Talking about the insufficient coverage of wildlife issues in the news media is akin to flogging a dead horse. Certainly in conservationist circles. Conservationists never mince words about what they think of the media per se. Having worked on both sides of this divide, with both wildlife organisations as well as in the news media, I feel conservationists too should start owning up to their faults.
A journalist who reports or writes about wildlife faces a number of problems, apart from the well-known and well-accepted one of fighting for space/time in the news outlet itself.
To start with, most wildlife organisations are woefully slack in breaking news. Press releases are either not sent out, and often when they indeed are, they are slightly outdated. A news event always has a trigger. A news event is immediate. Stale news is no news. For instance, a seizure made five days back makes no sense publishing today. And often the news does not appear even on the NGO's website for days. One reason could be slackness, the other may be lack of staff or adequate resources.
I have personally come across many wildlifers who are inordinately hesitant in sharing findings. They are all too willing to give their expert opinions about an issue or an incident, but when it comes to ongoing projects, they needlessly clam up. One can understand the apprehension, but such misgivings would be more pertinent in cases such as a police investigation into a crime. At a time when few disagree that you need to have people on your side to save wildlife and forests, media coverage about ongoing projects could go a long way in building that support base. This is also one of the reasons why most of the news items that one sees in news outlets are about incidents rather than issues.
Many wildlife NGOs do a considerable amount of work that is both commendable, as well as worth writing about. It would only go in the interest of wildlife conservation if words of these reaches out to the masses. My personal experience of having run a wildlife newsblog tells me that the people are there to support conservation. If NGOs are not able to reach out to them, maybe they should sit back, do some introspection/retrospection, and then devise new strategies for a new world.
