Amazon.com description: Product Description: The environment has become the hot topic of the 1990s. But it is a vast subject fraught with contrasting values, conflicting agendas, and deep emotional beliefs. Covering the environment requires reporters to grapple with extremely complicated technical material and to assess myriad claims from government agencies, businesses, and various special-interest groups. Radio and television journalists bear the additional burden imposed by the extreme time limitations they face every day. However, they have at their command the enormous storytelling power of sound and picture. "COVERING THE ENVIRONMENTAL BEAT" was written to help broadcast journalists make the most of this power. Veteran newsman and educator Lou Prato gives journalists a valuable overview of the environmental scene-why the issues are so politicized, how to understand the language of risk assessment, how to spot the hidden agendas of new sources, and much more. This book should be read by all station owners, news directors, and broadcast journalists-from the full-time environmental reporter to the general-assignment reporter who covers breaking environmental news.