Category Archives: Research

Knight Center research director publishes new book on environmental journalism in Latin America

Dr. Manuel Chavez and Dr. Bruno Takahashi

Knight Center research director Bruno Takahashi has co-edited a volume titled News Media Coverage of Environmental Challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The edited collection provides an overview of the ways in which news media organizations across Latin America and the Caribbean cover global, regional and local environmental issues. Each chapter covers news coverage and journalistic practices in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru.

Book jacket

The chapters highlight the political, economic and social pressures that journalists face, which include the tensions between economic development and environmental conservation, as well as social inequalities that affect these countries.

Takahashi’s co-editors are center affiliate Manuel Chavez, Juliet Pinto of Pennsylvania State University and Mercedes Vigon of Florida International University.

Knight Center director reports on soft propaganda from Moscow, protests in Tbilisi

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By Eric Freedman

A short article on the website of Georgia Today, an English-language newspaper, was headlined “Journalism and Youth: The South Caucasus Media Forum” and read like an innocuous advance story about an upcoming conference “where lectures of prominent figures of journalism and political science for young journalists and observers will be featured.” It said the main topics of the Sept. 4-7 forum would include regional political culture and media trends.

I saw the story two days before leaving the U.S. to spend the fall teaching and doing research in the Republic of Georgia. Sounded useful to give me a better sense of the mediascape in the South Caucasus. Continue reading →

Study on dangers facing environmental journalists wins award

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Knight Center director Eric Freedman’s study of dangers facing environmental journalists was recognized as a Top Faculty Paper at the 2018 Association for Journalism & Mass Communications annual conference.

The award came from the organization’s Communicating Science, Health, Environment and Risk Division.

For the study, “In the Crosshairs: The Perils of Environmental Journalism ,” Freedman interviewed journalists from five continents who had been arrested, interrogated, sued, harassed, physically assaulted or threatened for their coverage. It explored the impact of such situations, including the psychological effects on these journalists’ sense of mission and professional practices.

Freedman said environmental journalists around the globe are at heightened risk because environmental controversies often involve influential business and economic interests, political power battles, criminal activities, and corruption, as well as politically, culturally, and economically sensitive issues concerning indigenous rights to land and natural resources.

How we got the story dead-on

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By Eric Freedman

Is it true that nobody likes roadkill except scavengers – mostly animals but occasionally human. (More on human scavengers later.)

Nope.

“Learning from Death, my new article in Earth Island Journal, began, as do all stories, with an idea. This one had been germinating for a couple of years after I wrote an article for Great Lakes Echo about a roadkill study in Ontario.

I wondered: What if somebody human other than scavengers likes roadkill? What if the splatter, the gore and the stench don’t matter? What if there are scientists out there who find something valuable in things that the rest of us swerve to avoid?

Lab assistant Ricki Oldenkamp prepares the lymph nodes of a white-tailed deer for analysis in the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Disease Lab at MSU. Image: Tony Cepak.

I headed to the database Web of Science, typed in “roadkill” as my search term and, voila, there were studies from Canada and the U.S., Uganda and Portugal, Norway and Brazil, Argentina and Brazil and elsewhere written by researchers who’d found scientific gold in blood, guts and DNA. I read a dozen or so of them and crafted a pitch to the environmental magazine Earth Island Journal. Here’s how I began my inquiry to editor-in-chief Maureen Nandini Mitra, with a working title of “Splush! Thwap! Blam! Ugh!” and a working lead of:

Squished squirrels. Pulverized pigeons. Skewered skunks. Dismembered deer. Chopped-up chipmunks. Flattened frogs. Eviscerated elk. Violated voles. Blasted bunnies. Crushed cats. Mangled moose. Blistered butterflies. Ravaged ravens. Smushed snakes. Motorists swerve to avoid them. Bicyclists wrinkle their noses and hold their breath when pedaling past them. Rats and raptors feed on them. And scientists study them.

She said yes. Continue reading →