This article analyses the interaction between social movements and the media. Drawing on a qualitative study of media coverage of occupational diseases related to pesticides, we show how a handful of journalists have contributed to the emergence of a collective mobilization of farmers seeing themselves as victims of these substances and claiming for compensation and stricter risk management public policies. In line with previous research in sociology which stress the limits of media-centered analyses, the article demonstrates however that third parties – environmental activists or legal professionals – have played a crucial role in helping the pesticide victim movement to gain media attention, and analyses how the movement leaders progressively tried to gain more control on their media coverage and their political discourse in public space.