(Beth Clifton collage)
Our commitment to environmental journalism continues
Upon posting our resignation letter to the Society of Environmental Journalists listserv earlier tonight, September 4, 2020, Beth & I became aware that ANIMALS 24-7 appears to reach more environmental journalists, especially on animal-related news beats, than does the SEJ listserv itself.
ANIMALS 24-7 certainly reaches a much more racially and culturally diverse audience than does the SEJ listserv, simply by dint of reporting animal-related news wherever it occurs around the world, quoting whomever the sources and often posting their photos.
Our resignation letter, below, has relatively little to do with animals, yet has a great deal to do with why ANIMALS 24-7 exists, and how it came to be.
We are posting it, therefore, in hopes that it will be of interest and concern even to those of our readers who are not themselves journalists, but appreciate our widely ranging reportage.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
(Beth Clifton collage)
We resign!
Beth and I have, after several days of deliberation, decided that the time has come for us to leave the Society of Environmental Journalists. We are requesting a refund of our membership dues, and to be dropped from all SEJ membership lists.
Beth and I are resigning because SEJ, under the present management regime, has degenerated into “thought policing.”
Rather bizarrely, this has come about in the name of promoting the very diversity of cultural, racial, ethnic, and political perspectives that the mainstream of SEJ has steadfastly resisted for 30 years.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Maoist behavior
Much of the most racist, sexist, agist, and otherwise intolerant behavior we have seen within SEJ has come recently from several of the very individuals who most vociferously proclaim themselves to be committed to opposing it, albeit that this “commitment” has amounted, so far, to nothing more than exercises in tokenism, holding committee meetings, and tinkering with membership rules to try to get friends in the door, as opposed to offering activities worth coming in the door to join.
Apart from issues directly involving me & Beth, we have recently seen a sort of electronic Maoist “cultural revolution” underway in which two of the female members with the longest tenures in SEJ and environmental journalism, one of whom has spent much of her life immersed in an Asian culture, have been accosted online and verbally abused by some of the most junior male members, and one of the senior male members who has contributed the most to SEJ over the past 26 years has been unjustly “disciplined” because another junior member took offense at a joking remark.
Charging rhino.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Journalism is not for the thin-skinned
Journalism is not, and has never been, an occupation for the thin-skinned. Those who easily take offense where none is meant will not survive and thrive in real-life newsrooms where real-life readers, advertisers, subjects & sources call & email often to scream, often most definitely meaning offense.
If SEJ is to be genuinely the teaching organization it is incorporated as, it must avoid the academic pretense that there is such a thing as a real-world “safe space” within which anyone is “protected” from differing perspectives, including those which may be expressed in what some may perceive as an offensive manner.
Under no circumstance does either teaching or practicing quality real-world journalism, on the environmental beat or any other, include promoting censorship.
Merritt Clifton & feline news source, 1984.
Background is in order
Thirty years and six months ago, give or take a few days, Society of Environmental Journalists founder Jim Detjen called me, described his concept for starting the organization, asked me to join, and asked me for a list of other journalists working for small, specialized, and/or rural media who might be prospects for membership.
Jim emphasized that he hoped to attract as diverse a membership as possible, not just people from mainstream mass audience daily newspapers & electronic media, and from mainstream academia, where he already had extensive contacts.
Connie & Jim Detjen.
Long list of names
Jim guessed correctly that I would be able to furnish a long list of names, as I did, because even then I had been committing environmental journalism for more than 20 years, mostly for small rural newspapers and non-mainstream media serving communities of interest, rather than geographically defined communities.
I had also developed considerable contacts with other media produced and published by and for such specialized communities of interest as Native Americans (of many different tribes), Chicano labor activists, black vegetarians, Vietnam veterans concerned about Agent Orange exposure (many of them black), etc.
All were invited to join SEJ, & some did, some remaining as SEJ members into early in the present century. Mostly, however, & quite understandably, they wanted to wait & see what SEJ might mature into before committing their membership fees.
(Beth Clifton collage)
The listserv
Unfortunately, what SEJ matured into was, perhaps unavoidably, exactly what Jim told me he did not want it to become: a professional society dominated by representatives of mainstream mass media, almost all of them white, middle class, and urban/suburban, about 60% of them then employed by corporate-owned daily newspapers, whose activities revolved around big annual conferences that practically no one on the lists of prospects I nominated (including me) could afford to attend.
That began to change with the advent of online media, and early in the online era, the debut of the SEJ listserv.
The SEJ listserv for the first time enabled the non-mainstream members to become active participants. But only briefly.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
Tightened membership rules excluded diversity
Within less than a year of the SEJ listserv going online, many of the white, middle class members employed by urban/suburban corporate-owned daily newspapers became very uncomfortable with sharing bandwidth with people representing communities of interest, especially those whose media were sponsored by advocacy groups and whose work included such advocacy activities as organizing meetings, holding media conferences as well as attending them, and––horrors––writing media releases for the sponsoring organizations.
In the legitimate interest of preventing SEJ from becoming a conduit of access to journalists for corporate & political flacks, SEJ tightened the membership rules in such a manner as to exclude practically all of the media diversity it had managed to attract.
Within another year I was the only editor of a periodical covering animal advocacy issues left in SEJ, as mine was the only such periodical not hosted or sponsored by an advocacy organization & I never had occasion to write media releases.
Most of the journalists serving other communities of interest also disappeared––not out of my life and in-box, but out of the life of SEJ.
Michael Rivlin
Michael Rivlin
Several of us repeatedly pointed out the discriminatory, exclusivist, and elitist aspects of the SEJ policy changes.
Some other longtime SEJ members may remember the late Michael Rivlin, who edited the National Resources Defense Council magazine. He and I used to spar back and forth over quite a few issues, but we shared our appreciation for the bona fide diversity that SEJ had begun to develop.
Upset with being relegated, as he put it, to the “back of the bus” as an associate member, Michael started his own listserv to continue some of the discussions about such issues as race, culture, and journalism that had been squelched on the SEJ listserv.
Unfortunately, Michael was already gravely ill, and died before his listserv had much opportunity to grow and thrive. None of the rest of us who were part of it had the time or (then) the electronic media skills to keep it going.
Carroll Cox of EnviroWatch
Carroll Cox
SEJ responded to Michael’s challenge by making what appeared to be a renewed effort to encourage racial diversity, in particular. In September 2000, I nominated Carroll Cox for membership, a black man originally from Mississippi whose www.EnviroWatch.org web site and radio broadcasts have furnished high quality investigative journalism covering Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific Territories for 22 years now.
A former special investigator for 10 years with the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, and then for 10 years more with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Carroll was excluded essentially because, at the time, he cleaned carpets to support his environmental journalism, and was not inclined to be interrogated about it by people who did not allow his reporting and photography to speak for themselves.
(Beth Clifton, Miami Beach police 1983)
Now a word about Beth
Now a bit about me and Beth, and where we are coming from. Beth and I share, among our formative experiences, having begun junior high school in the first waves of court-ordered school desegregations.
Beth, who is Jewish, was born in New York City but raised in the Deep South.
Beth also had the experience of living across the street from a country club which excluded Jews, and of being hectored out of her first choice of universities by the intolerance of the fundamentalist Christians who surrounded her and dominated the institution.
ANIMALS 24-7 media editor Beth Clifton as Miami Beach mounted police officer in 1985.
Police officer, animal control officer
Beth became a police officer in Miami Beach, Florida.
In six years on the beat during the “Miami Vice” and “Mariel boat lift” era, Beth won commendations without ever getting into a fight or drawing her sidearm. She also became an outspoken critic of police violence and insensitivity toward black people.
Leaving the police force to raise her family, Beth later taught school, was an animal control officer in several multi-cultural jurisdictions, and was a veterinary technician before merging her life with mine.
Beth was initially very enthusiastic member of SEJ, putting her investigative and photography skills to work for both ANIMALS 24-7 and, occasionally, for SEJ too.
On the set of “The Birds,” the 1962 Alfred Hitchcock production often identified as the prototypical eco-disaster film. From left to right: Veronica Cartwright, unknown boy, ANIMALS 24-7 editor Merritt Clifton, Tippi Hedren, unknown girl, Suzanne Pleshette, unknown boy.
And a word about me
I gained my own initial understanding and appreciation of what it is to be outside the socio-political and cultural mainstream as the son of a man who became a vegetarian and conscientious objector as result of his World War II military experience, and was repeatedly hounded out of work during the McCarthy Era in the erroneous official belief that he might be a Communist.
At the eight grade schools I attended, the last three of them majority black, I was always the only vegetarian, the youngest in my grade by two years, and conspicuous for other reasons.
Some of you may remember an SEJ board meeting in Kennewick, Washington, at which I mistakenly blundered into a conference of high-functioning autistics held in the same building at the same time, who were discussing electronic communication devices.
I sat there until the first coffee break before realizing I was in the wrong room.
Temple Grandin & people who should be listening.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Social skills & behaviors
I made a joke of it, but I am a diagnosed high-functioning Asperger, somewhat like Temple Grandin (a longtime excellent source), which means that I combine extraordinary abilities at some things with having had to learn social skills and behaviors to pass as “normal” that come easily and naturally to others.
Knowing by about age seven that I wanted to commit journalism on behalf of animals, I found my way into a newspaper office shortly after turning 15, passing for 18, and within another year had begun reporting about environmental and public health issues.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Animals in China
By age 17 I was attending the San Jose State University journalism school, living on my own off-campus, sharing an apartment for my first two years with two Chinese Namvets.
The younger of the two was a U.S. citizen. The older man, who eventually became a U.S. citizen, was a visibly disfigured survivor of the 1937 “Rape of Nanking” and had spent 26 years altogether as a soldier at war in the service of three different nations, including six years in Vietnam.
The older man told me everything he knew about animals in China, imploring me to do what I could as a journalist to expose the cruelties he had seen. He emphasized that dog-eating, cat-eating, etc. were not reflective of the attitudes and practices of most Chinese people. I have done as the man asked, having seen first-hand that his testimony was dead accurate on every subject.
Samisdat
I founded my own monthly literary/political magazine, Samisdat, at age 19 in early 1973, & kept it going, mostly as a side venture to mainstream journalism for small daily & weekly rural newspapers, for 20 years.
Samisdat became best known as an early voice for Namvets, including black Namvets such as Cranston Sedrick Knight, whose Vietnam War anthology I published, and various other minority voices speaking out in a variety of causes.
In 1976 I printed, for the cost of the paper used, the first two editions of Mango, for some years an influential Chicano literary magazine.
In Quebec I first witnessed & reported about a fatal dog attack.
Quebec
In 1977 I relocated to Quebec, covering environmental issues there full-time for local news media for 13 years. My beat included extensive coverage of Native American affairs, which had never before been covered by the non-native regional media.
Of necessity, I learned to function in a place where I did not even speak French, the dominant language. (I did learn to read French and to understand most spoken French, in effect working as a mute.)
Shortstop S. Smith hit .301 for Montreal & St. Jean in 1899-1900.
Baseball
Also, having played semi-pro baseball for a Japanese-owned team in California, which existed mainly to help Japanese players improve their skills to play in Japan, I was intrigued to discover that black players had played with & against white players for decades in Quebec before Jackie Robinson.
I spent spare time for about 10 years digging up & publishing that history, including interviewing those old-time black players, & in some cases their widows, who were still alive & could be found.
I became news editor of a Connecticut-based independent news magazine covering animal issues in 1988, and had returned to the U.S. in that capacity not long before Jim Detjen called.
That also happened to be only days after I had, at a major national conference, stood up from the floor to recommend to animal and environmental advocacy organizations, and the media covering them, to stop just playing the bull fiddle about wanting to build racial & ethnic diversity, and start hiring and promoting some black, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American personnel.
Africa Network for Animal Welfare founder Josphat Ngonyo & Merritt Clifton. (Beth Clifton photo)
Newspaper
Two years after joining SEJ, I founded a monthly newspaper to continue & do a better job of covering the animal advocacy movement.
As it grew, enabling me to report first-hand from more than 40 nations, mostly in the developing world, I gained the opportunity to do exactly what I had recommended should be done, employing part-time personnel including young black stringers in Kenya, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, and Zimbabwe, and a physically disabled researcher who identified at the time as Native American, though she later changed her mind.
I also hired a physically disabled book reviewer. None were paid much, but neither was I, most of the time, and whoever was working for me at any given time always got paid, even when I did not.
I left that job, and that organization too, when in two separate yet simultaneous instances at the end of 2013, the board of directors wanted me to publish and endorse allegations which, while amplified by many animal advocacy groups, I knew from first-hand investigation to be false and defamatory to several different Asian ethnicities.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
ANIMALS 24-7
ANIMALS 24-7 came into existence in early 2014, and Beth joined me, to continue my lifelong work, including to set the record straight on animal issues involving people of color, both here in the U.S. and aboard.
One need only take a look at our front page, www.ANIMALS24-7.org, to see the evidence.
This at last brings us to this message, received Monday:
From: meera <meerasub@gmail.com>Subject: SEJ-TalkDate: August 31, 2020 at 1:10:06 PM PDTTo: animals24.7@frontier.comCc: Meaghan Parker <mparker@sej.org>, “Schleifstein, Mark” <Mschleifstein@theadvocate.com>, Michael Kodas <michaelkodas@me.com>Dear Merritt and Beth,Hello, how are you? Executive Director Meaghan Parker and I are writing in response to both a formal complaint and observed posts on SEJ-Talk under the threads “NAHJ Urges End to ‘Minorities’ Label” and “Racism, blah, blah, blah.” Your statements therein are a clear violation of the Membership Agreement and Policies, which state that “Differences of opinion should not drift into rudeness, condescension and disrespect. Avoid creating or contributing to flame wars.” At times, your statements have veered into racially and ethnically charged statements that border on harassment.You have been a long-standing members of SEJ, and we value your contributions, but this behavior is unacceptable. You must abide by Membership Agreement and Policies, and the Anti-Harassment Policy in order to engage with the SEJ community.We are suspending your access to SEJ listservs for the next three months, to be effective immediately, and reinstated November 30. We look forward to your return to the shared resource of SEJ-Talk at that point to join in the conversation about the practice of environmental journalism and how to cover stories on the beat.You have the right to appeal this decision to the full Executive Committee.Sincerely,~Meera Subramaniancc: Meaghan Parker, Mark Schleifstein, Michael Kodas~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Meera Subramanian
Journalist | Author | Society of Environmental Journalists Board Presidentwww.meerasub.org | @meeratweets | +1.541.337.5392
A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka
(Beth Clifton collage)
The posts in question, are below (as best we can determine. We did not post anything entitled “NAHJ Urges End to ‘Minorities’ Label”.)
Beth and I have no intention of appealing anything to anyone’s kangaroo court, either within SEJ or anywhere else.
And we have every intention of making this matter as public as possible.
The hypocrisy of the message could scarcely be more blatant, not least because we have reason to believe that at least one of the anonymous individuals behind it (and possibly three) were instrumental in blackballing Carroll Cox, while another has evidently been butt-hurt since Beth & I discovered a couple of years ago that he had hired an executive director who was simultaneously holding two other jobs while not performing her essential duties for SEJ.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
The time has come for Beth & me to shake the shit associated with SEJ off of our feet and move on, anticipating that if our health permits, we will continue to be practicing environmental journalism long after SEJ has imploded.
Merritt & Beth
Merritt on the job.
(Beth Clifton photo)
[SEJ-TALK:] Racism, blah blah blah
Among the most universal traits of young whippersnappers, journalists or otherwise, is an idealistic tendency to become excessively enamored of abstract theories espoused originally by academics, while simultaneously undervaluing the experience of elders.
A few of us here are old enough to remember that racial identity was frequently capitalized back in the segregation era, and much more recently abroad, in the apartheid era, thereby making racial identity seemingly as important as personal identity.
Capitalizing racial identity was an inherently racist practice then, was abolished by the same generation of journalists whose work helped to end segregation here & apartheid there, & returning to it is an inherently racist practice now, whether or not the young whippersnappers out there have the savvy to understand why.
A few of us here have also worked significant parts of our careers––and have lived for signifiant parts of our lives––in places where, white and privileged though we might be considered to be today, we were conspicuously different from those around us for a variety of reasons, including linguistic, religious, and yes, in some cases, racial identity.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Our job is to report, not pre-judge
Those of us paying any attention at all to the news evolving right around us should be aware that much of the political impetus behind Donald Trump’s ascent to power, and effort to stay there, originates from the feeling of white rural evangelical Christians, many of them out of work, underemployed, or in occupations threatened by obsolescence, that they are members of an oppressed minority.
As, indeed, in some places they more-or-less are, though the oppressors tend to be affluent people of the same ethnicity, not the members of other racial groups whom they imagine to be the threat. Their self-identity as “patriots” is fallacious, and rooted in racism, but that does not diminish the intensity of their grievances, or their self-perception as victims of “reverse discrimination.”
Our job as journalists is to report about all this, and to explain it, not to pre-judge that the anger of people of one color is any more or less authentic than that of people of another color, by allowing one group to name themselves but not the other. Our job is to report using the most accurate terminology.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Mob bosses
In the same direction, those of us who have had the opportunity at some point to interview old-time mafia mob bosses may recall having listened to long explanations of how, in their view, the various mafias––Italian, Jewish, Irish, etc.––formed not as elites of criminal oppressors, but rather as self-defense forces for ethnic minorities who faced severe & other violent discrimination 100 or 150 or 200 years ago.
Indeed, some of their ancestors did battle the Ku Klux Klan for control of bootlegging & other criminal enterprises.
Academic theory had it, circa 100 years ago, that the Benson Bubbler would stop the Spanish influenza and popularize Prohibition.
Quite a few of the list participants here who are most zealous about purging journalism of this & that which they perceive as being part of an “-ism” might do well to consider to what extent their own attitudes are part of yet another common “-ism,” agism, which manifests itself most often in young whippersnappers assuming that us old farts don’t know what we are talking about.
Incidentally, some of us old farts have also been reporting practically daily about subjects and sources of other ethnicities, nationalities, etc. for decades, frequently exchanging information with fellow journalists of just about every other ethnicity, nationality, linguistic group, etc., while some of the young whippersnappers have been more-or-less in an academic bubble, as students, interns, and freelances in university towns, which contributes to the naivete inherent in many of their favorite theoretical constructs.
Merritt & Beth
Carroll Cox
Culture & structure of news organizations
<How can the culture and structure of news organizations change to ensure non-white people are making news judgements and that “good” journalism isn’t just what white people think it is?>
This has a very simple three-part answer:
1) Hire people other than white folks to do news work. Television seems to be at least a generation ahead of other news media in that regard, perhaps because television audiences actually get to see the reporters.
2) Promote people other than white folks into editorial positions. We don’t see a lot of this, even in television, & it is not just black journalists who hit a glass ceiling. Fifty-odd years ago, as a cub reporter & copyboy in Berkeley & Oakland, I worked alongside several journalists of Chinese-American ancestry, whose families had actually been in California since the first railroads were built. Each had grown up with considerable depth of knowledge of the region & their communities. Each eventually quit and went into different branches of the computer industry because they were not getting promotions they had earned on the business, real estate, and financial beats. (White guys of less experience and no more seniority were promoted instead.) Going into computers turned out to be a more lucrative career choice than remaining in journalism would have been, but none of them knew that at the time.
3) If you happen to be white folks, find multiple sources representing everyone who happens to be involved in a story.
Our dog Bo on the job.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Journalism 1-A
This is really just Journalism 1-A, but Beth & I continually run into situations where reporters for major mainstream media presume that if they have gotten the perspective of one person with a dog, for instance, they have the perspective of the whole community on animals.
Sometimes this has significant racial implications, because, in the above example, the person who keeps pit bulls because he/she is hostile toward (or afraid of) neighbors of a different color is obviously going to have a different view of whether the dogs are dangerous than the people they are used to intimidate.
Sometimes too, the differences in perspective vary quite a bit among people of the same race, depending, for instance, on whether they happen to be farmers contending with marauding elephants or drivers employed in the tourist trade, whose living depends on their passengers seeing elephants. We often see coverage of such situations that mis-assumes there is a single perspective among “villagers,” or “indigenous people,” or whomever, when there are actually strong conflicting interests.
Merritt & Beth
Beth & Merritt Clifton, with African friend.
How people describe themselves
<as journalists we should listen to how people describe themselves. That’s part of our doing a good job.>
Listen, yes, but call people what they want to be called?
That all depends on the context. There are a lot of white supremacists out there who would prefer to be described as patriots. Gangsters would like to be called “men of honor.” Terrorists want to be called “freedom fighters.” Dictators prefer to be described as presidents.
Merritt & Beth Clifton
Ain’t going to happen on our beat.
We call people by the term that most accurately describes who they are, whether they like it or not.
That’s what’s doing a good job.
Merritt & Beth
Please donate to support our work:
https://www.animals24-7.org/donate/
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While I don’t fully comprehend the issues with the Society of Environmental Journalists, I do appreciate the dedicated professional history and background of the editors of Animals 24-7, Merritt and Beth. For many years before the launch of Animals 24-7, I read Merritt’s print-newspaper publication. Animal People, from which I learned so much.
In my early days in the Animal Rights movement, in the 1980s, I read Merritt’s fascinating biographical essay published in Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics where I first published my essay about “the little chicken who started it all, – Viva,the Chicken Hen.”
“Us guys” have all been around the block more than once and are still here fighting the good fight, win or lose, for animals and animal liberation. I take a dim-to-the-point-of-lightless view of human nature and progress generally, but being active for animals, and knowing others with unshakable dedication like Beth and Merritt, sustain what theologian Paul Tillich called the Courage to Be In Spite of Non-Being and what I call Keeping Faith versus having faith.
Karen Davis, PhD, President, United Poultry Concerns. http://www.upc-online.org
Thank you to you both for your much-needed journalism in an era when journalism seems to be disappearing into promoting corruption and supporting whoever can buy the news narratives they want people to believe. You are a precious resource!
A fascinating article. Thanking you and sharing to socials, with appreciation!
It isn’t apparent what specifically the problem was with SEJ, and I certainly haven’t read all you’ve written over your career, but in the decades of reading your publications I’ve found you to be considerate and respectful, even when responding to comments that many would consider insulting.
In this day and age, when people are taking offense from even the use of a period at the end of a sentence (as was reported on National Public Radio this weekend), I appreciate writing that is accurate and candid. You needn’t apologize for it, nor should you need to defend it.