Beneath the Radar: A Study of Pre-Crisis Disclosure of Environmental and Public Health Risks in the Mass Media. P. Kennedy, Clarion University of Pennsylvania
Although this study focuses on events that took place in a small town in Ontario, Canada, the environmental issues under study are not unique to small towns, to the province of Ontario or even to the country of Canada. Threats to the quality of the water in oceans, lakes, ponds and streams know no boundaries. The environmental and economic tensions that exist at the sites where residential and agricultural uses overlap are a familiar challenge in many countries. If ever there was doubt, it is increasingly clear that environmental and public health threats cannot be compartmentalized and do not respect news beats, media markets or political boundaries. Neither government nor the press are reliably delivering environmental risk information in a manner that matches the current needs of citizens living in complex, fast-paced, democratic societies. Important risk information often does not reach any truly public forum until after there is a crisis, emergency or catastrophic event.
The study described here attempts to shed light on the topic of media coverage of government by examining influences on the mass mediated communication of risk in the context of a specific environmental and public health crisis — the lethal contamination of the public water supply in Walkerton, Ontario, Canada with E. coli 0157:H7 from farm field run-off.
This study describes the ways that specific risk information — information that might have alerted the affected public to the potential for harm — was covered (or omitted) before the crisis, providing some comparisons with coverage after the crisis. The study also reports on how Canadian journalists from a variety of media outlets and familiar with the context of this event explain why they believe specific risk information was treated the way that it was and how obstacles they perceive to improving the publication of important risk information might be overcome.
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