MTV Misses the Mark on Eco-Activists

A few days ago, I read with interest a Treehugger post announcing an MTV casting call: producers at the show True Life were searching for an “eco-activist.” Great! I thought—what a chance to up the profile of the environmental community. The announcement sounded promising...but it turns out that MTV had a very specific type of activist in mind:

True Life: I'm Stopping Global Warming

“Are you an activist involved in a fight to protect your local environment in some way? Maybe you're taking legal action against a polluter in your area? Perhaps you're challenging your local government to become more green? If your eco-activism is helping to stop global warming, we'd love to hear your story. If you appear to be between the ages of 17 and 28, and are an eco-activist, email us at: ecoactivist@mtvstaff.com with all of the details of your story.”

I contacted MTV to nominate a friend—an eco-activist who has been instrumental in passing several recent Maryland laws to better our environment here in the Washington, D.C. area. He speaks to citizen groups, lobbies in Annapolis, organizes campaigns, and gets out on the front line to hold a sign when needed. Perfect person: he’s helping create real change at the local level.

I sent an e-mail to the MTV address and promptly received this response:

“It sounds like [he] is active by being a speaker and spreading the word. What MTV wants is someone who is going to climb up a smoke stack and stick a banner up there for a couple of days and get their voices heard. You get my point...is [he] active in this manner? We will be following someone with a camera for 3 to 6 months...so this is the kind of stuff we're trying to capture on camera. “

I respect MTV’s need to produce footage that will be exciting for viewers. But this exchange left a very bad taste in my mouth. Aren’t we yet past the era in which environmentalists are stereotyped as angry, in-your-face, adversarial protesters?

I don’t mean to imply that activists who use direct tactics do not have a place in the environmental movement. I believe they do. But I also believe their tactics represent a tiny minority of those being used to halt global warming—and MTV is perpetuating a tired stereotype by consciously ignoring others.

Many of us are busy researching, lobbying, speaking with our friends and family, spreading innovations, and making changes in our own lives that will allow us to have a better standard of living and improve our surroundings for generations to come. That’s certainly why I work at Worldwatch.

With so much positive action happening in the environmental community right now—action that I believe would make for great TV—I am dumbfounded that MTV would choose such an outdated perspective on an exciting, cutting-edge movement.