Praktik Jurnalisme Lingkungan oleh Harian Jawa Pos

Abstraksi

Keywords: Environmental Journalism, Mud Vulcano, textual analysis

Concept of environmental journalism was developed from environmental communication which reviews on how individual, institution, society and culture accept, understand, form, divert and utilize messages concerning environment as much as inter relationships between human and environment. The major demand on environmental journalism is how mass media as a source of public information takes responsibility to voice environmental issues that enables public to clearly understand and become aware of any dangers on their surroundings.

In this study, researcher wants to explore how environmental news coverage is performed by Indonesia mass media, especially Jawa Pos. The said environmental news is about mud volcano at Brantas Block in East Java.

This study takes focus on news publicized by Jawa Pos as one of the biggest mass media that is geographically close to disaster area. Hence, researcher uses textual analysis method. Researcher tries to capture understandings on how Jaw Pos journalists understand and news pack this mud volcano.  

When an environmental incident occurs, no matter it is caused by nature or human error, this will lead but not limited to environmental aspects. Other aspects like socio economy, law and politics can be affected. Media is highly expected to have carefulness in focusing to root causes of disaster, environmental mitigation actions, and recovery plan dealing with the disaster.

Last but not least, media should be able to take distance with interest groups that may make use of the environmental disaster. Environmental crime could be executed by individual, corporation or power group. Failure of mass media to perform environmental journalist can lead to another tragedy to environment.

Konsep jurnalisme lingkungan (environmental journalism) dikembangkan dari komunikasi lingkungan, yang mengkaji bagaimana individu, lembaga, masyarakat, serta budaya menerima, memahami, membentuk, menyampaikan, dan menggunakan pesan tentang lingkungan, serta hubungan timbal-balik antara manusia dan lingkungan. Tuntutan utama dari jurnalisme lingkungan adalah bagaimana media massa sebagai sumber informasi utama publik memiliki kewajiban untuk  menyuarakan isu-isu lingkungan sehingga publik dapat secara jelas memahami dan menyadari bahaya yang ada di lingkungan mereka.

Pada penelitian ini, peneliti ingin mengeksplorasi bagaimana praktik liputan berita lingkungan, yang menjadi ranah jurnalisme lingkungan dilakukan oleh media massa Indonesia, khususnya Jawa Pos. Berita lingkungan yang dimaksud adalah mengenai bencana lingkungan semburan lumpur (mud volcano) di penambangan Blok Brantas Jawa Timur. Pemilihan surat kabar Jawa Pos dikarenakan media ini adalah media massa nasional terbesar dan memiliki kedekatan geografis dengan lokasi bencana. Menggunakan metode textual analysis, peneliti mencoba mendapatkan pemahaman bagaimana jurnalis Jawa Pos memahami dan mengemas berita semburan lumpur panas tersebut.