Can Western news organizations help fill the environmental news and information gap left by local media in the three former Soviet republics in the South Caucasus — Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia?
Maybe in part, but there are still many news holes left unfilled. And the impact of foreign media coverage is uncertain in a region where press rights are ignored, where governments often are opaque and where those governments are reluctant to spend money to remedy environmental woes.
All three countries rank poorly in press freedom ratings from such organizations as Reporters without Borders and Freedom House, with Azerbaijan among the world’s worst-of-the-worst.
Those are some of the conclusions in a new study by Knight Center director Eric Freedman, research director Bruno Takahashi, former doctoral research assistant Christine Carmichael and University of St. Thomas journalism professor Mark Neuzil, who has been a Knight Center guest lecturer.
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Environmental impacts of steelmaking are felt in communities where steel is made and beyond, from dramatic changes in landscapes to smoke-darkened horizons to contaminated ponds.
For photographers and other artists—painters, poets, songwriters—those impacts provide an opportunity to use their creative works to draw public attention to ecological conditions at operating and abandoned mills.
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