Environmental reporting: before and after TMI

Mass media coverage of environmental events and issues, including problems at nuclear power plants, is a complicated affair, full of controversy and constraints imposed by the complexity of the information to be covered and by journalistic traditions and media economic conditions. Smaller newspapers and broadcast stations have a particularly hard time because they do not often employ reporters that have enough educational background or experience in a given area to cover complex technical topics. The author covered the Three Mile Island accident and studied the media coverage of TMI before and during the accident to find out how much local residents have been told about the general nuclear plant operations and possible consequences of the accident. She discussed her findings in this paper