Interest in environmental reporting has increased significantly since the 1980s among both media professionals and the public (Bond, 1994-1995). This increase, along with advances in understanding how the environment impacts health, has added to the need for effective coverage of issues and for the media's contribution toward a more enlightened discourse about the environment (Nelkin, 1995). Since its inception in 1989, for instance, the Society of Environmental Journalists has grown from 300 members to over 1,100 in 1996 (SEJ Directory Introduction, 1996) and is still growing. A study presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in 1994, based on a survey of 15 environmental writers and 25 educators, indicated science and journalism students' interest in environmental communication courses is growing rapidly in the United States (Friedman, 1994). Friedman also pointed out that educators felt that media had to do more to help the public evaluate environmental information, and journalists believed coverage needed to be more thoughtful and explanatory. It also stated students need much more experience with statistics and analysis of how quantitative data effect their stories. Neither researchers nor journalists are happy with the current state of environmental media, Friedman concluded. Recognizing the need to teach environmental reporting, some schools of journalism have established environmental media courses, including technical writing and science and health reporting (Friedman, 1994). The press itself is developing specialty areas in science and environmental reporting, hiring reporters with special training in these fields and providing sections of the newspaper concentrating on science and environmental issues (Klaidman, 1990). Along with the need for a better understanding of science and its methodologies in order to report on the environment accurately, there is also a need to understand the concept of and its influence on public behavior in environmental reporting. Otherwise, the reporting is disengaged and its information may cause unnecessary alarm or desensitization for the reader. Students need to have some experience with communication if they are to write about controversial issues. According to Griffin, Neuwirth, and Dunwoody (1995), scholarly literature on communication is growing as media professionals observe that issues of influence the behaviors of readers. The public can not be left out of the story. As Renz (1992) suggests, communication should be seen as a process involving the public as a legitimate partner in decision-making regarding a controversial environmental issue. With limited time in teaching the basic environmental reporting course, can this be done? My purpose here is to show that a reasonably thorough understanding of reporting can be taught in a basic environmental reporting course by applying Klaidman's (1990) reasonable reader approach. What is reporting? One of the challenges in teaching as a concept is that it is defined differently among several disciplines. Even more daunting are the philosophical and epistemological debates about from neo-modernists such as Popper, Habermas, Giddens, and Beck (Lash, Szerzynski, and Wynne, 1996) to the pragmatic less theoretical paradigm useful for this discussion, of Rowan (1991,1996); Olecknow (1995); and Flatow (1993). Once we have explored the philosophical underpinnings of what is, the students recognize the challenge of interpreting the definitions in understandable language. They note, for example, there is, as Beck-Gernsheim (1996) has put it, a competition between concepts of risk (p. 150) when the social scientist identifies non-emancipated groups in need of social assistance or, when the laboratory scientist identifies a gene to assist in the curing of an inherited disease, to point out just two competing concepts. …