing over the ongoing deaths from radiation among people living in the New Mexico desert, where the first nuclear bomb exploded in July,1945. “The film doubles down on the silence we’ve been living with for eight decades about the loss of life and health that was a consequence of the development and testing of the atomic bomb,” wrote Tina Cordova in a New York Times article July 30, 2023. “I will never be able to forgive them for wrecking our lives and walking away.”
Three new publications in the summer of 2023 show the novelty and ongoing excitement of science and environmental journalism history.
* Glen Feighery’s Frontier Values vs. Environmentalism in the June, 2023 issue of Journalism History explores the controversy and the complex motivations behind the newspaper coverage of Western dam controversies in the 1950s;
* Daryl Hartman’s Battle of Ink and Ice, a book published by Viking in June, 2023, is the story of Arctic expeditions organized by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., publisher of the New York Herald, in the 19th century.
* And in press this summer is “Health Reform in the Mid-nineteenth-century New York Periodical Press,” by David Dowling.
Many interesting issues and smoldering controversies remain from earlier eras, including leaded gasoline, the “radium girls,” hydro dams, and the coal wars of Appalachia. It is informative to see how they were covered at the time and to compare older and modern approaches to news coverage.
More work is needed to put us in touch with the reporters who wrote about these issues. Not all of them were “gee whiz” stenographers. Many (perhaps most) acted ethically and refused to be muzzled by industry or government.
They deserve to be remembered.
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Mainstream media S&EJ reporters whose writing has been neglected in history:
• Benjamin Franklin & the Dock Creed water pollution controversy of 1739, in the Pennsylvania Gazette;
• Hezekiah Niles and Niles Weekly Register of Baltimore, 1811-1842, covered science and public health
• Frederick Law Olmstead, a New York Times reporter in the 1850s traveled through the South (and later designed Central Park in New York City);
• Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who wrote a book about his “Overland Journey” to the great forests of California in 1859;
• George Bird Grinnell editor of Field & Stream pioneered issues such as bird preservation in the 1870s;
• Carl Schurz, newspaper publisher in the 1860s – 70s, conservationist, Secretary of Interior 1887-91;
• Non-bylined writers described the fight to save birds, bison and other wildlife 1890 – 1920 time frame;
• E.W. Scripps, founder of the Science Service in 1921 and Edward Slosson, its leading editor;
• Carr Van Anda, editor of the New York Times 1904 – 1932 insisted on taking science seriously;
• “Ding” Darling, NY Herald Tribune, helped organize the New Deal conservation movement 1930s;
• Reporters who founded the National Association of Science writers in 1934, among them, the five reporters who shared a Pulitzer for science writing in 1937: Howard Blakeslee (AP), David Dietz (Scripps), William L. Laurence (NY Times), Gobind Bahiri Lal (San Francisco Chronicle) and John O’Neill (NY Herald Tribune).
• Early 20th century science writers for major newspapers such as Garrett P. Serviss, Waldemar Kaempffert, Bernard Devoto, Silas Bent, Marjory Stoneman Douglass, Edward Meeman
• Early 20th century science writers who covered issues like radium (Walter Lippmann), leaded gasoline and carbon monoxide (Silas Bent) and other environmental controversies.
• International reporting from exploited frontiers: the Congo with Edmond D. Morel c.1904; the Amazon with Benjamin Saldaña Rocca and Euclides da Cunha 1900s – 1920s; and the Philippines with Fidel A. Reyes c. 1908; (Kovarik, 2019)
• Mid 20th century newspaper science writers: Gladwin Hill, Walter Sullivan, E.W. Kenworthy, and John B. Oakes of The NY Times; Luther Carter and Allan Hammond of Science; Jon Franklin and Ann Cottrell Free of the Baltimore Sun; Casey Burko of the Chicago Tribune. (Shabecoff, 1992);
• Mid 20th century reporters who covered radiation such as John Hersey, or dam controversies like Edward J. Meeman in the Tennessee Valley and John B. Oakes in the West (Feighery, 2023); or conservation like Washington Post writers Aubrey Graves and Richard Oulahan.
Sources for historical examples of science & environmental writing
• ProQuest Historical Newspapers, university library databases, searching by topic or authors.
• Open resources like Hathi Trust, Archive.org, Gutenberg.org
• Encyclopedias and Handbooks such as American Environmental Leaders (Grey 2018) or the Routledge Handbook of Environmental Journalism (2020).
• Awardees for Pulitzer, Meemann, Grady, Sullivan, Heinz, and Goldman prizes
• Society for science and the public https://centennial.societyforscience.org/.
• Science Service archives – Smithsonian https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_arc_217249
Blogs & Podcasts
• The pump handle (public health history)
• Science History blog (schi.org)
• Environmental History (environmentalhistory.org)
• Journalism History (https://journalism-history.org/) and podcast
Notes
Henrik Bødker, Irene Neverla, eds., (2013). Environmental Journalism. Routledge.
Deborah Blum (2021). “Science Journalism Grows Up.” Science. 23 Apr 2021. Vol 372, Issue 6540 p 323. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj0434
Douglas Brinkley (2010). The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. Harper
Douglas Brinkley (2022). Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening. Harper
John Burnham (1992). “Of Science and superstition: The media and biopolitics.” In Craid L. LaMay and Everett Dennis, eds., Media and the Environment. Island Press.
Tina Cordova (2023). “What Oppenheimer doesn’t tell you about the Trinity test,” New York Times, Aug. 1, 2023, p 22.
William Cronin (2021). “Two cheers for the whig interpretation of history,” Perspectives on History, American Historical Association, Sept 1, 2012. On the web: https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/september-2012/two-cheers-for-the-whig-interpretation-of-history
David Dowling (2023) “Health Reform in the Mid-nineteenth-century New York Periodical Press,” in R. Wilson (Ed.), New York: A Literary History, Cambridge University Press.
Martin Durkin (2007). The Great Global Warming Swindle. Documentary video, 2007.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle
Edith Efron, (1984) The Apocalyptics. Simon & Schuster; Also Rothman, S., and Lichter, R. (1986), “The Media, Elite Conflict and Risk Perception in Nuclear Energy Policy,” American Political Science Association.
Edwin Emery (1972), The Press and America, 2nd edition. Prentice Hall, 1972, p. 29.
Glen Feighery (2023). “Teaching essay: Frontier values vs. environmentalism in news coverage of Colorado river dams.” Journalism History. June, 2023.
Barbara Friedman, Carolyn Kitch, Therese Lueck, Amber Roessner & Betty Winfield (2009). “Stirred, Not Yet Shaken: Integrating Women’s History into Media History,” American Journalism, 26:1, 160-174, 2009.
DOI: 10.1080/08821127.2009.10677706
Daryl Hartman (2023). The Battle of Ink and Ice, A Sensational Story of News Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media, Viking.
John Hersey (1946). Hiroshima, The New Yorker, Aug. 23, 1946.
On the web: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima
Robert Hunter (1971). The Storming of the Mind: Inside the Consciousness Revolution. McClelland and Stewart; Doubleday.
Waldemar Kaempffert (1945). “Radiologists determine after effects of explosions of atomic bombs not the whole truth,” New York Times, Sept. 16, 1945, p E9.
Waldemar Kaempffert (1946). “Continuing studies of atomic radiation show its effect on living creatures,” New York Times, March 17, 1945, p E9.
Michael Keating (1993). Covering the Environment: a handbook on environmental journalism. National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, University of Western Ontario, Canada.
Vincent Kiernan (2022). Atomic Bill: A Journalist’s Dangerous Ambition in the Shadow of the Bomb. Three Hills
William (Bill) Kovarik (2022). “Changing views of extinction in history,” In David B. Sachsman, Eric Freedman, Sarah Shipley Hiles, (Eds.), Communicating Endangered Species: Extinction, News and Public Policy,. New York: Taylor & Francis. https://billkovarik.com/endangered-species-news-and-public-policy-a-history
William (Bill) Kovarik (2019). “International Environmental Journalism” in David B. Sachsman, and JoAnn Myer Valenti (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Environmental Journalism. London UK: Routledge.
Hillier Krieghbaum (1967). Science and the Mass Media, New York University Press.
William L. Laurence, “US atom bomb site belies Tokyo tales,” New York Times, Sept. 12, 1945, p 1.
Gabbi Mocatta (2015). Environmental Journalism. Open School of Journalism, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. On the web: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361052520_Environmental_Journalism
Chad Montrie (2018). The Myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking the Origins of American Environmentalism, University of California Press.
National Park Service – NPS (2023). “The story of the teddy bear.” On the web: https://www.nps.gov/thrb/learn/historyculture/storyofteddybear.htm
Nark Neuzil, William (Bill) Kovarik (1996). Mass Media and Environmental Conflict: America’s Green Crusades. Sage.
Mark Neuzil (2008) The Environment and the Press, From Adventure Writing to Advocacy. Northwestern University Press.
Joseph A. Pratt (1980). “Letting the Grandchildren Do It: Environmental Planning During the Ascent of Oil as the Major Energy Source,” The Public Historian 2:4, p. 28.
Richard Rhodes (1986). The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Simon & Schuster.
Nelson Smith, Leonard J. Theberge (1983), Energy Coverage, Media Panic, Longman, p. 142.
Alex Wellerstein (2022). Restricted Data: The history of nuclear secrecy in the United States. University of Chicago Press.
Rex Weyler (2020). “Remembering Bob Hunter, Mind Bomber.” Greenpeace International. On the web at: https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/30250/bob-hunter-greenpeace-founder-memorial-mindbombs-rex-weyler/
Wikipedia, “Science Journalism.” Accessed Aug. 1, 2023
On the web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_journalism
Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame. “Carl Schurz.” On the web: https://wchf.org/carl-schurz/.
Robert L. Wyss (2007, 2018) Covering the Environment: How Journalists Work the Green Beat. Routledge.