This Sporting Life

Field & Stream (circ. 1,860,000), a monthly devoted to duck hunting, fishing and other woodsy pursuits, hardly seems like a cockpit of ideological controversy. Yet in recent weeks its owner, the Columbia Broadcasting System, has been the target of angry letters and calls from the environment and conservation lobbies. Some of the protests came from members of Congress, including Henry Reuss, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Conservation and Natural Resources. Then 50 irate conservationists waved placards in front of CBS's Washington office. Cause of the wrath: the firing of Field & Stream's widely known conservation writer, Michael Frome.

Frome, 54, is a successful lecturer, magazine writer and author (Rand McNally National Park Guide), whose Stream columns have crusaded for preservation of wilderness areas since 1968.

This fall, Editor Jack Samson canceled the column, ostensibly because the magazine wanted a "modification in the editorial approach." Says he: "I've already hired someone else with an even more strident and stronger stand on conservation. I just don't think Mike Frome did a very good job." CBS officials say that they knew nothing of the change until Frome's supporters started to sound off, and that the parent company bore the writer no grudge.

Frome and some of his partisans insist that Stream's waters are murkier than that. Frome claims that after Samson was made editor in 1972, he was told not to "name names." Frome says that Samson, for example, refused to publish his criticism of John McGuire, chief of the Forest Service. Frome insists: "They want to play it safe and steady."

Irate Congressmen. Instead, Frome preferred to play it tough and tendentious. He criticized timber companies, highway builders and strip miners. Frequently he used his column to lobby against legislation that might be potentially destructive to the environment. One of his notable victories came in 1970, when he helped defeat a bill which would have given timber cutting priority over recreational and other uses for national forests.

Says Joseph Browder, director of the Environmental Policy Center in Washington: "Frome has raised the consciousness of millions of readers from bag limits and such to the real questions of what's happening to our resources and what can be done to protect them."

In the consciousness-raising process, Frome has made enemies in big business, the gun lobby and on Capitol Hill. Many Congressmen were irate about his controversial 1972 "Rate Your Candidate" article. The story evaluated Senators and Congressmen on their attitudes toward conservation and environment issues. Some Congressmen, including Gerald Ford (listed in the "poor" category), complained that the ratings were unfair.

Rhode Island Senator John Pastore was cited as "marginal"--a particular concern to CBS. Pastore chairs the Subcommittee on Communications, with jurisdiction over broadcasting regulations. His committee hearings are often an ordeal for the networks, and broadcast executives are always fearful of restrictive legislation. Clare Dean Conley, then Stream's editor, recalls: "We got vibes from CBS that they didn't want trouble with Pastore. The word was 'Do what you have to do, but take it easy.'

That Frome refused to do, with the result that he lost his biggest platform. Says Congressman Reuss: "If Field & Stream has no place for Frome, then we have come to a time when the voice of conservation is, quite literally, a voice crying in the wilderness."

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