By Shealyn Paulis

Shealyn Paulis
This is the 4th in a series of articles about reporting skills by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.
Reporters working in or focusing on the Amazon rainforest are forced to take extreme safety measures while doing so. That’s because their coverage threatens industries seeking to exploit the region’s resources and populations.
At the 2025 conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Tempe, Arizona, this topic was presented by representatives from the nonprofit organization Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji); security manager Valeria Oliveira and project coordinator Reinaldo Chaves.
The panel was hosted in two languages, Portuguese and English, and was part of an effort to answer why journalists in certain regions, like the Amazon, are put into such dangerous positions and how those threats are combated in the field.
Attendees were guided through a presentation on how Abraji funds, trains and mentors reporters investigating environmental crimes in the Amazon, leading to eight successful investigations thus far. Their organization advocates transparency and prioritizes journalists’ ability to have creative freedom to deliver the stories they want, but reinforces that physical security is the most important aspect of their work.
Latin America is the most dangerous place in the world to be an environmental journalist, according to a 2022 study by the international organization Committee to Protect Journalists.. The Amazon region is under particular stress, according to Reuters. In the past decade, over 200 incidents against journalists, such as threats, kidnappings and murders, have been documented. Continue reading