Public perception of environmental issues in the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond is regularly shaped by the Chesapeake Bay Journal, a 50,000-circulation newspaper staffed by veteran journalists that has been published for a quarter-century. Its aim is to raise public awareness of environmental issues related to the bay, which it does with extensive reporting of recognized high quality along with opinion coverage that is sometimes pointed and goes after named officials.

Casual readers of its work, which is widely reprinted elsewhere, may or may not be aware that the journal is also in part the result of a federal government effort to shape public awareness and opinion in pro-environmentalist directions. For its entire lifespan the publication has been supported in part by grants from the federal Environmental Protection Agency; in recent years EPA has been giving the paper $325,000 annually. Lately a miniscandal has called attention to that funding, and although the scandal has quieted down, the questions it raises should not.