In Australia, Mine Your Own Business continues to anchor important public discussion about not only environmental activism, but also about the value of vibrant, informed debate.
In an op-ed at On Line Opinion, Max Rheese, executive director of the Australian Environment Foundation, responds to an earlier piece by Leslie Cannold about how the public tends to ascribe value to ideas not by objectively assessing them, but by looking at who is propagating them.
Rheese agrees that in order to preserve the integrity of debate in a democracy, advocacy groups seeking to influence public opinion have a moral obligation to reveal their support base:
Influence of public opinion, facts and credibility of those commenting or seeking to influence public opinion are raised in a thoughtful article by Leslie Cannold (On Line Opinion, December 28, 2006), where she lays bare the need to expose those who are supporting groups commenting in the public arena.The article is timely in that many groups are seeking to influence public opinion on various issues. Their credentials to do so and their support base should be subject to public scrutiny.
A healthy democracy is strengthened by diverse and informed debate; the task of public interest groups is to have their message distributed to the public in the most effective manner. The task of the media or others who may have a differing opinion is to “keep those bastards honest” and the debate balanced.
Taking issue with Cannold's assumption that his organization is an example of problematic non-transparency, Rheese writes as one who helped launch a group dedicated to forwarding a perspective on environmental matters that has been marginalized by a media too dependent on the word of advocacy groups:
Ms Cannold somewhat lauds the honesty and integrity of journalists, but at least in relation to environmental matters, it is the failure of the media to give a balanced coverage - or put another way, their preference for emotional rhetoric over and above evidence-based commentary - that has driven the formation of the AEF.
AEF, Rheese observes, adheres to a policy of transparency about its affiliations. It also stands for "debate based on science and evidence not ideology"; its membership includes "nuclear physicists, professional foresters, farmers, marine and terrestrial biologists, geneticists." The "environmental debate," Rheese observes, is particularly fraught with ideology--"long on rhetoric and short on evidence." But this goes unrecognized by journalists who do not differentiate the spin of advocacy groups from statements of fact.
AEF's most recent response to this sorry state of affairs? A public screening of Mine Your Own Business, co-hosted with Australia's Institute of Public Affairs. The film, he notes, brings "an important story about the dark side of environmentalism to the Australian public." In making the film available to the public, he further observes, AEF and IPA did what no one else would.
In so doing, AEF has helped make it possible for members of both the media and the public to adopt a more informed opinion not only of environmental matters, but also of the extremist techniques sometimes undertaken by environmental advocacy groups. Whether either journalists or the public will take up the challenge AEF has implicitly posed remains to be seen.