Media Coverage of Environmental Conservation Issues (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Communications - Journalism, Journalism Professions, grade: 8.7, Kenyatta University (Media Technology and Advanced Communication), course: Bachelors: Mass communication and Journalism, language: English, abstract: Environmental issues represent a very low proportion of all stories covered by newspapers; these stories also suffer from content limitations. No coverage of environmental issues in the popular media is likely to be a straight forward treatment of the facts due to many practical constrains, some of which are inherent in the structure and values of modern news reporting. Some of these constrains are: misreporting or miscommunication, low levels of journalistic training in science reporting and writing, media time and space constrains and commercial pressures. The objectives guiding the study are: how regularly are environmental conservation stories published and why they are not published as regularly and with such prominence as other stories of political and entertainment nature. A descriptive survey design will be used. This involves content analysis per se primarily as a tool of data collection. Purposive sampling dictated the choice of THE DAILY NATION and THE STANDARD as newspapers whose content shall be analyzed. The selection of media outlets was based on popularity and the number of published copies and the rating of selected newspapers. The period under analysis will be between the month of May and June.

Conservation and sustenance of the environment has become one of the pressing issues facing humanity today with environmental and conservation education and awareness being regarded as one of the measures of halting the conflict between human and nature. According to Canadian Environmental Grantmakers' Network, solving today's challenging local and global environmental issues and moving society towards conservational efforts cannot rest only with "experts" but will require the support and active participation of an informed public in their various roles as consumers, voters, employers, and business and community leaders. Thus, mass media should become an indispensable partner in global conservation and management through their various roles of not only increasing awareness on the problems and challenges towards environmental conservation and sustainability.