Coral Triangle Journalists Attend 12th International Coral Reef Symposium

 Eleven journalists covering the six Coral Triangle countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste—attended the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium in Cairns, Australia, on July 9–13, 2012, as part of a media fellowship program.

The fellowship program, organized by the US-based communications organization SeaWeb, aimed to enhance media coverage of marine and ocean issues by connecting journalists with leading scientific experts and helping them understand the latest developments in the field. The fellows were responsible for generating 1,600 media uptakes from the symposium. They also joined Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) officials and scientists at a dialogue organized by USAID’s US CTI Support Program on July 11, 2012, to discuss ways in which CTI can work with the media to better communicate its messages to the public. USAID’s Coral Triangle Support Partnership, WWF, The Kingfisher Foundation, and the Pacific Island Countries Participation Fund supported the fellowship program.

Meanwhile, the Coral Triangle generated more than 600 news articles in print and online media, as well as interest from television and radio news organizations, during the 12th ICRS. The majority of the news coverage focused on the threats to the Coral Triangle’s reefs outlined in the USAID-supported Reefs at Risk Revisited in the Coral Triangle report, as well as the solutions put forward by the Coral Triangle Initiative—a multilateral partnership of six countries in the region supported by USAID through its US CTI Support Program. Some of the international media coverage included reports from BBC News, The Australian, The Jakarta Post, Huffington Post, Inter Press Service, Agence France-Presse, and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, among others.

Photo caption: Journalists covering the Coral Triangle attend the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium in Cairns, Australia. To find out more about the fellows, follow this link to the SeaWeb website.