Journalism, the environment and the new media politics of invisibility

This paper analyses the relationship between journalism and environmental politics at a time of major technological and political change. This relationship has generally been perceived in terms of the mutual benefit to movement and news media derived from visibility, or a shared ambition to make the previously unseen seen. More recently, however, sections of the environment movement have joined industry and government in adopting a "behind-closed-doors" strategy as they seek to influence conservation and broader policy outcomes. Our analysis focuses on a six-month period when public debate on the quarter-century-long conflict over Tasmanian forests virtually disappeared from public view while private negotiations seeking a truce began. In isolating the journalistic conditions that both supported and undermined this strategy of invisibility, we complicate established understandings of movement and news media roles in promoting public debate and negotiation over shared environmental futures.