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Abstract

Continuing education programs are needed to provide journalists with an understanding of risk assessment, and the preparation required to produce ac curate, professional coverage of environmental problems. The key audience for such programs is general assignment and local-beat reporters and their editors, rather than specialized science and environmental writers. In conducting such educational programs, the researchers learned that reporters and editors auto matically think in terms of the traditional journalistic determinants of news, rather than the scientific degree of risk. Journalists and news sources often col lide because they make assumptions based on their own very different defini tions and expectations. News sources wishing to influence media coverage should adjust their messages according to the needs of journalists: to achieve this, they too can benefit from continuing education programs.

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References

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Improving press coverage of environmental risk

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