Bad News or Good News: Environmental Politics and the Mass Media

Abstract

Concern for the environment is a prominent feature of contemporary British politics and culture, Such concern is not new. Many of today's environmental pressure groups date from the turn of the century and a good deal of the legislation protecting the environment derives from the 1940s and 1950s. What is new, as Kimber and Richardson (1974) point out, is ‘on the one hand, the global approach to the problem - both figuratively and literally - and, on the other hand, the popularisation of the issues by the mass media.’ In this paper we will examine the media's role in popularising environmental issues and use our findings to qualify some of the prevailing assumptions about the political role of the mass media.