Training for reporters in avoiding health risks in Nicaragua also slated
MIAMI, Florida (November 19, 2009)–The repercussions of climate change for the people of Guatemala will be detailed by the Central American country’s Environment and Natural Resources Minister Luis Ferraté Felice next Monday (November 23) in an Inter American Press Association (IAPA) seminar aimed at reducing risks for reporters in covering offenses against the environment.
Working as a journalist in the Americas has been hampered by attacks on and the murder of news men and women who expose such crimes, so the IAPA’s Press Institute and Impunity Committee have taken the initiative of confronting this serious situation by training editors, reporters and news photographers in a bid to minimize the risks they face in doing their job.
Also taking part in the event as keynote speaker will be Police Chief Rosendo Vásquez Bonilla, criminal information analyst with Interpol’s Latin American regional office based in San Salvador, El Salvador. He will detail the international cooperation that police forces are developing in order to combat environmental crimes.
Experts from Greenpeace, the Inter-American Association for Defense of the Environment (AIDA), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the School of Ecological Thought (Savia), as well as environmentalists from Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico, will also be guest speakers.
Epidemics
In its objective of reducing the risks that journalists face in covering the news the IAPA has also scheduled a course for November 23 and 24 to be held in Managua, Nicaragua, with the aim of training reporters in how to avoid dangers inherent in covering incidents of out-of-control nature.
The speaker will be Chilean scientist and journalist Sergio Prenafeta Jenkin, who will take an in-depth look at the health crisis in the region – swine flu and dengue – and how it is reported, offering suggestions for news media to mobilize effective preventive measures.
The seminars are part of a reporting under risk program that the IAPA is carrying out with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and in collaboration with the Guatemalan newspapers Prensa Libre and Siglo Veintiuno and Nicaraguan dailies La Prensa and El Nuevo Diario.
