Journalists who cover illegal operations like logging at this site in northern Sagaing division, Myanmar, can face threats and violence. AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe

At Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, we train students and professional journalists to report on what we view as the world’s most important beat. One hard fact is that those who cover it are at heightened risk of murder, arrest, assault, threats, self-exile, lawsuits and harassment.

In a recent study, I explored this problem through in-depth interviews with journalists on five continents, including impacts on their mental health and careers. I found that some of them were driven away from journalism by these experiences, while others became even more committed to their missions.

Journalist Saul Elbein describes how in developing countries, covering the environment can be tantamount to investigating organized crime.
 

In the cross-hairs

Covering the environment is one of the most hazardous beats in journalism. According to one estimate, 40 reporters around the world died between 2005 and September 2016 because of their environmental reporting – more than were killed covering the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Environmental controversies often involve influential business and economic interests, political battles, criminal activities, anti-government insurgents or corruption. Other factors include ambiguous distinctions between “journalist” and “activist” in many countries, as well as struggles over indigenous rights to land and natural resources.

In both wealthy and developing countries, journalists covering these issues find themselves in the cross-hairs. Most survive, but many undergo severe trauma, with profound effects on their careers.

As one example, in 2013 Rodney Sieh, an independent journalist in Liberia, disclosed a former agriculture minister’s involvement in a corrupt scheme that misused funds earmarked to fight the parasitic, infectious Guinea worm disease. Sieh was sentenced to 5,000 years in prison and fined US$1.6 million for defamation. He served three months in Liberia’s most notorious prison before an international outcry pressured the government into releasing him.

In the same year, Canadian reporter Miles Howe was assigned to cover protests by the Elsipotog First Nation in New Brunswick against hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. Howe worked for an independent online news organization that sought to spotlight unreported and underreported stories.

“Many times I was the only accredited journalist witnessing rather violent arrests, third-trimester pregnant women being locked up, guys tackled to the ground,” he recalls. Howe was arrested multiple times, and during one protest a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police pointed him out and shouted, “He’s with them!” His equipment was seized, and police searched his home. They also offered to pay him for providing information about upcoming “events” – in other words, spying on the protesters.
 

Psychological impacts

The relatively few studies that have examined attacks on reporters show that such treatment can have lingering impacts, including post-traumatic stress disorder and depressive and substance use disorders. While some journalists are able to cope and recover, others live in a state of fear of future incidents, or suffer survivor guilt if they escape and leave relatives and colleagues behind.

“Overall, journalists are a pretty resilient tribe,” Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University, told me. “Their rates of PTSD and depression are about 13 to 15 percent, which is comparable to rates among first responders. Environmental or social justice reporters often have a higher-than-average sense of mission and purpose and a higher level of skill,” beyond that of some of their peers on other beats.

But this attitude can translate into reluctance to seek help. Most journalists I interviewed didn’t seek therapy, usually because no services were available or because of the profession’s machismo factor. Gowri Ananthan, a lecturer at the Institute of Mental Health in Sri Lanka, calls journalism “a profession in denial,” even as some victims acknowledge the price they’ve paid.

For example, Miles Howe suffered serious psychological problems following his arrests. “What did it do to me? It made me upset, angry,” he says. Howe didn’t seek therapy until he left journalism more than two years later, but in hindsight regrets not acting sooner.
Others told me their experiences recommitted them to their missions as journalists. Rodney Sieh says his stint in prison “really elevated our work to an international level that we would never have had if I weren’t arrested. It made us stronger, bigger, better.”

Global press freedom declined to its lowest point in 13 years in 2016 amid unprecedented threats to journalists and media outlets in major democracies and new moves by authoritarian states to control the media. CC BY-ND
 

Indigenous rights versus professional ethics

Environmental controversies often involve indigenous rights. In South America, for example, indigenous journalists and “ethno-communicators” are playing an increasingly vital role in uncovering vast exploitation of natural resources, forests and land.

Despite professional codes calling for balanced, impartial coverage, some reporters can feel compelled to take sides on these stories. “We saw that clearly at Standing Rock,” says Tristan Ahtone, a board member of the Native American Journalists Association, referring to protests on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“NAJA had to put out ethical guidelines for journalists. We saw it mostly with young Native reporters who were happy to blow the ethical line,” Ahtone says. “A lot of it is having a different world view.”

One such reporter, freelance journalist Jenni Monet – a tribal member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico – was arrested while covering the protests but acquitted of trespassing at trial. She also has covered deforestation and logging in a tribal area in Brazil’s Amazon region. “Most times I’m with indigenous people (on such stories), and I see things through their eyes,” she told me.

Protesters march at Oceti Sakowin camp, where people have gathered to protest the Dakota Access oil pipeline in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, Dec. 4, 2016. AP Photo/David Goldman, File
 

Better training and legal protection

Many of these issues need further research. From a craft perspective, how do these experiences affect journalists’ approach to reporting? How do they deal with sources afterwards, especially if those people are also at risk? How do editors and news directors subsequently treat reporters in terms of assignments, story placement and salaries?

These findings also raise questions about how press rights groups can successfully protect and advocate for environmental reporters. In my view, more environmental journalists need the type of safety training that many war and foreign correspondents now receive.

Pollution and natural resource damage affect everyone, especially the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. The fact that journalists who report on these issues are so vulnerable is deeply disturbing. And their abusers often operate with impunity.

For example, there have been no convictions in the 2017 murder of Colombian radio journalist Efigenia Vásquez Astudillo, who was shot while covering an indigenous movement to take back ancestral land that had been converted to farms, resorts and sugar plantations. As the Committee to Protect Journalists observes, “Murder is the ultimate form of censorship.”
 

Eric Freedman, Professor of Journalism and Chair, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Michigan State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Women wearing their WIPNET T-shirts plan a peace jamboree the day before the Liberian election in October 2017. (Carter Center)

Affectionately known as “Ma Ellen,” Sirleaf took office at the end of a 14-year civil war in which an estimated 200,000 Liberians were killed.

Sickened and fatigued by war, thousands of Liberian women, through mass action, brought about an end to the conflict in 2003.

These same women took great risks to elect Sirleaf on her promise to sustain peace and make gender equality central to her administration’s agenda. Some women hid their sons’ voter ID cards to prevent them from voting for Sirleaf’s opponent; others tricked the young men into exchanging their cards for beer; still others managed market stalls while their female owners went to register to vote and watched babies so that mothers could vote on Election Day.

These women, many of whom belong to the Women in Peace Building Network (WIPNET), are identifiable by their white T-shirts with blue WIPNET insignia. They are a powerful, widely respected group for what they have accomplished and continue to fight for.

When Sirleaf came to power in 2005, the world was electrified. On Inauguration Day in January 2006, proud Liberians, world leaders and dignitaries watched as she took the oath of office.

Sirleaf singled out the women in the peace movement, thanking them for their courage, and committed to supporting their agenda. The Sirleaf administration kept some of its promises but with notable challenges. Liberia has tough rape laws, but weak enforcement mechanisms, and in 2016, Parliament signed into a law a new domestic violence bill but removed a ban on female genital mutilation.

At the end of Sirleaf’s two terms in office, peace has held, but the results of progress on gender equality are mixed.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shares a laugh with Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia in November 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
 

Women and peace huts

Today, some of the powerful grassroots women who brought Sirleaf to power are at the forefront of running what are known as peace huts. Spread across the country, the purposes of these huts are to put women in charge of mediating domestic abuse and other disputes before they escalate, to empower women through entrepreneurial opportunities and to educate them about their rights.

By and large, Liberian women and girls are well aware of their rights, and especially those enshrined in the UN Security Council Resolution 1325.

Adopted in 2000, the resolution recognizes that women bear the brunt and horrors of war, and calls for women’s full participation in conflict prevention, resolution and peace-building. Peace huts in Liberia are instrumental in teaching women — including those not formally educated — about these rights.

Peace huts work for gender equality, peace and human rights. But they do much more. The Ebola crisis of 2014 led to the deaths of an estimated 11,315 people and strained already fragile health-care systems. Women who ran peace huts in some of the communities stepped in to help the sick and dying, and some of them died in the process.
 

Gains and losses

There is general agreement among most Liberians that the Sirleaf administration stabilized the country and attracted investment. But there are those who also feel that, notwithstanding a staunch patriarchal culture, women have actually lost ground, especially in politics.

Of the 1,026 approved candidates in the election cycle, only 163 were women, and, in a field of 20 candidates, only one woman, Macdella Cooper, ran for president, and she lost badly.

Tackling corruption, infrastructure, youth unemployment and reconciliation by promoting national unity and advancing a peace agenda topped ballot issues in the elections.

Noticeably absent was a targeted focus on addressing violence against women and girls.

Yet the UN Women’s Global Database on Violence Against Women report that 39 per cent of Liberian women between 15-49 years old experience physical and/or sexual violence at the hands of intimate partners at least once in their lifetime.

Women who run peace huts spend much of their time supporting victims of gender-based violence. Where they are available, women work with the police to arrest the alleged perpetrators. But justice for victims is often hampered by a weak legal system.

Nonetheless, Liberian women rightly view themselves as the guardians of a hard-won peace connected to the fight for gender justice. They view peace as foundational to prosperity that can take root only if there is an end to gender-based violence and respect for rights.

An uncertain but hopeful future

The elections on Oct. 10 did not yield clear results. The frontrunners, Sen. George Weah and Vice-President Joseph Boaki, were scheduled for a run-off election on Nov. 7. However, the Liberian Supreme Court recently suspended the second round of voting pending an investigation into allegations of “fraud and irregularities.”

It is, therefore, too early to tell if gender equality will top the new administration’s agenda, but there’s room for guarded optimism.

Large groups of activist women in Liberia are prepared to continue to fight for equality and are unafraid to do so. Wearing their WIPNET T-shirts, women have come out in force in recent years to press the government to change or implement laws, usually with the support of an engaged public.

The new administration would do well to work with women in the peace huts and in civil society to achieve success. Without a strong voice for gender equality, it’s unlikely that the new Liberian government will realize its political goals.

Erica Lawson, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research, Western University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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