Environmental reporting

August 18, 1993
Issue 

By Paula Nassif

"We're not being protected ... those who are supposed to protect people from poison, just have not done the job... By and large, they're in bed; in cahoots with those doing the polluting." This damning comment was made by prize-winning investigative journalist and professor of journalism at the State University of New York, Professor Karl Grossman, speaking at a seminar organised by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, at the University of Technology, Sydney.

"This is a life and death issue. Here in Australia, I believe the environmental problems are as critical, and as life threatening and as country ravaging as anywhere on earth, if not more so.

"There are people on the left that say business/capitalism cares more about profit than resources and human beings. The people on the left are right ... corporate responsibility is a contradiction in terms often. On the other hand, look at what government control has done. Look at Eastern Europe. The environment should be perceived not from a left or right perspective, but from an ecocentric perspective."

The most immediate obstacle impeding effective investigative environmental reporting in Australia, Grossman believed, were Australia's libel laws.

"I don't know how a journalist here can function if every time you try to move an inch you're intimidated, your enquiry is chilled by some company ... I think it is utterly necessary to absolutely eliminate these defamation laws ... They are draconian. They are awful. We have nothing like those laws in the United States."

Not only would journalists suffer as a result, Grossman believed, the Australian people would as well, because they would not get the facts.

He was particularly astonished at the lack of protection of sources of Australian journalists.

"[They're] the key to an inquiry. There's reporters going to jail for months in this country — and you're supposed to have a free and unfettered press? This is unbelievable to me. You can't have a free press with this dynamic going down — it's just — I mean — wow!"

In many states in the United States, shield laws protect journalists from disclosing sources. In 1964, in the US case of "Sullivan versus The New York Times", the Supreme Court found that public officials, (this definition was later widened to include those in the public eye), would stand on a different criteria of libel. For example, the official must prove the statement was made with actual malice, that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false. This is not the case in Australia. Grossman believed journalists could get around libel laws by relying on documents more; introducing alternative newspapers; and eventually bringing in cable television.

"Do it. It must be done. We're talking frankly, a very critical time for Australia. I get a sense from travelling around this country, and not for very long, that it's a very vulnerable place. There's not many of you ... I can't honestly believe the American influence ... Wherever you go you have an American multinational moving in, and if you don't have an American multinational moving, you have Japanese influence and you have a government which doesn't seem to have, you know, the guts to represent its' people fully. You have the press being bridled by defamation laws — you've got trouble! I mean really! ... You've got to produce fundamental change in Australia."

Grossman believed there were many important environmental issues to be looked at in Australia. These included the pesticide issue, sewage, and the rainforest question.

"The world's focussed on Brazilian rainforest, but I was up North and what's in store for some of North Queensland and its rainforests — unbelievable to me. I mean, you have more than enough to work on."

Criminal prosecution, he believed, was appropriate for "environmental murder".

"The bad environmental actors have to be eliminated. The poisoning of the landscape, the poisoning of all kinds of forms of life, a very silent spring."

Nuclear power "is totally unacceptable. [And] hey, you're not away from this. Indonesia is moving rapidly by building 30 nuclear plants. I wouldn't like to be in Darwin when those plants get into operation; and if you think Sydney is far away, after Chernobyl, it became clear that it isn't a 10 mile or 50 mile zone of danger. When a nuclear plant goes, thousands of miles downwind is subject to radioactive poisoning".

Grossman believed fundamental change was required, and there was a major question about whether the major political parties in Australia or the US could deal with the threats.

"I'm not seeing any success story in Australia frankly ... the current system of accommodating pollution ... [both] in Australia and the US ... must be ended."

People of colour, in particular he said, were the biggest victims of environmental pollution. Grossman said there was a global pattern of the industrial white world dumping in South America, Africa and other countries.

"This is real critical and it involves the whole world. For years there's been this notion that environmentalism is some kind of white bourgeois thing. In fact, Afro-Americans, Latino-Americans, native Americans, and increasingly, Asian Americans ... are subject to what's called in my country, environmental racism ... This applies

The key point he believed however, was that virtually all the poisonous products and processes were unnecessary, ant that there has been an attempt by various industries, to claim that "life is risky in general and we're just gonna have to spray the landscape with pesticides and take the risk because of the cost benefit analysis or what have you.

"Invariably I find the argument that you meet all the time when you do environmental reporting, makes no sense, doesn't pan out, doesn't float."

He cited examples such as McDonalds saying they could not do without their polystyrene containers for hamburgers, until they were force to switch to wax paper; of officials claiming that nuclear power was totally necessary, where there are alternative and much safer forms of energy.

For example, a new technology called "hot dry-rock geothermal", a simple process whereby oil rigs can be drilled 2-6 miles beneath the earth's surface where it is extremely hot, two pipes are positioned so that water can be pumped into one of the pipes, the injection pipe. Once it hits the hot rock below it, the water boils and comes up the other pipe as super heated water ready to be flashed to steam. The steam can then be used to turn a turbine, for heating, to generate electricity or even power a city.

One expert on Grossman's documentary about this hot dry-rock technology, said: "If only 10% of it is tapped, we could run the country for tens of thousands of years at today's consumption levels".

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