INTERNATIONAL GREEN PEN AWARD WINNER - 2009
Prof. Sharon M. Friedman - USA

Prof. Sharon M. Friedman is Professor and Director of the Science and Environmental Writing Program in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Lehigh University. She directed Lehigh's Environment and Society program from 1994-2004, currently chairs the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee for the Environmental Studies Program and is a member of the Executive Committee of Lehigh's Environmental Initiative. She served as Associate Dean for Faculty and Staff in Lehigh's College of Arts and Sciences from 2006-2008 and Chair of the Journalism and Communication Department from 1986-1995. Her research focuses on how environmental, scientific and health issues are communicated to the public as well as on risk communication issues.  She has conducted research on mass media coverage of such environmental and health risk issues as the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, Alar, radon, dioxin and electromagnetic fields. Currently, she is studying mass media coverage of potential environmental and health risks from nanotechnology. 

From 1987-90, she was a consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), co-authoring with Kenneth A. Friedman the first edition of the volume, Reporting on the Environment:  A Handbook for Journalists.  This book has been translated into 11 languages and widely distributed throughout Asia and the Pacific and Russia and the Ukraine. Sharon and Ken co-taught 12 environmental reporting seminars and workshops from 1988-1996 for national forums of environmental journalists in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Nepal, Singapore and Bangladesh sponsored by ESCAP, National Forums of Environmental Journalists, various government agencies and foundations. Sharon also gave presentations on environmental media issues, including risk reporting and statistics, to The Jakarta Post and Antara in Jakarta, the Malaysian Department of Environment, and to environmental conferences sponsored by ESCAP and by the Pakistani government. In 1997, they conducted a science writing workshop for Malaysian journalists and consulted with The Science University of Malaysia on how to establish a science writing program there. In 2001, she consulted on establishing a joint science writing program for several universities in Sydney, Australia. In 2002, she was a lecturer for a special summer school for journalists and scholars on radiation and environmental and health risks in Olan, Sweden.  She also has served as a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Brazil and twice as a Bosch Foundation Lecturer in Germany. 

In addition to co-authoring the Reporting on Environment Handbook, Sharon Friedman is the senior editor of two books widely used books about science and environmental communication: Communicating Uncertainty: Media Coverage of New and Controversial Science, and Scientists and Journalists: Reporting Science as News. She has written a number of book chapters on environmental issues including “The Never-Ending Story of Dioxin,” “Communicating with the Public about Exposure and Cancer Risk,” “Risk Communication on Toxic Air Pollutants, “Risk Management: The Public Versus the Technical Experts” and “TMI: The Media Story that Will Not Die” as well as numerous journal and magazine articles on media coverage of environmental, scientific and health issues.

She co-authored with Ken Friedman a major article on the development of Asian environmental journalism, “Environmental Journalism: Guardians of the Asian Commons,” which appeared in Environment magazine in 1989. Sharon presented a paper at a Society of Environmental Journalists conference on the about international environmental journalism in 1991. She also helped to track the development of environmental journalism in the United States in two book chapters, “Two Decades of the Environmental Beat” (2004) and “And the Beat Goes On: The Third Decade of Environmental Journalism” (1991) as well as an article, “Despite Challenges, Study Finds the E-Beat Has Matured,” which was published in SEJournal in 2003. 

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