No, you’re not imagining things.

With U.S. gasoline prices edging toward $4.00 a gallon; oil prices at an all-time high, demand for materials such as copper outstripping demand; worldwide food shortages; major cities running short on water; Antarctic ice sheets crumbling into the Southern Ocean; and continued uncertainty over our climatological future, you’d think the environment would be front-and-center on the evening news. And you’d be wrong.

Sure, there’s some reporting on spotty gas lines and store chains placing minor restrictions on rice purchases. But the policy failures which are already being felt in the stomachs of the developing world — and will eventually become obvious elsewhere — are hardly ever discussed. Nor are the tremendous advances in clean and green technology which will hold such promise for the coming decades.

What a difference a year makes

Just 14 months ago, Hollywood rolled up to the Academy Awards in electric cars and hybrid limos to laud An Inconvenient Truth. By summer, it was nonstop coverage of the Live Earth climate concerts. Advertisers were falling all over themselves to slap green stickers on their products, and the media was all but pronouncing the penguin and polar bear extinct.

Then came the inevitable blowback from radio talk show hosts, politicians, and indistrialist talking heads. Perhaps, also, the general public — suffering a green hangover from too much eco-marketing and inflated claims on both sides of the climate change issue. By autumn, the press had moved on to follow presidential hopefuls, not the environment.

A real decline in environmental and science reporting

If you’re reading EcoTech Daily, you’ve probably sensed for some time that the mainstream media has largely abandoned environmental science coverage. Now there are some hard numbers which show the issue’s consignment to the back page.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism — a nonpartisan group affiliated with the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC — has just released a study tracking the editorial direction of the Wall Street Journal since its purchase by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. In the process, they’ve turned up statistics showing just how little environmental news is deemed worthy of editorial attention at both the WSJ and the New York Times.

Surveying front page stories at the WSJ between 12 August and 12 December, 2007, the Project discovered that five percent of the paper’s reporting could be categorized as Science/Technology or the Environment. The study then tracked these issues for a three-month period beginning 13 December — the day Murdoch took control. Coverage declined by over half, to 2.1 percent.

This isn’t an aberration. The project also surveyed the front page editorial content of the New York Times between December and March. The NYT’s coverage of Science/Technology and the Environment clocked in even lower than the WSJ: 1.8 percent.

Out of step with the real world

Admittedly, there’s a lot of political news as the United States prepares for this November’s general election. But even in the context of presidential debates and a heated congressional campaign, environmental reporting has been pushed off the front page.

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are two of the world’s most influential news organizations: their reporting helps set the tone for both print and electronic media. Their editorial abandonment of the environment both reflects and guides the media at large.

All this is happening at a time of unparalleled progress in environmental technology and business. Corporations have genuinely embraced sustainability as a necessary component of profitability. The CleanTech and green collar sector is roaring ahead, and there’s no shortage of meaningful advances in the fields of alternative energy, clean transportation, and resource conservation. Green has transcended its utopian roots to become a real bridge to the future.

The new environmental media

To a degree, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times’ disconnect with environmental issues speaks to the decline of traditional mass media. No longer the gatekeepers of public discourse, print and electronic broadcast media are enduring sharp reversals in readership, viewers, and revenues. In response, mass media increasingly relies on the sensational to prop up the exodus of their core consumers.

Reporting is now more about conflict and drama than the issues from which they extend. The transformation of news from information to entertainment — and the corrosive effect of this process on the guilded remnants of traditional news brands — can be observed in the long decline of the once-great CBS News, former home to Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. There will be other failures.

With this transition, though, comes the rise of a new web-based media. Decentralized, specialized, and interactive, new media is steadily taking possession of the fields abandoned by its predecessor.

In terms of environmental reporting, there are already clear leaders: stalwarts, such as Grist and Treehugger; EcoGeek, for green tech; Jetson Green and Inhabitat in the fields of sustainable design and construction; the Green Options family of eco blogs; and the dozens of independent and corporate-owned environmental voices you’ll see quoted here on EcoTech Daily.

So the cycle begins anew. Thank you for being part of the Green Revolution.

Read more:

How Different is Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal? (Project for Excellence in Journalism)