Water As News and Media's Influence on Urban Water Management: News Coverage on Water Management

Media has tried to cover water and environment sector for a long time. Within environment and water sector is urban water sector; this is generating a series of events that are converted into news. The underlying problem in relation to his coverage on urban water issues as news is there is little knowledge about media's process of selecting water issues as news. And, what influences this coverage has on urban water management. This thesis attempts to find answers to this information gap. The study found that the process of news making requires new, unusual and controversial events that are selected through a series of gates; influenced by individual journalist's traits and flair, combined with external and internal influences of market, politics, public and idealism. In urban water, events related to crisis, controversy, tariff, pollution and private sector participation are considered news worthy. However, consistency of coverage is lacking and the media loses interest in the issues. Mainstream media is poorly equipped to address urban water issues and requires to be trained. However, news media does influence urban water management.