Covering the African mineral trade

Jacob Kushner of Columbia University’s Covering Business spoke with Michael Kavanagh, a veteran Bloomberg reporter in Congo who has covered the mineral trade there for more than a decade, about what journalists get wrong and how they can do a better job of covering this complex and divisive subject.

Here is an excerpt:

Kushner: What must journalists remember when they approach a topic like conflict minerals?

Kavanagh: Be really suspicious of just about everyone you talk to when it comes to this issue. The Enough Project has a particular agenda that they don’t want to undermine. They’re cherry picking examples to make it look like Dodd Frank was a success. At the same time, on the other side, you have certain groups like the US Chamber of Commerce that don’t want the cost of it or the potential for reputational damage. So you can’t fully trust them at all. They care mainly about the billions of dollars it costs to implement these regulations.

And at the same time you should be suspicious of the academics and the pundits who have easy answers for these issues, because we lack a lot of data.

Kushner: What are some other mistakes journalists make when covering conflict minerals?

Kavanagh: There’s so much writing about conflict minerals. Inevitably they show a snapshot of a particular place.

Read more here.