ABSTRACT
The writer, a freelance journalist based in England, begins at the beginning, noting that a “1750 edition of the Edinburgh Courant … mentioned a ‘contagious distemper, which has raged very much in several villages,’ while editions of The Scotsman, from its early years in the 1870s right through to the 1930s and beyond, carried regular local stories of polluted rivers and lakes.” He explains that modern environmental journalism in Great Britain was influenced (as was American environmental reporting) by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. He writes that “mainstream media publications are now almost under an obligation to report environmental issues” and that the British reporters now covering the topic “really care about it” (quoting reporter Sarah Robinson, formerly of the Weston Mercury).
