ABSTRACT
News coverage of the environment and environmental issues is the result of complex processes of ‘construction’ (the literature on how news comes about also deploys a number of other and similar terms – ‘production’, ‘manufacture’, ‘packaging’, etc. – to indicate that news is the result of active ‘work’), rather than something that just happens by itself or as a result of obvious observable events, accidents or disasters. If we accept the notion of environmental news coverage as actively ‘constructed’ – and concomitantly and emphatically reject the models of news media commonly referenced in such metaphors as ‘a mirror of reality/society’ or news as ‘a window on the world’ – then what becomes interesting from a communications and sociological point of view is to examine the key operatives/agents, the key institutional settings/forums, and other factors which circumscribe and impinge on the processes of news construction.
