Sir, - Your editorial "World Environment" (June 28th) criticised politicians, especially those from Northern industrialised countries, for failing to address urgent environmental problems such as global warming at the recent United Nations Conference in New York. You rightly observe that as long as politicians are subservient to vested interest groups such as the fossil fuel lobby, little progress will be made.
It is easy to point the finger at others and let oneself off the hook. In failing to mention that the media, both globally and locally, have succumbed to the same pressures you could be accused to seeing the mote in another's eye while overlooking the plank in your own.
Media coverage of environmental issues has fallen dramatically in recent years. K. Carmody in the Columbia Journalism Review (May/June 1995) estimated that in the US it had fallen 60 per cent since 1989. While I am not aware of similar research here in Ireland, it seems to me that environmental issues are no longer as extensively aired in the print and electronic media as they were in the late 1980s. The media reaction to a month-long pollution of the Nenagh water supply in August 1996 lacked any investigative teeth. Needless to say, there has been little or no follow-up since to see how those who caused the pollution have fared. In like manner, claims by the Aughinish management at the recent EPA oral hearing that stricter controls on air emissions could lead to the plant closing down here not thoroughly scrutinised in the way similar assertions would be in other form (The Irish Times. June 21st and 23rd).
As far as I am aware the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been operating since the early 1990s, has received very little serious media appraisal. Is it protecting the Irish environment? Or is there truth in the claims of some environmentalists that its gamekeeper/poacher role, as a licensing and monitoring agency, undermines its objectivity?
You may feel aggrieved by this criticism since your own environment correspondent, Frank McDonald, has written insightfully and courageously on the environment for years. In comparison with your competitors in the print media and RTE, most people would recognise that you are way ahead of the pack. RTE, for example, scrapped an environment radio programme a few years ago and has not replaced it with anything substantial. However, given the fact that you "have heard the stark warnings about deteriorating conditions", shouldn't you be in the forefront informing the public? You have supplements on almost every item under the sun - finance, sport, fashion, property. Why not publish a well researched environment supplement? If the problem is serious, the response should also be serious. Hand wringing editorials once every few years are no substitute for serious, sustained media interest. - Yours, etc.,
Dalgan Park, Navan, Co Meath.