Joel Simon on environmental journalism

"In the United States and Europe, environmental reporting is not an especially dangerous beat. But that's not true in much of the rest of the world, where environmental reporters have faced harassments, lawsuits, violent attacks, and the occasional murder," writes Simon in his article, "Unnatural Disaster: The Crisis of Environmental Journalism."

Simon cites the case of Russian journalist Mikhail Beketov, who was savagely beaten last November. Editor and publisher of Khimkinskaya Pravda (Khimki Truth), Beketov had been reporting on a local environmental group campaigning to stop a planned highway that would have cut through the Khimki Forest, destroying one of the last areas of pine and oak near Moscow.

"Press freedom groups and environmental groups both speak out about such abuses, but they don't work together to ensure that there is systematic documentation of violations and a strategy to confront the worst abusers," writes Simon.