As expected, Brazil has had continuous coverage on deforestation occurring in the Amazon. It's their country, and they should want to conserve their environment and make citizens aware of what's going on.
I found this article on the front page of the Rio Times, an online newspaper in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, discussing deforestation as a daily struggle. It states, "...5,850 km suqare meters (2,250 sq miles) of the Amazon were deforested between August 2012 and July 2013."
Photo from Aljazeera
It goes on to say that Brazilian government officials were already pushing to adopt measures to slow illegal logging within the Amazon. There have been several Forest Codes passed because of increased deforestation, so we know this is an important environmental problem for the Brazilian government and citizens.
Convergence is one of the mass communication trends evident in the Rio Times article and in articles from my previous posts on the Amazon Rain Forest. This is a trend that now allows us to find elements such as written stories, video clips, slideshows, polls, and other things on news Web sites. This is an important idea because it means newspapers and other old news forms are conforming to the high rate of technology today and putting all sorts of information in one easy place online.
Below is a screenshot of the home page of the Rio Times. It shows videos, pictures, written news articles, and further down on the page they give other information like the weather in the region. So convenient, and it only furthers the point of convergence.
While Brazil makes it seem as though they are making a lot of effort to slow deforestation, this article from Aljazeera says otherwise. They state that enforcement of the foresting codes have been lax. This is interesting to see how two articles from different countries are looking at the Amazon deforestation differently.
The purposes of these articles in mass communication are to get information to the citizens, but also at an international level to make people aware this is a serious issue.
I find it amazing the Brazil is trying to cover up deforestation to its own people. Obviously, this is nothing that a citizen would want to hear about, but it is important that they know. It is unbelievable that a country would try to hide the truth from its people. It is also interesting to see how the same topic is being covered in other countries. I see that the article mentions that there is a 28% growth in deforestation but I am wondering what percent of the Amazon has been destroyed? What is the actual percent loss of the rain forrest? I also find it interesting that this is a topic that is important to everyone, in the world in that the rain forrest is essential for the natural weather patterns in the world, yet I rarely find deforestation covered in the media.
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