'Environmental journalism prize will only reward Daily Mail's hypocrisy'

On Monday the shortlist for the Press Gazette Environmental Press Awards was announced with both familiar and surprising names in the running.

Up for Environment Journalist of the Year is Fiona Harvey of the Financial Times. Fiona is a celebrated environment correspondent, having won the 2007 British Environment and Media Award.

One of the reasons for Fiona's continued award nominations is the positive approach she and the FT take to reporting on the environment. Fiona explained it like this:

"We're very solutions focused — we won't just present the problem. Our readership is generally in positions of power. They don't like to be told there's a problem without some way of dealing with it. So we like to think we've got a very can-do attitude, it's not just 'oh dear'. And that's with all issues, not just the environment."

It is encouraging that environment journalism has another new set of gongs to recognise committed investigation and green campaigning. For this the Press Gazette should be applauded, because such events bring a wider set of rewards.

Last year freelance environment journalist Sarah Lewis won the EDF Energy London and South Environmental Journalist of the Year Award.

It's already opened doors for her as both journalist and guest speaker on the environment. In November she's chairing a discussion panel at RIBA's sustainability conference; and she's also turned judge for the Brighton Argus' eco-awards.

Good reporting on the environment should be as critical and, yes, as skeptical as reporting on any other area of public life. There isn't a single paper that hasn't offered a wide range of views in its coverage of the environment.

In their 2007 Ipsos-Mori report ‘Turning Point or Tipping Point?’ looking at the reporting of climate change, Phil Downing and Joe Ballantyne noted how inconsistencies and tensions often exist within the same publication, for example between the news section and the commentary.

But some are more inconsistent than others, which is why I almost choked on my toast when I saw The Daily Mail nominated for the Press Gazette's Campaign of the Year Award for 'Banish the Bags', its campaign to get supermarkets to stop giving away disposable plastic carrier bags.

The campaign officially launched on February 27 this year with graphic images of dead turtles, who had become entangled with some of the 13 billion plastic bags we use and discard every year.

According to the Press Gazette's shortlist, the campaign 'scored major successes earlier this year'.

Really? While getting rid of plastic bags is a significant environmental benefit, I find this nomination difficult to swallow.

First, this was a social revolution that the Daily Mail has co-opted and called its own. Remember that date: February 27 2008.

The ultra-stylish ‘I'm Not A Plastic Bag’, designed by Anya Hindmarch and which made rejecting plastic fashionable, was introduced at the end of 2006.

Then in early 2007, the British Retail Consortium announced a voluntary initiative to reduce the environmental impact of carrier bags by 25 per cent by the end of 2008.

On April 27 2007, Sainsbury's banned bags for a day to see if a permanent ban was feasible. Three days later, Modbury in Devon was the first town in Britain to ban plastic bags, with all 43 market retailers putting a stop to the waste.

Throughout 2007, dozens of other towns started putting their communities forward to become plastic bag free, such as Aylsham in Norfolk and Henfield in West Sussex.

The organisation behind this campaign? No, not the Daily Mail, but the Marine Conservation Society.

It's important to keep this campaign in perspective. Plastic bags are a waste of precious resources and threat to wildlife. Small changes can make a huge difference. It is for this reason that 'decline plastic bags wherever possible' is the first action suggested in the book Change The World For A Fiver.

But as environmental group Friends of the Earth have been quick to point out, in the context of climate change and biodiversity threats, plastic bags account for only 0.3 per cent of domestic waste and are not a top priority.

All of this is forgivable: the nationals often get on board only when momentum has already built among their readerships.

But the real problem with this nomination is the hypocrisy it would reward if the Daily Mail won. 'Banish the Bags' came hot on the heels of another of the Daily Mail's causes: its 'Great Bin Revolt' campaign.

This one was aimed at getting the 'bin tax' — a plan to get over-polluting families to contribute more to their refuse collection cost (seems sensible to me) — scrapped from the UK Climate Change Bill.

This campaign threw the bill out with the bathwater, with barely a mention of the growing global crisis of climate change in its coverage.

Of the 45 stories that the Daily Mail ran between January 1 2006 and July 31 2008 on the Climate Change Bill, 23 rejected the bill outright, while a further eight argued it was of questionable use.

Why? Because there was a bin tax in there, one tiny element of a huge and important piece of legislation. As such, 70 per cent of all the Mail's articles dismissed the bill.

Awarding the Daily Mail the 'environmental campaign of the year' award would be like giving George Bush the Nobel Prize instead of Al Gore, because Bush uses geothermal springs to heat water in his home. A drop in the ocean compared to his wholesale rejection of Kyoto and refusal to impose compulsory action on reducing emissions.

Yes, getting rid of plastic bags is a great thing. But we were on our way to doing this before the Daily Mail got on board.

The government and retail associations were already behind it. This was the easiest campaign to run, a clear winner, no losers, and no tough choices.

What is the point of these awards from Press Gazette? To reward the playground bully simply for not beating up the other kids? Or to reward newspapers who, in difficult economic and environmental times, take on the extra challenges of convincing their readers to choose green sustainability over personal ease?

Is the Daily Mail really punching its weight against environmental problems or simply picking the easy wins?

Let's hope this environmental campaign award goes to another nominee: the Exeter Express and Echo for its 'Green shoppers' campaign, a grassroots initiative launched in June 2007 to, guess what, ban plastic bags.

Alex Lockwood is a journalism lecturer at the University of Sunderland specialising in the practice and theory of environmental journalism, and the experience of global environmental change. He writes on environment, journalism and the media at www.alexlockwood.net.

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