With the first organizational meeting of the budding Mexican Environmental Journalists Network coming up at the end of May, debate about media members’ role in covering sustainable development is due some consideration.

Conventional journalistic ethics embrace the idea that informing the public is the media’s job, while going as far as to educate readership and audiences is not its responsibility.

What is the difference between informing and educating? Among other things, it is the amount or type of orientation and spin put on the content. It is like the contrast of “kiss-and-tell” with the purposeful examination of motivation and impact of the kiss. But I would argue that no line separates the two, rather a vast border zone.

The prevailing code of conduct is a condition of a structural relationship between the newsroom on one hand, and major advertisers and investors, on the other. The latter holds sway since it sustains and assures the economic survival of profit-motivated media.

“Politicians and business men are powerful people. Communications media depend on them to obtain publicity. Few ... want to see their ads next to a story criticizing the government’s capacity to detain illegal lumbering in a protected area. Nor do they want to pay air time on the radio or television,” writes Diane Jukofsky, director of the Costa Rican Center for Environmental Journalism.

As a result, the content in conventional media outlets that qualifies as educational material is mostly confined to the realm of opinion columns, op-eds and special supplements, venues in which management can say it is not responsible for the message.

The needs of the listening, viewing and reading public should be a greater determinant of the content than the monetary yield for corporate interests behind news organizations. The outlets where this is possible, such as the non-profit media, recognize today’s receptors have different needs than they used to. This kind of media also responds to the demands of sectors that are just emerging from illiteracy or suddenly propelled into cultural clashes by globalization.

For example, not long ago, providing the addresses of sources quoted in a story would have been considered overkill in the information management industry. Such data still is guarded jealously when competition between news providers is extremely intense. But in the advent of Internet information gathering, the inclusion of web sites is becoming an essential part of informing that once would have been considered educating.

COMMUNITY JOURNALISM Another response to changing needs is the evolution of “community” radio and other forms of community journalism, now being incorporated into university level curriculum. In Mexico, its roots are traceable back 40 years to the Veracruz state Radio Huayacocotla and Radio Teocelo, according to Aleida Calleja, Mexican representative of the World Community Radio Association. This group now boasts more than two dozen stations in the states of Veracruz, Oaxaca, State of Mexico, Michoacán, Jalisco, Sonora and others.

The history of environmental journalism in Mexico is part of a tradition, if not a long one, in which journalists in Latin America conceive our roles to be something more than simply informers.

Jukovsky offered a number suggestions for making coverage of sustainable devolopment inssues more professional. One recommendation was for journalists to “practice what is known as ‘preventive journalism,’” which, in so many words is just a way of saying, “get the jump on the story.”

Adán Castillo Galástica in his Spanish-language book, “Communication, Education, Training: Human Sustainable Development’s Lost Link” (Panama: Articsa Press, 2006), alludes to David Kaimowitz’ 17-year-old study on the “Process of Technology Transfer in the Area of Central America” to support the legitimization of the journalist as one of a spectrum of stakeholders who can be called “social communicators.”

Castillo, presented the book May 7, during a panel discussion on environmental journalism held at the Smithsonian Institute in Panama City under the auspices of the Panamanian National Nature Conservation Association (Ancon) and the International Center for Journalists in Washington. It is an extract of his earlier book, “Journalism, Nature and Nation Building.”

In it he relates, “A social communicator for sustainable development is much more than a gatherer or reporter of facts, problems and situations.” He likens the role to that of an “apostolate, a rural teacher, trailbreaker, trusty sentry, permanent beacon, fortune teller, provocateur of solidarity.”

If Castillo sets the bar high for some of us, he nonetheless sets the stage for acknowledgement that coverage of 21st century Latin American environment and development requires practitioners to delve into questions that will reveal whether legal frameworks, enforcement, and public participation mechanisms are sufficient to warrant slated projects. Besides keeping these conditions in mind, environmental journalists can balance coverage more by providing positive examples of sustainable development that helps consumers take action.

A little more of that, and whether we are classified as informers or educators, reporters and editors will certainly be doing the public a greater service.

Talli Nauman is a founder and co-director of Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness, a project initiated with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. (talli@hughes.net)