Research among experienced environmental journalists reveals a shift since 2000 in their view of "balance," as an element of objectivity. They now advocate a "weight of evidence" approach where stories reflect scientific consensus.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D08345
Notes:
Pages 265-285 in Steve May, Case studies in organizational communication: ethical perspectives and practices. Sage Publications, Inc., Thousand Oaks, California. 402 pages.
Gifford, Claude W. (author / Director, Office of Communication, U.S. Department of Agriculture)
Format:
policy statement
Publication Date:
1974-01-01
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 67 Document Number: D10745
Notes:
Claude W. Gifford Collection. Beyond his materials in the ACDC collection, the Claude W. Gifford Papers, 1919-2004, are deposited in the University of Illinois Archives. Serial Number 8/3/81. Locate finding aid at https://archives.library.illinois.edu/archon/, Claude W. Gifford Collection. 4 pages., Considerations involved in separating the program information function of USDA from the policy information function. They focused, for example, on efforts proposed by the American Agricultural Editors' Association to "be objective in playing an educational role rather than a promotional role in explaining farm programs, referendums and related policy matters."
Call, Robert (author / Farmer, USA), Pigeon, Roland (author / Farmer, Canada), Watt, Hew (author / Farmer, England), and Bentley, J.M. (author / President, Canadian Federation of Agriculture)
Format:
Panel report
Publication Date:
1967-06
Published:
International: First International Congress of Farm Writers.
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 73 Document Number: D10791
Notes:
Item located in Document D10786. Claude W. Gifford Collection. Beyond his materials in the ACDC collection, the Claude W. Gifford Papers, 1919-2004, are deposited in the University of Illinois Archives. Serial Number 8/3/81. Locate finding aid at https://archives.library.illinois.edu/archon/, Pages 49-56 in J.S. Cram (ed.), Proceedings of the first International Congress of Farm Writers at Macdonald College, Quebec, Canada, June 18-21, 1967. 112 pages.
This article explores the role of traditional objectivity in newspaper coverage of the nomination in Alaska of a socialist commissioner of environmental conservation and the subsequent "framing" of public discussion.
8 pages., Online via UIUC Library electronic subscription., The author of this commentary argued that environmental journalism offers a conceptual model and guide to action for all journalists in the "post-truth" and "post-fact" era. "Since the specialism was formed in the 1960s, environmental journalists have reported on politically partisan issues where facts are contested, expertise is challenged, and uncertainty is heightened. To deal with these and other challenges, environmental journalism ... has reassessed and reconfigured the foundational journalistic concept of objectivity. The specialism has come to view objectivity as the implementation of a transparent method, as the pluralistic search for consensus, and, most importantly, as trained judgment."
