Abstract
Peru has experienced remarkable economic growth based on the exploitation of natural resources in the last few decades. Within a multicultural, economically unequal, and institutionally weak context, this growth has led to a great amount of social–environmental conflicts. At the same time, it has promoted the expansion and growth of informal and illegal businesses, like small-scale gold-mining. This chapter presents an analysis of media coverage of informal mining in Peru. Results reveal that the violence and conservation frames were the most dominant, while justice and public-health issues were missing from the coverage. In addition, interviews with eight journalists about their reporting experiences highlighted the low importance accorded to environmental concerns in a context dominated by the economic growth paradigm. A significant impediment to accurate reporting is the lack of access to government sources and limited use of scientific sources.
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Notes
- 1.
Report available here: http://maaproject.org/2016/mineria-2016/
- 2.
Peruvian jargon that refers to a labor system used by a miner who works for a company or patrón, and who in exchange for working a certain number of days, works a single day for himself; the gold he finds that day is his compensation for his labor.
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Willer, H., Takahashi, B. (2018). The Challenges for Environmental Reporting in Peru: Coverage of Small-Scale Mining in Peruvian Newspapers. In: Takahashi, B., Pinto, J., Chavez, M., Vigón, M. (eds) News Media Coverage of Environmental Challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean. Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70509-5_7
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