Environmental reporting does not rank high among the editorial priorities and newsroom hierarchies across the country. Media organizations agreed that media coverage is an important way to spread knowledge about environmental issues. Because of this belief in the media as an important educational tool, all interviewees told that most of the journalists in the country are covering environmental detailed issues as routine business. They are not having specific training in this regard. Covering the environment in its geopolitical, social and scientific contexts requires expert knowledge and the capacity to frame environmental stories in an attractive way. For most of them even the commonly used terms about environment like acid rain, ozone layer depletion and extinction were heard terms without any meaning. Our educational institutes are giving little or no importance to the specialized journalist tools, it is suggested that public education on environmental issues is required.
National contribution towards global climate change has not been considered of significance by all the newspapers. Deforestation, however, has been considered that major cause of climate at national level and then comes up industrialization. A major challenge facing environmental journalists in country is the lack of reliable environmental data; the journalists are relying more on data provided government officials or other secondary source which reliability has never been checked before going to make it public.
Hafiza Sana Gul
Rawalpin