According to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, only 1% of news stories in 2011 focused on the environment. Our September 2010 analysis of headlines from one of the world’s most visited online news portals reflects the same poor level of environmental news coverage:
| Headline Categories | # of Stories | % of Stories |
| Trivial / Violence / Death, Crime / Celebrity / Scandal /Entertainment | 266 | 44% |
| Domestic and International News and Politics | 193 | 32% |
| Disaster and Natural Disaster (Including Weather) | 53 | 9% |
| Business and Economy | 34 | 6% |
| Health / Science | 27 | 4% |
| Iraq-Afghan Wars | 20 | 3% |
| Religion | 12 | 2% |
| Environment | 5 | 1% |
| Total | 610 | 100% |
Obviously, “if it bleeds it leads” is still the prevalent and socially irresponsible philosophy at most news desks. Celebrity “news” garnered 48 stories and 10 times the coverage allocated to environmental news. By way of contrast, a leading progressive media website, Commondreams.org, devoted 17% of its coverage to the environment. This demonstrates the lack of coverage in mainstream media was not due to a lack of environmental news but to corporate priorities that require maximizing audience tune-in.
