Environmental journalism is an increasingly significant area for study within the broader field of journalism studies. It connects the concerns of politics, science, business, culture and the natural world whilst also exploring the boundaries between the local, regional and global. A central and typical focus for its concerns are the global summits convened to share scientific knowledge about global warming and to formulate policies to mitigate its consequences in particular locales. But reporting environmental change creates difficulties for journalists who are often ill equipped to resolve the uncertainties in the disputed scientific accounts of climate change. This research-based collection focuses on aspects of environmental journalism in Australia, France, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Contributors present case studies of media reporting of the environment, and explore considerations of objectivity and advocacy in journalistic coverage of the environment and climate change. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.

The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Journalism provides a thorough understanding of environmental journalism around the world. An increasing number of media platforms – from newspapers and television to Internet social media networks – are the major providers of indispensable information about the natural world and environmental risk. Despite the dramatic changes in the news industry that have tended to reduce the number of full-time newspaper reporters, environmental journalists remain key to bringing stories to light across the globe. With contributions from around the world broken down into five key regions – the United States of America, Europe and Russia, Asia and Australia, Africa and the Middle East, and South America – this book provides support for today’s environment reporters, the providers of essential news in the 21st century. As a scholarly and journalistic work written by academics and the environmental reporters themselves, this volume is an essential text for students and scholars of environmental communication, journalism, and global environmental issues more generally, as well as professionals working in this vital area.

Covering the Environment serves as a primer for future and current journalists reporting on environmental issues across all types of media. This practical resource explains the primary issues in writing on the environment, identifies who to go to and where to find sources, and offers examples on writing and reporting the beat. It also provides background to help environmental journalists identify their audiences and anticipate reactions to environmental news. This primer emphasizes the role of environmental journalists not as environmental advocates but as reporters attempting to accurately and fairly report the news. Contents include: An overview and history of the environment and journalism, spotlighting the most significant issues in the beat Guidance on understanding environmental and health science, ranging from issues of risk, to scientific research and studies, to interviewing scientists Insights into government and regulatory communities and environmental advocates on all sides of the political spectrum Assistance in accessing public records and conducting computer-assisted reporting Guidance in writing the story for print, broadcast and Internet audiences An examination of the future of journalism and coverage of the environment. Observations and story excerpts from experienced journalists provide a "real world" component, illuminating the practice of environmental journalism. Additional features in each chapter include study questions, story assignments and resources for additional information. The book also provides a glossary of environmental, science, regulator and journalism terms, as well as a reference section and index. This resource has been developed to train advanced undergraduate and graduate journalism students to cover the science and environment community, writing print and broadcast stories to a general audience. It also serves as a guide for working journalists who cover the environment in their work.

Environmental journalism aims to shed light on the ramifications of our interaction with the planet. Beginning in the 1970s, environmental journalism gained popularity by combining the fruitful efforts by journalists, scientists, and environmentalists. The media is attempting to embrace a comprehensive environmental language in order to address environmental-related problems more objectively and without diluting coverage. The breadth and magnitude of the environmental issues society is currently facing are different from those in the past. Environmental journalists can shape society and, as a result, have a big impact on the future. Compared to the rest of the news media, environmental journalism is still in its infancy today. Ironically, though, there is controversy over the safety of reporters who cover environmental issues. Local mafia intimidation, threats, physical harm, and occasionally even murder are subject to potentially disastrous pressures.

Combining perspectives from media studies and political ecology, this book analyses socially constructed news regarding three environmental conflicts in South America. In recent decades, South American political administrations have tied national economies to neo-extractive development strategies, creating not only vulnerabilities to global commodity boom and bust pricing cycles, but also to conflict regarding environmental and cultural degradation from extraction activities. Environmental contestations among indigenous peoples, environmental and social NGOs, state actors, and extraction industries receive media attention, but how these disputes are covered has implications for understandings of media performance in democratizing nations. The authors examine three case studies of environmental contestation in a region that is simultaneously vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and yet has become once again dependent on commodity exportation to industrializing and industrialized nations for economic benefit and social development strategies.

Media and communication processes are central to how we come to know about and make sense of our environment and to the ways in which environmental concerns are generated, elaborated, manipulated and contested. The second edition of Environment, Media and Communication builds on the first edition’s framework for analysing and understanding media and communication roles in the politics of the environment. It draws on the significant and continuing growth and advances in the field of environmental communication research to show the increasing diversification and complexity of environmental communication. The book highlights the persistent urgency of analysing and understanding how communication about the environment is being influenced and manipulated, with implications for how and indeed whether environmental challenges are being addressed and dealt with. Since the first edition, changes in media organisations, news media and environmental journalism have continued apace, but – perhaps more significantly – the media technologies and the media and communications landscape have evolved profoundly with the continued rise of digital and social media. Such changes have gone hand in hand with, and often facilitated, enabled and enhanced shifting balances of power in the politics of the environment. There is thus a greater need than ever to analyse and understand the roles of mediated public communication about the environment, and to ask critical questions about who/what benefits and who/what is adversely affected by such processes. This book will be of interest to students in media/communication studies, geography, environmental studies, political science and sociology as well as to environmental professionals and activists.

"This is the best undergraduate text devoted to environmental communication. It’s the standard book for an introduction to the field." —Jeffrey L. Courtright, Illinois State University The Fifth Edition of the award-winning Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere remains the most comprehensive introductory text in the growing field of environmental communication. This groundbreaking book focuses on the role that human communication plays in influencing the ways we perceive the environment. It also examines how we define what constitutes an environmental problem and how we decide what actions to take concerning the natural world. In the highly anticipated Fifth Edition, internationally recognized researcher Phaedra Pezzullo and three-time Sierra Club President Robert Cox leverage their vast experience to offer insights into the news media, Congress, environmental conflict, advocacy campaigns, and other real-world applications of environmental communication. This edition also explores recent events—the Trump Administration, wolf conservation, public land milestones, the Flint water crisis, corporate disinformation campaigns, new alliances for a "just transition" in a growing renewable energy economy, the People’s Climate March, international legal precedents, and more—to illustrate key terms and the significance of environmental communication.

The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Journalism provides a thorough understanding of environmental journalism around the world. An increasing number of media platforms - from newspapers and television to Internet social media networks - are the major providers of indispensable information about the natural world and environmental risk. Despite the dramatic changes in the news industry that have tended to reduce the number of full-time newspaper reporters, environmental journalists remain key to bringing stories to light across the globe. With contributions from around the world broken down into five key regions - the United States of America, Europe and Russia, Asia and Australia, Africa and the Middle East, and South America - this book provides support for today's environment reporters, the providers of essential news in the 21st century. As a scholarly and journalistic work written by academics and the environmental reporters themselves, this volume is an essential text for students and scholars of environmental communication, journalism, and global environmental issues more generally, as well as professionals working in this vital area.

Equal parts anecdote, advice, personal testimony, and nuts and bolts instruction, Green Ink will inspire all who care about the environment. Having encountered censorship and dismissal for his unstinting defense of the environment, Michael Frome writes with passion and conviction about advocacy journalism. He reports candidly on the rewards and challenges to be expected in its pursuit, noting the important contributions of such varied voices as Rachel Carson and Bernard DeVoto, John Muir and Edward Abbey, William Cullen Bryant and Walt Whitman, Studs Terkel and Aldo Leopold, as well as many contemporary investigative environmental writers. Green Ink serves as a valuable primer for those who aspire to write about the environmental issues and crises facing us today.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive statement and reference point for theory, research and practice with regard to environment and communication, and it does this from a perspective which is both international and multi-disciplinary in scope. Offering comprehensive critical reviews of the history and state of the art of research into the key dimensions of environmental communication, the chapters of this handbook together demonstrate the strengths of multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to understanding the centrality of communication to how the environment is constructed, and indeed contested, socially, politically and culturally. Organised in five thematic sections, The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication includes contributions from internationally recognised leaders in the field. The first section looks at the history and development of the discipline from a range of theoretical perspectives. Section two considers the sources, communicators and media professionals involved in producing environmental communication. Section three examines research on news, entertainment media and cultural representations of the environment. The fourth section looks at the social and political implications of environmental communication, with the final section discussing likely future trajectories for the field. The first reference Handbook to offer a state of the art comprehensive overview of the emerging field of environmental communication research, this authoritative text is a must for scholars of environmental communication across a range of disciplines, including environmental studies, media and communication studies, cultural studies and related disciplines.