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 News Media Coverage of Environmental
Challenges in Latin America & the Caribbean
Mediating Demand, Degradation & Development

Edited by
Bruno Takahashi, Juliet Pinto, Manuel Chavez,
and Mercedes Vigón

Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication

Series Editors: A. Hansen; S. Depoe
Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental
Communication

Series Editors
Anders Hansen
Department of Media and Communication
University of Leicester
Leicester, UK

Steve Depoe
McMicken College of Arts & Sciences
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH, USA
Drawing on both leading and emerging scholars of environmental com-
munication, the Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental
Communication Series features books on the key roles of media and com-
munication processes in relation to a broad range of global as well as
national/local environmental issues, crises and disasters. Characteristic of
the cross-disciplinary nature of environmental communication, the books
showcase a broad variety of theories, methods and perspectives for the
study of media and communication processes regarding the environment.
Common to these is the endeavour to describe, analyse, understand and
explain the centrality of media and communication processes to public and
political action on the environment.

Advisory Board
Stuart Allan, Cardiff University, UK
Alison Anderson, Plymouth University, UK
Anabela Carvalho, Universidade do Minho, Portugal
Robert Cox, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
Geoffrey Craig, University of Kent, UK
Julie Doyle, University of Brighton, UK
Shiv Ganesh, Massey University, New Zealand
Libby Lester, University of Tasmania, Australia
Laura Lindenfeld, University of Maine, USA
Pieter Maeseele, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Chris Russill, Carleton University, Canada
Joe Smith, The Open University, UK

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14612
 Bruno Takahashi • Juliet Pinto
Manuel Chavez • Mercedes Vigón
Editors

News Media Coverage

of Environmental
Challenges in Latin
America and the
Caribbean
Mediating Demand, Degradation and Development
Editors
Bruno Takahashi Juliet Pinto
School of Journalism and Donald P. Bellisario College of
Department of Communication Communications
Michigan State University The Pennsylvania State University
East Lansing, MI, USA State College, PA, USA

Manuel Chavez Mercedes Vigón

Journalism and Latin American Studies Department of Journalism
Michigan State University Florida International University
East Lansing, MI, USA North Miami, FL, USA

Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication

ISBN 978-3-319-70508-8    ISBN 978-3-319-70509-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70509-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018945557

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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 Contents

1 Challenges in the Reporting of Environmental Issues

in Latin America and the Caribbean   1
Bruno Takahashi, Juliet Pinto, Mercedes Vigón, and
Manuel Chavez

Part I North America and the Caribbean  17

2 The News Media and Environmental Challenges in Mexico:

The Structural Deficits in the Coverage and Reporting by
the Press  19
Manuel Chavez, Mireya Marquez, Denisse J. Flores, and
Manuel A. Guerrero

3 Comparing Cuban and South Florida Spanish-Language

Media Coverage of Sea-­Level Rise  47
Juliet Pinto and Mercedes Vigón

Part II The Andes and the Amazon Regions  65

4 Environmental Journalism in Brazil: History, Characteristics,

and Framing of Disasters  67
Rachel R. Mourão and Heloisa Aruth Sturm

v
vi Contents

5 Environmental News Coverage in Ecuador: New Resources,

Old Media–State Tensions and Practices  91
Mercedes Vigón, Juliet Pinto, and Lilliam Martínez-Bustos

6 Environmental Journalism in Colombia: An Analysis

of Two Specialized Environmental Magazines 113
María Angela Torres-Kremers

7 The Challenges for Environmental Reporting in Peru:

Coverage of Small-Scale Mining in Peruvian Newspapers 131
Hildegard Willer and Bruno Takahashi

Part III Southern South America 157

8 Environmental Journalism in Argentina 159

María Teresa Mercado-Sáez and Fermín Koop

9 The Future of Environmental Communication and

Journalism in Latin America and the Caribbean 177
Juliet Pinto, Mercedes Vigón, Manuel Chavez, and
Bruno Takahashi

Index 187
 Notes on Contributors

Manuel Chavez is the Director of the Information and Media Studies

doctoral program and a professor of journalism at the College of
Communication Arts and Science at Michigan State University. He con-
centrates his research on crisis and risk communication, and international
journalism. He has published in the areas of media and governmental
accountability, border studies, migration issues, and natural resources
protection.
Denisse J. Flores is a science and environmental journalist who holds a
master’s degree in communication from the Department of
Communication, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. She has
received a number of awards for her work in areas related to communica-
tion and environmental education and her interests focus on the conserva-
tion of natural resources.
Manuel A. Guerrero is the Director of the Department of Communi­
cation of the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, and UNESCO
Chair in Communication and Society. His research has focused on the
role of the media in new democracies, especially in the framing of political
issues, and on media and political attitudes. He has also published in areas
of transparency, accountability, and anticorruption policies and regulation.
Fermín Koop is an experienced Argentine environmental journalist, who
currently works as a freelancer for local and international media outlets. He
is the cofounder of Claves21, a network of Latin American ­environmental
journalists and journalism students, and a local partner of the Earth

vii
viii Notes on Contributors

Journalism Network (EJN). He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism, a

postgraduate degree in climate change and an MSc degree in environment
and development. He has taken part in three COP climate-change summits
(COP20, COP21, and COP23), where he worked as a reporter and pro-
vided training for journalists on the subject of climate change.
Mireya Marquez is the coordinator of the master’s program in
Communication and Professor of Journalism Studies and Media Theory at
the Dept. of Communication, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City.
Her research interests include comparative journalism cultures, media sys-
tems in Latin America, beat journalism, freedom of speech and anti-­press
violence, theories of media democratization, and mixed-methods research.
Lilliam Martínez-Bustos is an assistant professor in the Department of
Journalism and Media at Florida International University. Ms. Martínez-
Bustos has worked as an executive producer for CBS Telenoticias, as a
producer in the Washington offices of the NBC-Telemundo and Univision
networks, and has also worked at local affiliates of PBS, CBS, and ABC in
Boston.
María Teresa Mercado-Sáez is an associate professor in the School of
Journalism at Universidad Cardenal Herrera-CEU, CEU Universities
(Valencia, Spain). She teaches environmental journalism and her research
focuses on climate change and energy in the media. She is editor of El
debate energético en los medios, of a book about the energy debate on
Spanish media. She contributes to the local newspaper Levante-EMV as a
TV columnist. She spent 2010 in Argentina conducting research there.
Rachel R. Mourão is an assistant professor of innovative technologies at
the School of Journalism, Michigan State University. Her research focuses
on the relationships between journalism, technology, and politics in Latin
America and the USA. Employing both quantitative and qualitative meth-
ods, her projects analyze how multiple influences shape journalistic cover-
age of protests and elections in Brazil, and how that compares to the US
press.
Juliet Pinto is an associate professor in the Department of Journalism,
Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, Pennsylvania State
University. Dr. Pinto studies environmental communication in Spanish-
and English-language media and has produced an award-­winning docu-
mentary on sea-level rise, South Florida’s Rising Seas (2014).
 Notes on Contributors 
   ix

Heloisa Aruth Sturm is a doctoral candidate at The University of Texas

at Austin School of Journalism and the student leader of the Digital Media
Research Group at the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life. Her
research interests include political communication, social media, and jour-
nalistic practices. She previously worked as a reporter in Brazil covering
education, culture, and science.
Bruno Takahashi is an associate professor of environmental journalism
and communication at Michigan State University. Dr. Takahashi is also the
research director of the Knight Center of Environmental Journalism. His
research interests include media coverage of environmental affairs, envi-
ronmental journalism practices, risk communication, and the links between
media and policy.
María Angela Torres-Kremers is an environmental journalist in Berlin,
Germany. Over many years she has worked as part of the academic staff in
the departments of Social Communication and Journalism of several
Colombian universities. She is also the editor of Revista YARUMO
Internacional. Dr. Torres-Kremers’s PhD degree was in Journalism and
Communication Sciences, with a special focus on environmental commu-
nication in Germany.
Mercedes Vigón is an associate professor at Florida International
University’s Department of Journalism and Media, and is the associate
director of the FIU International Media Center. Dr. Vigón has worked as
an executive producer and international writer for CBS Telenoticias, a
journalist with UPI, and a news director for Net Financial News.
Hildegard Willer is a German journalist and journalism lecturer at the
Catholic University of Peru (PUCP). Her journalistic work focuses on
environmental and social issues and has appeared in German-language
publications, for example in the NZZ, taz, welt-sichten, and Tageswoche, as
well as English-language publications like Eco-Americas and The Lancet.
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Main angle of story (%) 36

Fig. 2.2 Institutional focus (%) 38
Fig. 2.3 Article characteristics and reporting techniques (%) 40

xi
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Word counts of all stories 53

Table 4.1 Characteristics of the sample by outlet and episodic/thematic
coverage80
Table 4.2 Descriptive statistics for the stories on Mariana Dam—
proportion of quotes from each type of source and tone of
coverage related to the government and Samarco (N = 40)81
Table 4.3 Correlations between the proportion of quotes coming from
each type of source and the tone of coverage toward the
government and the company Samarco 82
Table 4.4 Comparison of proportions of sources used by thematic and
episodic stories 83
Table 5.1 Frames in El Comercio stories 102
Table 5.2 Frames in El Ciudadano stories 104
Table 5.3 Origin of coverage 106
Table 5.4 Approach to the issues compared to Obregón et al. (2010) 107
Table 6.1 Main themes in Catorce 6122
Table 6.2 Main themes in Semana Sostenible122
Table 6.3 Tone in Catorce 6 and Semana Sostenible123
Table 6.4 Conflict frames in Catorce 6 and Semana Sostenible123
Table 6.5 Solutions mentioned 124
Table 6.6 Frames in Catorce 6 and Semana Sostenible124
Table 6.7 Frames and tone 125
Table 7.1 Number of newspaper articles 140

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Challenges in the Reporting

of Environmental Issues in Latin America
and the Caribbean

Bruno Takahashi, Juliet Pinto, Mercedes Vigón,

and Manuel Chavez

A region home to some of the most important ecosystems in the world—

including the Amazon rainforest, Galapagos Islands, Andes mountains,
Patagonia, and the reefs, coastlines, and maritime areas of the Caribbean Sea

B. Takahashi (*)
School of Journalism and Department of Communication,
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
e-mail: btakahas@msu.edu
J. Pinto
Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications,
The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA
e-mail: jzp726@psu.edu
M. Vigón
Department of Journalism, Florida International University,
North Miami, FL, USA
e-mail: vigonm@fiu.edu

© The Author(s) 2018 1

B. Takahashi et al. (eds.), News Media Coverage of Environmental
Challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean, Palgrave Studies
in Media and Environmental Communication,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70509-5_1
2 B. TAKAHASHI ET AL.

and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, among others—Latin America and the
Caribbean provides important opportunities for scholarship examining the
nexus of economics and environment, politics and populace, and the articu-
lations of the ecological world in the mainstream, legacy media, who serve
as much in agenda-setting capacities as they do in reflecting signals from
society and institutions. Many of these countries are also uniquely vulnera-
ble to global climate change (CEPAL 2015; World Bank 2014). This
includes the melting of the tropical glaciers in the Andean region that serve
as the main source of water for millions of habitants; the deforestation of the
Amazonian region; acidification and fisheries depletion along the coasts;
species extinctions; as well as extreme natural events and disasters, such as El
Niño, and the exacerbation of their effects on populations who may already
suffer unreliable levels of access to basic services (CEPAL 2015).
Indeed, Latin America and Caribbean countries have faced a multiplic-
ity of structural challenges—political, social, and economic—over the last
couple of centuries, all of which have hindered the equality of economic
and social development across class and racial cleavages (Skidmore et al.
2013). Social inequalities, cycles of political and economic instability, and
the degradation of the natural environment have ensued. Historical lega-
cies from colonialism have in part made most of these countries heavily
dependent on their natural resources, oftentimes to the benefit of devel-
oped nations—a modern form of dependency (Skidmore et al. 2013). This
dependency has led to a variety of environmental problems, including the
pollution of waterways, deforestation, and air pollution, among others.
But at the same time, the ecosystems and natural resources found in the
Latin America and Caribbean region are unique and of extreme impor-
tance to the rest of the world. From abundant fisheries to endemic hard-
woods, unparalleled biodiversity, and exotic fruits, among many others,
this region continues to offer to the rest of the world not only products
and natural resources, but also ecosystem services such as carbon seques-
tration and purification of water and air which take place in the Amazon
(Strassburg et al. 2010).
In addition, many countries in the region play a significant role in global
environmental politics. For example, Brazil hosted the 1992 United Nations
Earth Summit, and now as an emerging economy and as part of the BRICS

M. Chavez
Journalism and Latin American Studies, Michigan State University,
East Lansing, MI, USA
e-mail: chavezm1@msu.edu
 CHALLENGES IN THE REPORTING OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN LATIN… 3

bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), has a strong influence
in global environmental negotiations. In addition, Argentina, Mexico, and
Peru have hosted the UN Conference of the Parties meetings, and Amazonian
countries participate in the UN’s REDD+ programs. Furthermore, Bolivia,
Venezuela, and to a lesser extent Ecuador, have taken a shared position on
climate change negotiations, firmly condemning developed nations for their
role in greenhouse gas emissions. In 2008, President Rafael Correa and the
Ecuadorian government approved changes to the constitution that granted
nature constitutional rights, and a voice, for the first time in history (Becker
2011). Various actors compete for public attention in mediated environmen-
tal discourses. The media is a public arena (Hilgartner and Bosk 1988) where
claims-makers battle and negotiate over meanings that attempt to socially
construct nature as well as environmental problems. These alternative voices
can indeed shape local, regional, and global environmental discourses.
By providing case studies of instances of national news coverage of envi-
ronmental challenges, we hope to further and expand research in a variety
of disciplines that critically examine mediated articulations of demand,
degradation, and development, and the cultural, political, economic, and
societal influences on them. Environmental news coverage provides an
important opportunity to take the pulse of how and why news is produced
in the region. In Latin America and the Caribbean, such coverage is
uniquely important, as many if not most national economies depend heav-
ily on the exploitation and exportation of their natural resources.
Coverage of these processes through a mediated lens provides a scalable
analytical view of how local politics meets national political and economic
agendas and international capital flows, and national and international
journalism production meets established global power structures. Added
to this mix are factors such as severe income inequality, indigenous politics
and citizen activism, and questions of identity, development, modernity,
and legitimacy, as actors at every level battle to dominate and structure the
narrative, legitimize the mediated discourse, and decide the voices that
will be transmitted along myriad mediated platforms.

The Politics of the Environment in Latin America

and the Caribbean

Harnessing national well-being to natural resource exploitation and expor-

tation is not new. At the beginning of the last century, a global com-
modities boom sent prices for exports skyrocketing, including those for
soybeans, wheat, gold, silver, natural fertilizer, oil, and many others.
4 B. TAKAHASHI ET AL.

Governments rushed to leverage the boom, with the promise that this
‘resource nationalism’ (Yates and Bakker 2014, p. 15) would fund social
development (Gao 2015). After the global economic crash of the Great
Depression and World War II, which followed it, such resource national-
ism was replaced by populist economic strategies, such as import substitu-
tion industrialization (Skidmore et al. 2013) and national interventions in
economic development. These strategies mostly failed for those countries
that faced a lack of competition and innovation. This in turn generated
economic and political instability, which in some cases led to military take-
overs of democratic regimes. In the cases of Argentina and Chile, these
golpes de estado (coups d’état) meant that thousands of dissidents disap-
peared and were detained and/or tortured; this state of affairs lasted for a
decade, until democratization processes returned.
The rocky transition from military regimes to democratic governments
in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Brazil, and the high levels
of corruption in most countries (Seligson 2002) affect governability, which
is reflected in the weakness of the rule of law and the fragility of govern-
mental and nongovernmental institutions. In this context, the environ-
ment as a policy issue was institutionalized via ministries in most countries
in the region (Takahashi and Meisner 2012), but was always undermined
by economic interests tied to extractive industries (Liverman and Vilas
2006). By the turn of the twenty-first century, all that was old was new
again. What others termed neopopulist governments had once again capi-
talized on a global commodity boom to feverishly exploit resources and
export them to meet international demand, particularly from the explod-
ing economic giant China (Jenkins et al. 2008). Latin American leaders’
rhetoric joined progressive promises with extractive activities to argue that
national development, moving sectors of the populace out of poverty and
into ‘modernity,’ depended on exploiting ecological systems. This ‘pink
tide’ swept across much of Latin America and was a stark shift away from
the neoliberal policies that had accompanied the return to democratization
processes in the last decades of the twentieth century (Chodor 2014).
Although neither type of regime made particular efforts to conserve envi-
ronmental integrity, the discourse had shifted to place national concerns
over international investment (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2012).
The free-trade policies that emerged during the period from the mid-­
1980s to the mid-2000s were touted as potential regional agreements that
included environmental protection measures. In 1994, that was the case
of Mexico, which made the creation of policies to protect its natural
resources and environment one of the major conditions of the passing of
 CHALLENGES IN THE REPORTING OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN LATIN… 5

the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In fact, the agree-
ment included an environmental parallel agreement that focused particu-
lar attention on the creation of protected areas in regions shared as borders
between the three countries that were involved (Canada, the USA, and
Mexico) and in areas of heavy manufacturing and industrialization in each
country. Of these three countries, Mexico, having been the weaker envi-
ronmental regulator, turned into an active international actor to protect
the national environments of developing countries (Chavez 2006). The
intentions and results of this successful example inspired the planned cre-
ation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas; however, this never material-
ized, as Latin American countries resisted the trade policies of the USA.
Even though global economic growth rates exploded in the first decade
of the twentieth century and poverty rates declined (World Bank 2014),
others have argued that the promises of societal betterment as a result of
this have been largely unmet, and in some cases, such as that of Venezuela,
social mobility has steeply declined (Gudynas 2010). As a result of the
region’s extreme vulnerability to global price fluctuations, and uneven
state policy interventions, the stability so sorely needed for improved
social conditions has not been achieved (Veltmeyer 2012). It is clear from
these historical lessons that in Latin America politics, governments, and
the media are either in collusion or in collision.

The News Media in Latin America and the Caribbean

Within this context, the news media are expected to play a watchdog role
(Waisbord 2000) and to inform individuals and policymakers about the
urgency of dealing with environmental problems. However, the media in
Latin America and the Caribbean have undergone dramatic changes in the
last decades that have been closely linked with the instability of democratic
regimes in the region. Globalization and technological changes on the one
hand, and local politics on the other, have shaped media systems and media
organizations in Latin America (Fox and Waisbord 2002). The fragility of
democratic governments requires a docile media system to be in place,
which allows those in power to have control over political, social, and eco-
nomic systems (Lugo-Ocando 2008; Matos 2012). Government censor-
ship has been a common practice in the mostly unregulated media systems
(Lugo-Ocando 2008; Matos 2012). The role of citizenship and of public
participation in projects to further the public good and in important deci-
sion-making has suffered from the historical and structural tensions of the
media and their state governments (Guerrero and Chavez 2009).
6 B. TAKAHASHI ET AL.

The combination of this volatility of governments, a weak institutional

capacity to enforce the rule of law, and the unique cultural and social
dynamics of multicultural countries rich in natural resources, constitutes a
unique context in which to explore the coverage of environmental issues
by the news media. Political communication and media scholars have
highlighted the limitations of news media and journalists in serving their
watchdog role due to restraints such as risks to the safety of journalists,
media concentration, and oligarchic ownership structures, among others
(Hughes and Lawson 2005). The economic agendas of most countries in
the region—which are driven by extractive industries—make a vigilant
media sector necessary. Global news dynamics have quickly changed the
ability of most news organizations in the region to cover issues not tradi-
tionally perceived as critical, including local environmental issues.
Economic development and social development are commonly priori-
tized, therefore limited focus has been provided to environmental issues.
This new hole has been filled in by news wire services, and environmental
issues are now being pushed into niche publications which do an excellent
job in covering issues in depth, but only cater to niche audiences, therefore
preventing the issues reaching the national agendas of their countries
(Guerrero and Chavez 2009). While environmental news per se tended to
be scarce (Jukofsky 2000), research indicates that Latin American news
regarding climate change, environmental or scientific affairs is being pro-
duced and covered in various ways, showing the impetus of news values,
event-driven coverage, cultural influences, and media, state, and public
agendas (e.g. Mellado et al. 2012; Mercado 2012; Pinto et al. 2017; Reis
2008; Takahashi 2011; Waisbord and Peruzzotti 2009; Zamith et al. 2013).
These limitations have prevented the development of a mature environ-
mental journalism in Latin America and the Caribbean. Developed coun-
tries such as the USA—despite the shrinking of the environmental beat
within their traditional and legacy media—experienced a period of growth
during the 1990s and 2000s, and in many cases the quality of reporting
has remained high or has improved (Friedman 2015). In Latin America—
perhaps with the exception of Brazil—environmental journalism has not
developed into a strong news beat. Overall, environmental issues seem to
populate the pages of newspapers or television screens when a disaster
occurs (see Mourão and Aruth Sturm, this volume). Some publications
might include a small section on science, the environment, and health,
though this is oftentimes limited in space and prominence. However, few
systematic empirical efforts have been made to describe and explain these
broad generalizations.
 CHALLENGES IN THE REPORTING OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN LATIN… 7

Journalists who report on the environment face a variety of constraints

in their jobs. These include organizational, social, economic, and political
barriers. Research in this area, mostly in the USA and Europe, has docu-
mented the development and subsequent decline of the environmental
beat (Friedman 2015). Mainstream news organizations in the USA such
as the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post, closed their envi-
ronmental sections and reassigned their reporters based on the argument
that the environment is a cross-sectional issue that includes politics, the
economy, business, and even entertainment. In the case of Latin America
and the Caribbean, the practice of environmental reporting lags behind
the reporting in the USA and Europe. But many unique conditions in the
region clearly shape the working environment and practices of the report-
ers who cover the environment. First, violence against reporters, similar to
the violence against environmental activists, is among the highest in the
world (Hughes and Lawson 2005). The killings of journalists in Mexico
by drug cartels, and those of environmental activists such as Chico Mendez
in Brazil and Berta Cáceres in Honduras, among many others (Neto
2017) have many parallels, as both activists and journalists were perceived
by outlaw groups as a threat.

Environmental Communication Scholarship in Latin

America and the Caribbean
There is recognition within academia, governments, industries, NGOs,
and civil society of the importance of using both strategic communication
and the news media to inform current societal and policy discussions about
environmental issues. Research exploring media coverage of environmen-
tal issues in developed nations such as the USA, the UK, Germany,
Australia, and France, among others, is extensive and comprehensive (e.g.
Brüggemann and Engesser 2017; De Brún et al. 2016; Djerf-Pierre et al.
2016; Duan et al. 2017). The last few decades have seen an explosion of
research on several topics, especially on climate change, which documents
the ways in which the media have covered those issues in regards to
themes, frames, sources, and so on. This has now expanded to the analysis
of the factors that explain such coverage, such as the level of experience of
the reporters, the types of news organizations, and environmental factors
(e.g. greenhouse gas emissions by countries), among others (e.g. Evans
2016; Tandoc and Takahashi 2014). However, this level of sophistication
8 B. TAKAHASHI ET AL.

is still lacking in most research in Latin America and the Caribbean (Román
Núñez and Cuesta Moreno 2016). This is a region which, we argue, has
its own idiosyncrasies, and these require a unique epistemological lens,
grounded in the cultural sensitivities of the countries and the geographical
area. For example, while newspaper readership in the USA and Europe is
in decline due to the shifting media consumption trends that go hand in
hand with technological changes (e.g. online access), readership in many
Latin American countries is increasing (WAN-IFRA 2014). This can partly
be explained by increasing levels of income and improvements in educa-
tion that have led to a higher number of literate individuals who can now
access newspapers (The Economist 2011). Despite the existence of some
worthy academic efforts exploring the environment and science in the
news media in the region (e.g. Massarani et al. 2005), few systematic
efforts to present a comprehensive view of the region have been made
(e.g. Pinto et al. 2017). Most of the scholarly work produced in or about
Latin America in terms of its environmental journalism or communication
takes the form of commentary (e.g. González Cruz 2007; Jukofsky 2000;
Lemos 1991), with only a few scholars developing empirical studies (e.g.
Gavirati 2012; Gómez 2012).
This book provides a unique survey of the ways in which news media
organizations across the region cover global, regional, and local environ-
mental issues—and challenges. It explores the content of reporting, as well
as the structural and individual challenges faced by media organizations and
journalists that explain information and content provided. Each chapter
explores the unique political, social, cultural, and environmental conditions
that affect each country individually, but does so with an eye on its subre-
gions and also the region as a whole.
As the field of environmental communication continues to grow, there
will be a higher demand for research and materials that explore other media
systems, cultures, and discourses related to the environment. The institu-
tionalization of environmental communication research in professional and
academic organizations, as well as in academic programs around the world,
provides the context in which we developed this book—with the goal of
inserting Latin America and the Caribbean into those discussions.
The main goal of this book is therefore to serve as a starting point to a
reflective and rigorous analysis of environmental discourses in the news media
in Latin America and the Caribbean. This book is one of the first comprehen-
sive volumes on the topic, following that of Pinto et al. (2017). This book will
contribute to the broadening and internationalization of academic work in
 CHALLENGES IN THE REPORTING OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN LATIN… 9

the field of environmental communication by bringing together a unique

set of contributions both from Latin American scholars and from scholars
researching the region. In addition, the chapters integrate various disci-
plinary, methodological, cultural, and epistemological approaches in their
examination of media issues in Latin America. Finally, we expect this book
to serve as a resource for instructors teaching a variety of courses focused
on news media or Latin America, including courses in journalism, sociol-
ogy, cultural studies, communication, Latin American studies, and inter-
national studies, among others.
This book provides a survey of some of the most newsworthy environ-
mental topics and events that have attracted public attention across regions
and within countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Purposely, we
chose a select number of countries (seven), representing diverse geographic
regions (North America, the Caribbean, Southern South America, and the
Andean and Amazonian Region). It was not possible to include all of the
countries in this area, so we determined key and salient countries (based on
the uniqueness of their environmental issues) to examine, without being
dismissive of the importance of the rest of the countries in the region. Each
chapter provides the general context of the situation it studies, including
an overview of the roles and characteristics of both ­government and media,
and of the pressing environmental issues in each country. This will help the
reader identify and learn about the characteristics and variations of, and
similarities between, the different environmental cases, countries, and
media involved, and how each event was presented to the public.
Chavez, Marquez, Guerrero, and Flores review the news media context
in Mexico from structural and institutional perspectives. They analyze the
structure and functions of the Mexican news media and their pervasive
reliance on governmental sources, their lack of investment in investigative
journalism, and the absence of solutions journalism. The authors also
describe the institutional governing apparatus that in Mexico has caused
duplication, overlapping, and in many cases conflict. Chavez et al. discuss
the role that NAFTA and the USA have played in upgrading and updating
national environmental actions and the protection of vulnerable areas,
especially across the USA–Mexico border. To illustrate their case, the
authors conducted a content analysis of the Mexico City air-pollution cri-
sis of 2016 as reported by the digital news media. The crisis and its cover-
age generated conflict, misinformation, and resentment on all sides: for
citizens, government, businesses, and scientists.
10 B. TAKAHASHI ET AL.

Rachel Mourão and Heloisa Aruth Sturm examine Brazil’s coverage of

the 2015 dam collapse which took place near the historical district of
Mariana, in the state of Minas Gerais, and which is considered to have
been the worst environmental tragedy in Brazilian history. Through a con-
tent analysis, Mourão and Aruth Sturm report similarities between cover-
age of the disaster with coverage of environmental disasters in the USA,
such as the use of episodic framing and a reliance on official sources.
Although Brazil has the most highly developed network of environmental
journalists in the region, the researchers argue that many limitations still
exist with regards to resources assigned to the coverage of the environ-
ment, and the ways stories are framed.
Willer and Takahashi analyze Peru in their examination of informal and
illegal mining operations in the Andes and Amazonia regions of the coun-
try. This chapter uses a thematic analysis of newspaper coverage, alongside
in-depth interviews with Peruvian reporters. The authors present evidence
that news coverage of these operations is limited both in terms of quantity
and quality, especially when one takes into account that informal mining is
considered one of the most severe drivers of environmental degradation in
the country. The centralized nature of media conglomerates in Lima affects
the type of coverage given to mining; this tends to be devoid of contextual
meanings related to the cultural and social dynamics of the activity.
María-Angela Torres-Kremers examines the representations of environ-
mental affairs in two Colombian environmental magazines, exploring the
articulation of natural themes and issues, particularly the concept of ‘bio-
diversity,’ in newly mediated spaces that incorporate the visual and the
textual. The study examines the use of frames, focusing on a period of
study that coincides with the United Nations Sustainable Development
Summit of 2015, held in New York City. The results suggest that in these
two specialized magazines, the coverage of environmental issues tends to
use a social progress frame much more often than a traditional conflict
frame. This highlights the importance of having specialized media that can
counterbalance the traditional conflict framing used in traditional media
outlets across the region.
Pinto and Vigón also explore the Andean and Caribbean regions in
their chapters on Ecuador (with Martínez-Bustos), and on Cuban and
Latino media in South Florida. While obviously South Florida is not part
of Latin America, significant Latino populations live and travel there, and
it is a center of Spanish-language media in the USA that gives substantial
airtime and space to covering issues of import to Latin Americans.
 CHALLENGES IN THE REPORTING OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN LATIN… 11

Simultaneously, South Florida and Cuba are both uniquely vulnerable to

the impacts of climate change, particularly sea-level rise. Finally, the stark
difference among the media systems in the two countries provides impor-
tant avenues for comparison of environmental coverage. Therefore, Pinto
and Vigón present a comparative analysis between the USA (South
Florida) and Cuba that highlights the cultural links between these regions,
but at the same time their divergent approaches to the media. The content
analysis of legacy and alternative media in both countries focuses on sea-­
level rise due to climate change. The results show that the Cuban state
media provided more in-depth reporting and less uncertainty about the
issue than Florida’s privately owned Spanish-language media. The implica-
tions for communicating scientific uncertainty, policy interventions, and
public understanding are important in two regions with shared histories
and demographics, as well as shared vulnerabilities to relentlessly rising
seas. In Ecuador, while increasing amounts of resources are being dedi-
cated to training journalists to report on climate change, this is occurring
in the context of largely hostile media–state relations, state interventions
in mediated industries, and changes to legal infrastructure that reduce
press freedom and freedom of expression.
In their chapter, María Teresa Mercado-Sáez and Fermín Koop analyze
the recent history and influences on environmental content in the main
Argentine press. Here, the authors note that low levels of environmental
news output—in part due to reporter inexperience, levels of mistrust
between scientists, journalists, and politicians, or editorial indifference—
have been punctuated by moments of coverage of disasters, international
environmental events, or issues that have been adopted into the national
political or economic agendas. Given the existence of new digital plat-
forms for so-called niche media to fill in these gaps, the authors expect to
see increasing coverage of issues such as climate change in the future.
In our conclusion, we examine the trends, connections, and avenues for
future research that arise from the discussions in this volume. Given the
international and interdisciplinary nature of this examination, encompass-
ing policy and politics, economics and environment, news and society, we
ask what are the similarities and differences in the coverage of the issues,
as well as providing a discussion of how discourses could be unified across
regions. The introductory and concluding chapters provide the intellec-
tual bridge to connect the problems discussed here with potential solu-
tions: they explore how different countries, media formats, methodologies,
and theories can be used to study a diverse environment, such as Latin
America and the Caribbean.
12 B. TAKAHASHI ET AL.

We are deeply involved in scholarship concerning Latin America and

the Caribbean. We attend regional, national, and international communi-
cation conferences, including those in the region. At the main communi-
cation conferences (which include the International Environmental
Communication Association, the National Communication Association,
the International National Communication Association, the Association
for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Latin
American Studies Association among others), the involvement of Latin
American scholars researching environmental communication is limited.
This book is one attempt to build a connection between scholars from
different countries who are interested in both the environment and com-
munication research in the region.

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 PART I

North America and the Caribbean

 CHAPTER 2

The News Media and Environmental

Challenges in Mexico: The Structural Deficits
in the Coverage and Reporting by the Press

Manuel Chavez, Mireya Marquez, Denisse J. Flores,

and Manuel A. Guerrero

Most countries in Latin America face environmental challenges; yet,

information about these varies significantly. First, there is variation in the
way different governments provide information to their citizens about
the status of their natural resources, for example in terms of threats,
protection and preservation measures. Second, news media environmen-
tal reporting is constrained by either internal professional factors or by

M. Chavez (*)
Journalism and Latin American Studies, Michigan State University,
East Lansing, MI, USA
e-mail: chavezm1@msu.edu
M. Marquez • M. A. Guerrero • D. J. Flores
Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: mireya.marquez@ibero.mx; alejandro.guerrero@ibero.mx

© The Author(s) 2018 19

B. Takahashi et al. (eds.), News Media Coverage of Environmental
Challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean, Palgrave Studies
in Media and Environmental Communication,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70509-5_2
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
efficient must always, under any conceivable system of government,
be taken by the executive. It was certainly taken by the executive in
England thirty years ago; and that much in opposition to the will of
Parliament. The prominence of our President in administrative
reform furnishes no sufficient ground for attributing a singularity of
executive influence to the government of this country.
In estimating the actual powers of the President it is no doubt
best to begin, as almost all writers in England and America now
habitually begin, with a comparison between the executives of the
two kindred countries. Whilst Mr. Bagehot has done more than any
other thinker to clear up the facts of English constitutional practice,
he has also, there is reason to believe, done something toward
obscuring those facts. Everybody, for instance, has accepted as
wholly true his description of the ministry of the Crown as merely an
executive committee of the House of Commons; and yet that
description is only partially true. An English cabinet represents, not
the Commons only, but also the Crown. Indeed, it is itself ‘the
Crown.’ All executive prerogatives are prerogatives which it is within
the discretion of the cabinet itself to make free use of. The fact that it
is generally the disposition of ministers to defer to the opinion of
Parliament in the use of the prerogative, does not make that use the
less a privilege strictly beyond the sphere of direct parliamentary
control, to be exercised independently of its sanction, even secretly
on occasion, when ministers see their way clear to serving the state
thereby. “The ministry of the day,” says a perspicacious expounder of
E
the English system, “appears in Parliament, on the one hand, as
personating the Crown in the legitimate exercise of its recognized
prerogatives; and on the other hand, as the mere agent of
Parliament itself, in the discharge of the executive and administrative
functions of government cast upon them by law.” Within the province
of the prerogative “lie the stirring topics of foreign negotiations, the
management of the army and navy, public finance, and, in some
important respects, colonial administration.” Very recent English
history furnishes abundant and striking evidence of the vitality of the
prerogative in these fields in the hands of the gentlemen who
“personate the Crown” in Parliament. “No subject has been more
eagerly discussed of late,” declares Mr. Amos (page 187), “than that
of the province of Parliament in respect of the making of treaties and
the declaration of war. No prerogative of the Crown is more
undisputed than that of taking the initiative in all negotiations with
foreign governments, conducting them throughout, and finally
completing them by the signature and ratification of a treaty.... It is a
bare fact that during the progress of the British diplomatic
movements which terminated in the Treaty of Berlin of 1878, or more
properly in the Afghan war of that year,”—including the secret treaty
by which Turkey ceded Cyprus to England, and England assumed
the protectorate of Asia Minor,—“Parliament never had an
opportunity of expressing its mind on any one of the important and
complicated engagements to which the country was being
committed, or upon the policy of the war upon the northwest frontier
of India. The subjects were, indeed, over and over again discussed
in Parliament, but always subsequent to irreparable action having
been taken by the government” (page 188). Had Mr. Amos lived to
take his narrative of constitutional affairs beyond 1880, he would
have had equally significant instances of ministerial initiative to
adduce in the cases of Egypt and Burmah.

E
Mr. Sheldon Amos: Fifty Years of the English
Constitution, page 338.

The unfortunate campaign in the Soudan was the direct outcome

of the purchase of the Suez Canal shares by the British government
in 1875. The result of that purchase was that “England became
pledged in a wholly new and peculiar way to the support of the
existing Turkish and Egyptian dominion in Egypt; that large English
political interests were rendered subservient to the decisions of local
tribunals in a foreign country; and that English diplomatic and
political action in Egypt, and indeed in Europe, was trammelled, or at
least indirectly influenced, by a narrow commercial interest which
could not but weigh, however slightly, upon the apparent purity and
simplicity of the motives of the English government.” And yet the
binding engagements which involved all this were entered into
“despite the absence of all assistance from, or consent of,
F
Parliament.” Such exercises of the prerogatives of the Crown
receive additional weight from “the almost recognized right of
evolving an army of almost any size from the Indian seed-plot, of
using reserve forces without communication to Parliament in
advance, and of obtaining large votes of credit for prospective
military operations of an indefinite character, the nature of which
Parliament is allowed only dimly to surmise” (page 392). The latest
evidence of the “almost recognized” character of such rights was the
war preparations made by England against Russia in 1885. If to such
powers of committing the country irrevocably to far-reaching foreign
policies, of inviting or precipitating war, and of using Indian troops
without embarrassment from the trammels of the Mutiny Act, there
be added the great discretionary functions involved in the
administration of colonial affairs, some measure may be obtained of
the power wielded by ministers, not as the mere agents of
Parliament, but as personating the Crown. Such is in England the
independence of action possible to the executive.

F
Amos, page 384.

As compared with this, the power of the President is

insignificant. Of course, as everybody says, he is more powerful than
the sovereign of Great Britain. If relative personal power were the
principle of etiquette, Mr. Cleveland would certainly not have to lift
his hat to the Queen, because the Queen is not the English
executive. The prerogatives of the Crown are still much greater than
the prerogatives of the presidency; they are exercised, however, not
by the wearer of the crown, but by the ministry of the Crown.
As Sir Henry Maine rightly says, the framers of our Constitution,
consciously or unconsciously, made the President’s office like the
King’s office under the English constitution of their time,—the
constitution, namely, of George III., who chose his advisers with or
without the assent of Parliament. They took care, however, to pare
down the model where it seemed out of measure with the exercise of
the people’s liberty. They allowed the President to choose his
ministers freely, as George then seemed to have established his
right to do; but they made the confirmation of the Senate a
necessary condition to his appointments. They vested in him the
right of negotiating treaties with foreign governments; but he was not
to sign and ratify treaties until he had obtained the sanction of the
Senate. That oversight of executive action which Parliament had not
yet had the spirit or the inclination to exert, and which it had forfeited
its independence by not exerting, was forever secured to our federal
upper chamber by the fundamental law. The conditions of mutual
confidence and co-operation between executive and legislature now
existing in England had not then been developed, and consequently
could not be reproduced in this country. The posture and disposition
of mutual wariness which were found existing there were made
constitutional here by express written provision. In short, the
transitional relations of the Crown and Parliament of that day were
crystallized in our Constitution, such guarantees of executive good
faith and legislative participation in the weightier determinations of
government as were lacking in the model being sedulously added in
the copy.
The really subordinate position of the presidency is hidden from
view partly by that dignity which is imparted to the office by its
conspicuous place at the front of a great government, and its
security and definiteness of tenure; partly by the independence
apparently secured to it by its erection into an entirely distinct and
separate ‘branch’ of the government; and partly by those
circumstances of our history which have thrust our Presidents
forward, during one or two notable periods, as real originators of
policy and leaders in affairs. The President has never been powerful,
however, except at such times as he has had Congress at his back.
While the new government was a-making—and principally because it
was a-making—Washington and his secretaries were looked to by
Congress for guidance; and during the presidencies of several of
Washington’s immediate successors the continued prominence of
questions of foreign policy and of financial management kept the
officers of the government in a position of semi-leadership. Jackson
was masterful with or without right. He entered upon his presidency
as he entered upon his campaign in Florida, without asking too
curiously for constitutional warrant for what he was to undertake. In
the settlement of the southern question Congress went for a time on
all-fours with the President. He was powerful because Congress was
acquiescent.
But such cases prove rather the usefulness than the strength of
the presidency. Congress has, at several very grave crises in
national affairs, been seasonably supplied with an energetic leader
or agent in the person of the President. At other times, when
Congress was in earnest in pushing views not shared by the
President, our executives have either been overwhelmed, as
Johnson was, or have had to decline upon much humbler services.
Their negotiations with foreign governments are as likely to be
disapproved as approved; their budgets are cut down like a younger
son’s portion; their appointments are censured and their
administrations criticised without chance for a counter-hearing. They
create nothing. Their veto is neither revisory nor corrective. It is
merely obstructive. It is, as I have said, a simple blunt negation,
oftentimes necessarily spoken without discrimination against a good
bill because of a single bad clause in it. In such a contest between
origination and negation origination must always win, or government
must stand still.
In England the veto of the Crown has not passed out of use, as
is commonly said. It has simply changed its form. It does not exist as
an imperative, obstructive ‘No,’ uttered by the sovereign. It has
passed over into the privilege of the ministers to throw their party
weight, reinforced by their power to dissolve Parliament, against
measures of which they disapprove. It is a much-tempered
instrument, but for that reason all the more flexible and useful. The
old, blunt, antagonistic veto is no longer needed. It is needed here,
however, to preserve the presidency from the insignificance of
merely administrative functions. Since executive and legislature
cannot come into relations of mutual confidence and co-operation,
the former must be put in a position to maintain a creditable
competition for consideration and dignity.
A clear-headed, methodical, unimaginative President like Mr.
Cleveland unaffectedly recognizes the fact that all creating,
originating power rests with Congress, and that he can do no more
than direct the details of such projects as he finds commended by its
legislation. The suggestions of his message he acknowledges to be
merely suggestions, which must depend upon public opinion for their
weight. If Congress does not regard them, it must reckon with the
people, not with him. It is his duty to tell Congress what he thinks
concerning the pending questions of the day; it is not his duty to
assume any responsibility for the effect produced on Congressmen.
The English have transformed their Crown into a Ministry, and in
doing so have recognized both the supremacy of Parliament and the
rôle of leadership in legislation properly belonging to a responsible
executive. The result has been that they have kept a strong
executive without abating either the power or the independence of
the representative chamber in respect of its legislative function. We,
on the contrary, have left our executive separate, as the Constitution
made it; chiefly, it is to be suspected, because the explicit and
confident gifts of function contained in that positive instrument have
blinded us by their very positiveness to the real subordination of the
executive resulting from such a separation. We have supposed that
our President was great because his powers were specific, and that
our Congress was not supreme because it could not lay its hands
directly upon his office and turn him out. In fact, neither the dignity
and power of the executive nor the importance of Congress is served
by the arrangement. Being held off from authoritative suggestion in
legislation, the President becomes, under ordinary circumstances,
merely a ministerial officer; whilst Congress, on its part, deprived of
such leadership, becomes a legislative mass meeting instead of a
responsible co-operating member of a well-organized government.
Being under the spell of the Constitution, we have been unable to
see the facts which written documents can neither establish nor
change.
 Singularly enough, there is sharp opposition to the introduction
into Congress of any such leadership on the part of the executive as
the Ministers of the Crown enjoy in Parliament, on the ground of the
increase of power which would accrue as a result to the legislature. It
is said that such a change would, by centring party and personal
responsibility in Congress, give too great a prominence to legislation;
would make Congress the object of too excited an interest on the
part of the people. Legislation in Parliament, instead of being
piecemeal, tessellated work, such as is made up in Congress of the
various fragments contributed by the standing committees, is, under
each ministry, a continuous, consistent, coherent whole; and, instead
of bearing the sanction of both national parties, is the peculiar policy
of only one of them. It is thought that, if such coherence of plan,
definiteness and continuity of aim, and sanction of party were to be
given the work of Congress, the resulting concentration of popular
interest and opinion would carry Congress over all the barriers of the
Constitution to an undisputed throne of illimitable power. In short, the
potential supremacy of Congress is thought to be kept within
bounds, not by the constitutional power of the executive and the
judiciary, its co-ordinate branches, but by the intrinsic dulness and
confusion of its own proceedings. It cannot make itself interesting
enough to be great.
But this is a two-edged argument, which one must needs handle
with great caution. It is evidently calculated to destroy every
argument constructed on the assumption that it is written laws which
are effective to the salvation of our constitutional arrangements; for it
is itself constructed on the opposite assumption, that it is the state of
popular interest in the nation which balances the forces of the
government. It would, too, serve with equal efficacy against any
scheme whatever for reforming the present methods of legislation in
Congress, with which almost everybody is dissatisfied. Any reform
which should tend to give to national legislation that uniform, open,
intelligent, and responsible character which it now lacks, would also
create that popular interest in the proceedings of Congress which, it
is said, would unhinge the Constitution. Democracy is so delicate a
form of government that it must break down if given too great facility
or efficacy of operation. No one body of men must be suffered to
utter the voice of the people, lest that voice become, through it,
directly supreme.
The fact of the overtopping power of Congress, however,
remains. The houses create all governmental policy, with that wide
latitude of ‘political discretion’ in the choice of means which the
Supreme Court unstintingly accords them. Congress has often come
into conflict with the Supreme Court by attempting to extend the
province of the federal government as against the States; but it has
seldom, I believe, been brought effectually to book for any alleged
exercise of powers as against its directly competing branch, the
executive. Having by constitutional grant the last word as to foreign
relations, the control of the finances, and even the oversight of
executive appointments, Congress exercises what powers of
direction and management it pleases, as fulfilling, not as straining,
the Constitution. Government lives in the origination, not in the
defeat, of measures of government. The President obstructs by
means of his ‘No;’ the houses govern by means of their ‘Yes.’ He has
killed some policies that are dead; they have given birth to all
policies that are alive.
But the measures born in Congress have no common lineage.
They have not even a traceable kinship. They are fathered by a
score or two of unrelated standing committees: and Congress stands
godfather to them all, without discrimination. Congress, in effect,
parcels out its great powers amongst groups of its members, and so
confuses its plans and obscures all responsibility. It is a leading
complaint of Sir Henry Maine’s against the system in England, which
is just under his nose, that it confers the preliminary shaping and the
initiation of all legislation upon the cabinet, a body which deliberates
and resolves in strict secrecy,—and so reminds him, remotely
enough, of the Spartan Ephors and the Venetian Council of Ten. He
commends, by contrast, that constitution (our own, which he sees at
a great distance) which reserves to the legislature itself the
origination and drafting of its measures. It is hard for us, who have
this commended constitution under our noses, to perceive wherein
we have the advantage. British legislation is for the most part
originated and shaped by a single committee, acting in secret,
whose proposals, when produced, are eagerly debated and freely
judged by the sovereign legislative body. Our legislation is framed
and initiated by a great many committees, deliberating in secret,
whose proposals are seldom debated and only perfunctorily judged
by the sovereign legislative body. It is impossible to mistake the
position and privileges of the Brutish cabinet, so great and
conspicuous and much discussed are they. They simplify the whole
British system for men’s comprehension by merely standing at the
centre of it. But our own system is simple only in appearance. It is
easy to see that our legislature and executive are separate, and that
the legislature matures its own measures by means of committees of
its own members. But it may readily escape superficial observation
that our legislature, instead of being served, is ruled by its
committees; that those committees prepare their measures in
private; that their number renders their privacy a secure secrecy, by
making them too many to be watched, and individually too
insignificant to be worth watching; that their division of prerogatives
results in a loss, through diffusion, of all actual responsibility; and
that their co-ordination leads to such a competition among them for
the attention of their respective houses that legislation is rushed,
when it is not paralyzed.
It is thus that, whilst all real power is in the hands of Congress,
that power is often thrown out of gear and its exercise brought
almost to a standstill. The competition of the committees is the clog.
Their reports stand in the way of each other, and so the complaint is
warranted that Congress can get nothing done. Interests which press
for attention in the nation are reported upon by the appropriate
committee, perhaps, but the report gets pushed to the wall. Or they
are not reported upon. They are brought to the notice of Congress,
but they go to a committee which is unfavorable. The progress of
legislation depends both upon the fortunes of competing reports and
upon the opinions held by particular committees.
The same system of committee government prevails in our state
legislatures, and has led to some notable results, which have
recently been pointed out in a pamphlet entitled American
Constitutions, contributed to the Johns Hopkins series of Studies in
History and Political Science by Mr. Horace Davis. In the state
legislatures, as in Congress, the origination and control of legislation
by standing committees has led to haphazard, incoherent,
irresponsible law-making, and to a universal difficulty about getting
anything done. The result has been that state legislatures have been
falling into disrepute in all quarters. They are despised and
mistrusted, and many States have revised their constitutions in order
to curtail legislative powers and limit the number and length of
legislative sessions. There is in some States an apparent inclination
to allow legislators barely time enough to provide moneys for the
maintenance of the governments. In some instances necessary
powers have been transferred from the legislatures to the courts; in
others to the governors. The intent of all such changes is manifest. It
is thought safer to entrust power to a law court, performing definite
functions under clear laws and in accordance with strict judicial
standards, or to a single conspicuous magistrate, who can be
watched and cannot escape responsibility for his official acts, than to
entrust it to a numerous body which burrows toward its ends in
committee-rooms, getting its light through lobbies; and which has a
thousand devices for juggling away responsibility, as well as scores
of antagonisms wherewith to paralyze itself.
Like fear and distrust have often been felt and expressed of late
years concerning Congress, for like reasons. But so far no attempt
has been made to restrict either the powers or the time of Congress.
Amendments to the Constitution are difficult almost to the point of
impossibility, and the few definite schemes nowadays put forward for
a revision of the Constitution involve extensions rather than
limitations of the powers of Congress. The fact is that, though often
quite as exasperating to sober public opinion as any state
legislature, Congress is neither so much distrusted nor so deserving
of distrust. Its high place and vast sphere in the government of the
nation cause its members to be more carefully chosen, and its
proceedings to be more closely watched, and frequently controlled
by criticism. The whole country has its eyes on Congress, and
Congress is aware of the fact. It has both the will and the incentive to
be judicious and patriotic. Newspaper editors have constantly to be
saying to their readers, ‘Look what our state legislators are doing;’
they seldom have to urge, ‘Look what Congress is doing.’ It cannot,
indeed, be watched easily, or to much advantage. It requires a
distinct effort to watch it. It has no dramatic contests of party leaders
to attract notice. Its methods are so much after the fashion of the
game of hide-and-seek that the eye of the ordinary man is quite
baffled in trying to understand or follow them, if he try only at leisure
moments. But, at the same time, the interests handled by Congress
are so vast that at least the newspapers and the business men, if no
others, must watch its legislation as best they may. However hard it
may be to observe, it is too influential in great affairs to make it safe
for the country to give over trying to observe it.
But though Congress may always be watched, and so in a
measure controlled, despite its clandestine and confusing methods,
those methods must tend to increase the distrust with which
Congress is widely regarded; and distrust cannot but enervate,
belittle, and corrupt this will-centre of the Constitution. The question
is not merely, How shall the methods of Congress be clarified and its
ways made purposeful and responsible? There is this greater
question at stake: How shall the essential arrangements of the
Constitution be preserved? Congress is the purposing, designing,
aggressive power of the national government. Disturbing and
demoralizing influences in the organism, if there be any, come out
from its restless energies. Damaging encroachments upon ground
forbidden to the federal government generally originate in measures
of its planning. So long as it continues to be governed by unrelated
standing committees, and to take its resolves in accordance with no
clear plan, no single, definite purpose, so long as what it does
continues to be neither evident nor interesting, so long must all its
exertions of power be invidious; so long must its competition with the
executive or the judiciary seem merely jealous and always
underhand: so long must it remain virtually impossible to control it
through public opinion. As well ask the stranger in the gallery of the
New York Stock Exchange to judge of the proceedings on the floor.
As well ask a man who has not time to read all the newspapers in
the Union to judge of passing sentiment in all parts of the country.
Congress in its composition is the country in miniature. It realizes
Hobbes’s definition of liberty as political power divided into small
fragments. The standing committees typify the individuals of the
nation. Congress is better fitted for counsel than the voters simply
because its members are less than four hundred instead of more
than ten millions.
It has been impossible to carry out the programme of the
Constitution; and, without careful reform, the national legislature will
even more dangerously approach the perilous model of a mass
meeting. There are several ways in which Congress can be so
integrated as to impart to its proceedings system and party
responsibility. That may be done by entrusting the preparation and
initiation of legislation to a single committee in each house,
composed of the leading men of the majority in that house. Such a
change would not necessarily affect the present precedents as to the
relations between the executive and the legislature. They might still
stand stiffly apart. Congress would be integrated and invigorated,
however, though the whole system of the government would not be.
To integrate that, some common meeting-ground of public
consultation must be provided for the executive and the houses.
That can be accomplished only by the admission to Congress, in
whatever capacity,—whether simply to answer proper questions and
to engage in debate, or with the full privileges of membership,—of
official representatives of the executive who understand the
administration and are interested and able to defend it. Let the
tenure of ministers have what disconnection from legislative
responsibility may seem necessary to the preservation of the
equality of House and Senate, and the separation of administration
from legislation; light would at least be thrown upon administration; it
would be given the same advantages of public suggestion and
unhampered self-defence that Congress, its competitor, has; and
Congress would be constrained to apply system and party
responsibility to its proceedings.
The establishment in the United States of what is known as
‘ministerial responsibility’ would unquestionably involve some
important changes in our constitutional system. I am strongly of the
opinion that such changes would not be too great a price to pay for
the advantages secured us by such a government. Ministerial
responsibility supplies the only conditions which have yet proved
efficacious, in the political experience of the world, for vesting
recognized leadership in men chosen for their abilities by a natural
selection of debate in a sovereign assembly of whose contests the
whole country is witness. Such survival of the ablest in debate
seems the only process available for selecting leaders under a
popular government. The mere fact that such a contest proceeds
with such a result is the strongest possible incentive to men of first-
rate powers to enter legislative service; and popular governments,
more than any other governments, need leaders so placed that, by
direct contact with both the legislative and the executive departments
of the government, they shall see the problems of government at first
hand; and so trained that they shall at the same time be, not mere
administrators, but also men of tact and eloquence, fitted to
persuade masses of men and to draw about themselves a loyal
following.
If we borrowed ministerial responsibility from England, we
should, too, unquestionably enjoy an infinite advantage over the
English in the use of it. We should sacrifice by its adoption none of
that great benefit and security which our federal system derives from
a clear enumeration of powers and an inflexible difficulty of
amendment. If anything would be definite under cabinet government,
responsibility would be definite; and, unless I am totally mistaken in
my estimate of the legal conscience of the people of this country,—
which seems to me to be the heart of our whole system,—definite
responsibility will establish rather than shake those arrangements of
our Constitution which are really our own, and to which our national
pride properly attaches, namely, the distinct division of powers
between the state and federal governments, the slow and solemn
formalities of constitutional change, and the interpretative functions
of the federal courts. If we are really attached to these principles, the
concentration of responsibility in government will doubly insure their
preservation. If we are not, they are in danger of destruction in any
case.
But we cannot have ministerial responsibility in its fulness under
the Constitution as it stands. The most that we can have is distinct
legislative responsibility, with or without any connection of co-
operation or of mutual confidence between the executive and
Congress. To have so much would be an immense gain. Changes
made to this end would leave the federal system still an unwieldy
mechanism of counteracting forces, still without unity or flexibility; but
we should at least have made the very great advance of fastening
upon Congress an even more positive form of accountability than
now rests upon the President and the courts. Questions of vast
importance and infinite delicacy have constantly to be dealt with by
Congress; and there is an evident tendency to widen the range of
those questions. The grave social and economic problems now
thrusting themselves forward, as the result of the tremendous growth
and concentration of our population, and the consequent sharp
competition for the means of livelihood, indicate that our system is
already aging, and that any clumsiness, looseness, or irresponsibility
in governmental action must prove a source of grave and increasing
peril. There are already commercial heats and political distempers in
our body politic which warn of an early necessity for carefully
prescribed physic. Under such circumstances, some measure of
legislative reform is clearly indispensable. We cannot afford to put up
any longer with such legislation as we may happen upon. We must
look and plan ahead. We must have legislation which has been
definitely forecast in party programmes and explicitly sanctioned by
the public voice. Instead of the present arrangements for
compromise, piecemeal legislation, we must have coherent plans
from recognized party leaders, and means for holding those leaders
to a faithful execution of their plans in clear-cut Acts of Congress.
 LIST OF VOLUMES OF ESSAYS ON LITERATURE,
ART, MUSIC, ETC., PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S
SONS, 743–745 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.

HENRY ADAMS.
Historical Essays. (12mo, $2.00.)
Contents: Primitive Rights of Women—Captaine John Smith—
Harvard College, 1786–1787—Napoleon I. at St. Domingo—The
Bank of England Restriction—The Declaration of Paris, 1861—The
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SIR EDWIN ARNOLD.

Japonica. Illustrated by Robert Blum. (Large 8vo, $3.00.)
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AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.
Obiter Dicta, First Series. (16mo, $1.00.)
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Obiter Dicta, Second Series. (16mo, $1.00.)
 Contents: Milton—Pope—Johnson—Burke—The Muse of
History—Lamb—Emerson—The Office of Literature—Worn Out
Types—Cambridge and the Poets—Book-buying.
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Prof. H. H. BOYESEN.
Essays on German Literature. (12mo, $1.50.)
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W. C. BROWNELL.
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Contents: The Social Instinct—Morality—Intelligence—Sense
and Sentiment—Manners—Women—The Art Instinct—The
Provincial Spirit—Democracy—New York after Paris.
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French Art. (12mo, $1.25.)
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THOMAS CARLYLE.
Lectures on the History of Literature. (Now printed for the
first time. 12mo, $1.00.)
 Summary of Contents: Literature in General—Language,
Tradition—The Greeks—The Heroic Ages—Homer—Æschylus to
Socrates—The Romans—Middle Ages—Christianity—The Crusades
—Dante—The Spaniards—Chivalry—Cervantes—The Germans—
Luther—The Origin, Work and Destiny of the English—Shakespeare
—Milton—Swift—Hume—Wertherism—The French Revolution—
Goethe and his Works.
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Boston Herald.

ALICE MORSE EARLE.

The Sabbath in Puritan New England. (12mo, $1.25.)
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China Collecting in America. (with 75 illustrations. Sq. 8vo,
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old houses and country people, in the history of America, and the habits and
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Customs and Fashions in Old New England. (12mo, $1.25.)
Mrs. Earle describes the daily life and habits, the festivals, larder,
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HENRY T. FINCK.
Chopin, and Other Musical Essays. (12mo, $1.50.)
 “Written from abundant knowledge: enlivened by anecdote and touches of
enthusiasm, suggestive, stimulating.”—Boston Post.

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

The Spanish Story of the Armada, and Other Essays.
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Norway Fjords—Norway Once More.
Short Studies on Great Subjects. (Half leather, 12mo, 4
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Vol. I. The Science of History—Times of Erasmus and Luther—The Influence
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WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.
Gleanings of Past Years, 1843–1879. (7 vols., 16mo, each
$1.00.)
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Bachelor.’”—Boston Transcript.
Opinions of a Philosopher. (Illustrated by Reinhart and
Smedley. 12mo, cloth, $1.00.)
A sequel to the author’s “Reflections,” relating the experiences
through middle life of Fred and Josephine, with equal charm and
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E. J. HARDY.
The Business of Life: A Book for Everyone.—How To Be
Happy Though Married: Being a Handbook to Marriage—The Five
Talents of Woman: A Book for Girls and Women—Manners
Makyth Man—The Sunny Days of Youth: A Book for Boys and
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which he draws with a lavish hand, and he has the art of brightening his pages
 with a constant play of humor that makes what he says uniformly
entertaining.”—Boston Advertiser.

W. E. HENLEY.
Views and Reviews. Essays in Appreciation: Literature. (12mo,
$1.00.)
Contents: Dickens—Thackeray—Disraëli—Dumas—Meredith
—Byron—Hugo—Heine—Arnold—Rabelais—Shakespeare—Sidney
—Walton—Banville—Berlioz—Longfellow—Balzac—Hood—Lever—
Congreve—Tolstoï—Fielding, etc., etc.
“Interesting, original, keen and felicitous. His criticism will be found
suggestive, cultivated, independent.”—N. Y. Tribune.

J. G. HOLLAND.
Titcomb’s Letters to Young People, Single and Married—
Gold-Foil, Hammered from Popular Proverbs—Lessons in
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—Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects—Every-Day Topics, First
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WILLIAM RALPH INGE.

Society in Rome under the Cæsars. (12mo, $1.25.)
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ANDREW LANG.
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