By
Peter Dykstra for Environmental Health News
The
first glimpses of a Trump Administration in action have, to most citizens in
America and abroad, been quite unnerving. Appalling. Unsettling. In other
words, everything that his pre-election conduct promised us.
On
an almost everyday basis, a new media maelstrom leaves us staring slackjawed at
something new: The Wall. The Muslim Ban. Disputes over inaugural crowd size or
millions of alleged illegal voters – those two important if only to show an
Oval Office capacity for deep self-delusion. His accusations that real
journalists publish fake news, while re-tweeting news that is truly fake.
Launching
Twitter attacks – by one pre-inaugural estimate once every 42
hours – on reporters, news organizations, sovereign nations,
beauty contestants, Gold Star parents, Meryl Streep, Samuel L. Jackson, John
Lewis, and at least two future members of his own cabinet, Ben Carson and Nikki
Haley. A prime time Supreme Court appointment.
But
it also plays to the news media’s worst instincts to follow, en masse, the
brightest, shiniest object of the day.
And
while we’re doing that, the real work of dismantling government – including
efforts on health, climate change, and environmental protection – are free to
continue without scrutiny, or even in relative secrecy.
 |
| Climate news coverage disappearing faster than polar ice. |
The
liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America has tracked the demise
of climate reporting on
network newscasts for years. I can't see that trend changing under Donald
J. Trump.
Traditional
print media and online sources haven’t been nearly as negligent as commercial
broadcast news. Old-line media like the Washington Post, New York Times, and
the Associated Press have, if anything, upped their game.
New media and nonprofit news sites are performing
nobly, but let’s face it: Collectively, we don’t rate a mention when the
administration talks about war against the media.
A
prominent industry newsletter, the Tyndall Report, chronicled the steep drop in issue-oriented
coverage in TV news during the 2016 campaign. They saved this
remarkable line for the exclamation point:
“No trade, no healthcare, no climate change, no drugs, no poverty, no guns, no infrastructure, no deficits. To the extent that these issues have been mentioned, it has been on the candidates' terms, not on the networks' initiative.”
This
past week, while the news media obsessed over two genuinely important stories –
the “Muslim Ban” and the Supreme Court appointment – here’s what fell into the
shadows:
- Congress rescinded a rule requiring transparency in oil companies' payments to foreign governments. Let's assume Secretary of State Tillerson is okay with this.
- An EPA transition team leader floated the notion of firing two-thirds of the agency’s staff.
- The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists pushed its “Doomsday Clock” thirty seconds closer to midnight.
- The leading U.S. diplomat on the Arctic quietly walked away from the Chairmanship of the multi-nation Arctic Council
- An executive order directed federal agencies to abolish two regulations for every one new one it creates – a sort of buy one, get one free for the Koch Brothers.
- Trump promised pharmaceutical executives that the Food and Drug Administration would face a regulatory purge.
- The Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline projects were revived by Executive Order.
- Congress voted to overturn the Stream Protection Rule, which guards 6,000 miles of American streams from surface mine runoff.
- The potential gutting, or outright abolition, of the Endangered Species Act.
- The House Science Committee announced a hearing titled “Making the EPA Great Again.”
Each
of these items got covered. Then they went away, while the national
conversation from network newscasts to trending Twitter stories featured the
Ban, and such Earth-shattering figures as LeBron James, Beyoncé and
Punxsutawney Phil.
And
chances are that someone who reads an environmental page like this one would
already know these things. But beyond the small circle of us who follow this
stuff closely, the rollbacks, science purges, and outright denial of scientific
fact will continue, buried at the bottom of a broad heap of absurdity.
Don’t
rely on the nation’s political press to give a rip, or have a clue.
Gorsuch
was branded as a westerner even though he spent much of his adolescence in the
capital, watching his mother Anne stage a previous attempt to dismantle EPA.
A
CNN reporter named Pamela Brown speculated that many conservatives, for whom
“your Momma was an EPA Administrator” would be the highest of insults, would
mistrust the nominee.
History
much? Of all the Reagan-era appointees, Anne Gorsuch Burford would have been
one of the best fits in a Trump cabinet. Her Trump-ish attempts to cripple the
EPA were thwarted by a Democratic congress, and her career ended
in scandal. The type of scandal that pretty much happens hourly,
with little notice or no consequence, in the current administration.
But
there’s no need for an ambitious Washington reporter to have known that. Being
steeped in knowledge of the environment beat rarely furthers your political
journalism career.
Jake
Fuentes on the Medium.com offers another angle on this: Many of us presume that
our new President is outwardly disjointed in his public utterances. But his
media success, so far, is unquestionable. Could the Muslim ban be a conscious
headfake to throw the press and public into an uproar while our
system of protections is dismantled?
Maybe.
But
don’t expect the denial, the harassment of scientists, or the relentless
contempt for environmental protection to impress very many people. When the
Commander-in-Chief launches a 3 a.m., 140-character hissyfit at an
environmental journalist, I’ll know we’ve arrived.
