An environmental news review

1. DEFINING CRITERIA FOR
GOOD ENVIRONMENTAL
JOURNALISM AND TESTING
THEIR APPLICABILITY
An environmental news
review
Kaitlyn Rieper
JOU 5350

2. OVERVIEW
Two-fold: establish criteria & test criteria
No previous studies had established criteria for evaluating
environmental news, particularly concerning scientific sources
Wanted expert consensus on criteria for general journalism +
environmental journalism
Took criteria that was agreed upon and had reviewers use it to
critique 50 environmental news stories

3. METHODS
Sent out a survey to experts
 Included veteran journalists, environmental journalists, and even journalism
students
 Asked what would be the necessary criteria for valuable environmental news
 Relied on the assumption that these experts knew what the norms for expectations
in the field are
Collected criteria listed by experts and combined it to find where
there were differences
 Held discussions on questions that did not have consensus until the answers could
be reworked until a consensus was found
Sent out 50 environmental news stories to reviewers to evaluate the
stories based on the criteria that the experts established

4. RESULTS
Consensus was found for all criteria after discussion
 Only 2 questions needed further discussion
Reviewers found that the majority of the articles did not several very
important criteria
 27/50 failed to meet the basic general journalistic criteria
 38/50 failed to note how valid the events or facts were that the story was based on
 42/50 failed to give context of scientific findings
Overall, the majority of the stories were rated as “average” in meeting
criteria

5. DISCUSSION
This study provided a systematic criteria evaluation for environmental
journalism that did not previously exist
The study did not say where the stories reviewed specifically came
from, only that they were from German media
The researchers understood that the criteria might need major
revising after it was formed, so they looked back at it after a year and
only found minor edits that needed to be made
The study’s methods were lacking in detail, I doubt I would be able to
completely recreate the study