Americans on Environment News: We Want More! | Azeen Ghorayshi, Mother Jones

Ghorayshi begins:

According to results from a nationwide poll released Thursday, roughly 79 percent of Americans believe environmental news needs a drastic overhaul—both in terms of how much it's being covered and what's making up the conversation.

The poll was conducted by the Project for Improved Environmental Coverage. Says Shannon Binns, project manager at PIEC:

The unique thing about the environment is that it touches on so many other issues. The mainstream media tends to focus on the problems and the controversies around the problems, but really people just want to know how these things are going to affect their lives.

Ghorayshi explains that the mainstream media also insist "on providing 'balanced' coverage, thereby lending credence to scientifically unsubstantiated points of view."

Binns says:

Those kinds of articles are so destructive to public literacy, and just get caught up in the politics. That's what we continue to see, and public environmental literacy is really driven by the way the mass media treats environmental issues.