Gary Polakovic, an award-winning veteran environmental reporter for the Press-Enterprise and LA Times, visited Cal State Fullerton's first environmental reporting class last night and gave some insight into the growing field.
Mr. Polakovic spoke last night to new journalists, who desire to become balanced EV reporters, and gave a few pointers.
First, with the aspect of the environment and news like global warming and "Al Gore," swimming around in the "blogsphere," becoming ever so popular, changing the course of history, although that could happen, should not be our intention. This is called advocacy journalism and can often label journalists as being "green," or "pro-environment." We must stay away from this Gary says and we should force ourselves to be objective and accurate.
The most important point is that environmental reporting has a lot at stake, we're talking big business, lives, jobs, economy, housing, reporting on the environment can affect a lot of things. So that's why he said it's so important to be accurate!!! The smallest mistake or misquote or exaggeration can result in people losing their trust in what you say or a lawsuit.
So if there is one thing we can learn from Gary, who basically created the field of EV reporting, it's that we need to get our facts straight. Once the facts can stand on their own, then it doesn't matter what anyone says.
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