Why Gordon Bishop Became Anti-"Environmentalist"
By Gordon Bishop (07/16/07)
My career as a journalist began in 1959 when I was hired as a reporter/columnist for The North Jersey Herald News, then the second largest evening newspaper in the Garden State.
I guess it was fate or destiny that made me walk into The Herald News on the Main Street border where Clifton and Passaic merged. I was 21 years old.
The Editor, Al Smith, hired me because I had written my first biographical novel, Holding Onto Nothing. It was a manuscript awaiting a publisher to print and distribute this personal family tale about the Bishops of Bergen County (Ridgewood and Hackensack).
My first assignment was covering Lodi and Hasbrouck Heights. I reported and wrote two columns a week – ‘Lodi Lookout’ and “Heights Highlights.” I was rapidly learning to work and live in the world of the “mass media.”
My one of my first investigative reports was an expose on the Saddle River, a tributary of the great Passaic River. Dense human activity had transformed the Saddle River into a cesspool with floating feces, oil, chemicals and whatever sewer plants spewed into the waterways in 1959 and 1960.
That disgusting sight immediately turned me into a pollution bounty hunter: Exposing pollution – both air and water and, yes, hazardous wastes in this urban-suburban region of chemical, power and oil-chemical manufacturing plants.
In 1965, the New Jersey Press Association (NJPA) awarded me “Columnist of the Year.” In 1966, the NJPA lauded me as “Reporter of the Year.”
That led me to The Star-Ledger in 1969, then New Jersey’s second largest newspaper. In 1971, The Ledger bought the No. 1 paper – the Newark Evening News – and became New Jersey’s official statewide newspaper.
It was at The Star-Ledger where I was the recipient of 8 Congressional Commendations and dozens of national and NJPA awards, including the Press Association’s first “Journalist-of-the-Year” Award in 1986 and a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Without realizing it, I had become New Jersey’s leading “environmental journalist” and the author of the State’s first official New Jersey book (Gems of New Jersey) and the first official book of the City of Newark (Great Newark – A Microcosm of America). I also had my own syndicated weekly TV program, New Jersey Issues, on public television and CTN (Cable Television Network).
I was in writer’s heaven and really unaware of it at that time. I just loved writing and exposing corruption, both pollution and politicians, as well as reckless businesses impacting our natural world.
After 12 published books, some 300 TV programs and more than 5,000 published articles in newspapers and magazine, I decided on my 58th birthday – January 1, 1996 – to leave The Star-Ledger and be my own boss. It worked: My weekly syndicated column is picked up by hundreds of news and political websites, and some regional papers and magazines, with a readership of 12 million or more.
Not bad for a kid from Hackensack who wanted to be the next Burt Lancaster on the silver screen.
Now my reason for attacking certain politically motivated “environmentalists.” During the early years of the environmental movement, we were able to pass great laws to protect our air, water and natural world. These laws were passed in the late 1960s and 1970s, culminating in the early 1980s. The environment was a nonpartisan movement.
Suddenly, liberal Democrats hijacked the nonpartisan environmental movement and turned it into a political voting machine to remain in power. Remember, it was Richard Nixon who created NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).
The eco-movement was now in the hands of extremist environmentalists who used the issue to exploit liberalism. Example: Al Gore’s “Global Warming,” which America’s leading meteorologists reject as “Junk Science.”
Yes, I didn’t leave the Environmental Movement, the Environmental Movement left me.
So now you know the rest of the story (Thank you, Paul Harvey).
Gordon Bishop
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