My Northeastern ethics students identify news stories that should get more attention

If you’ve been reading Media Nation for a while, you know that I like to ask my journalism ethics students to find stories that they think have been underreported. The definition is elastic. Even a prominently played story in The New York Times can be underreported if it isn’t repeated enough to enter the public discourse.

This semester I’ve got 29 advanced undergraduates, and I’ve boiled down their responses to 10 stories. What I looked for in presenting here was a range of topics and a diversity of media outlets, including stories published by non-mainstream outlets. I could have shared all of them, but I think this is a good sample.

UN Agencies Warn Humanitarian System in Sudan “Could Collapse,” UN News, Sept. 14. “Sudan has been embroiled in a brutal civil conflict since 2023 between rival militaries and their backers. Some 8.6 million people remain internally displaced and 19.5 million people currently face crisis levels of food insecurity, which has been compounded by maritime disruptions and drought caused by the El Niño weather pattern.”

Indigenous Tribes Form Resistance Camp Against Proposed Copper Mine in Michigan, Truthout, Sept. 16. “The difficulties northern tribes are facing on their shared ancestral lands in the Porcupine Mountains of Michigan’s Western Upper Peninsula have recently become acutely thorny, as they stare down an industrial buildout in the last uncut old-growth forest in the region.”

Gary, Indiana, Is America’s Latest Climate Victim, The American Prospect, Aug. 28. “The power is finally coming back on in Gary, though when I visited hundreds were still without. Stories are unearthing about the squalid — and sometimes dangerous — conditions that residents were forced to endure during outages that lasted up to two weeks. About 80 percent of Gary’s 69,000 residents are Black, and around a third live in poverty, the result of more than half a century of deindustrialization, disinvestment, racial segregation, and bank redlining.”

Haiti: Signs of Hope Despite Gang Violence and Political Uncertainty, UN News, July 16. “Powerful armed gangs control large parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and continue expanding into other parts of the country. Families are fleeing their homes in record numbers, schools and health centres have closed, and humanitarian agencies are struggling to meet soaring needs as funding runs dangerously low. Yet amid the crisis there are also signs of progress.”

Narrowing Endangered Species Act Will Likely Drive Right Whales to Extinction, Experts Warn, WBUR, Sept. 17. “Environmental advocates say a Trump administration proposal to narrow the scope of the Endangered Species Act could drive the world’s remaining North Atlantic right whales to extinction, with the animals likely reaching the point of no return within a decade. ‘It doesn’t take much to push a species like this right over the brink,’ said  Mark Baumgartner, a marine ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.”

Gold Mining Expands Fastest on Indigenous Lands in Brazil’s Amazon, New Analysis Finds, The Associated Press, Sept. 15. “Indigenous lands face the greatest threat from the expansion of gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the nonprofit Amazon Environmental Research Institute, known as IPAM…. IPAM said the mining is aggravating the climate risks facing Indigenous communities. Climate change, driven primarily by human activities that increase greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, has intensified droughts and heat in the Amazon.”

The Pentagon Is Digging Through Medical Records to Find Trans Troops Before a Court Can Stop It, Erin in the Morning, Sept. 10. “Time is running out for the Department of Defense. A judge has signaled that an injunction for the trans military ban is imminent. In response, the military has supercharged efforts to purge transgender personnel by digging through sensitive medical records, the Federal News Network reports. It seems the Trump administration is trying to oust as many people as possible before a judge can successfully force them to stop.”

The Pentagon Asked OpenAI for Artificial Intelligence Designed to Rarely Say No, The Intercept. “The Department of Defense asked OpenAI to provide the U.S. military with a special version of its artificial intelligence technology designed to turn down the military commands as infrequently as possible, according to documents obtained by The Intercept. The desire for a custom AI tool with ‘minimal refusal rates’ to Pentagon commands was revealed in files released to The Intercept as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking information about the military’s secretive deals with AI companies.”

Lawsuit over Sexual Assault Aboard Navy Transport Ship Dismissed as Worker’s Comp Issue, Stars and Stripes, Aug. 25. “A judge dismissed a lawsuit from a civilian engineer in the Military Sealift Command after it was determined that her report of being raped in her own bed aboard a Navy transport ship was within her duties and must be treated as a worker’s comp claim.”

GLP-1 Prescriptions for People with No Medical Need Are Climbing, The New York Times, Sept. 22. “An analysis of the medical records of more than 92 million U.S. adults, identified more than 1.1 million who were taking GLP-1 medications, without any record of an issue that would make them eligible, like obesity or diabetes. While the researchers didn’t examine why people took these medications, doctors said many people are probably using them simply to shed some pounds or in the hope they might deliver other, buzzy potential benefits.”