Environmental reporting in Vietnam often a comedy of errors

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam – This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but reporting on the environment in Vietnam is not an easy task. The one-party state was recently ranked 175 out of 180 in Reporters Without Borders’ 2017 World Press Freedom Index, between Sudan and China. Vietnam’s major newspapers are state-owned, and nearly everything published on paper within the country must go through a censor before it hits the streets. The internet is not restricted in the same way that it is in China, but it is common knowledge that social media networks like Facebook are monitored by government ministries. On the ground, this translates to heavily restricted access for journalists, cagey responses to questions, and absolutely zero interest from anyone involved in the government in talking to the press. Over the last year in particular, numerous citizen journalists have received lengthy prison sentences for writing about corruption and environmental abuses. Since starting as a Vietnam-based correspondent for Mongabay in 2016, I’ve come to rely on NGOs such as the WWF and Forest Trends for access to information and guides when in the field reporting. I quickly learned that emails to government ministries go unread. I’ve gone on four reporting trips in Vietnam for Mongabay; three in the country’s north and one in a national park that is home to several of the world’s largest, most spectacular caves in the central region on the border with Laos. Somewhat surprisingly, given the often suffocating reporting atmosphere here, three out of those…

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