Released in January, and based on interviews with some 1,400 researchers
and journalists, the report is broadly pitched to scientists in general
and the news media at large, and offers a three-part conclusion that’s
pretty much what you’d expect:by Curt Suplee
The latest, predictably gloomy, report on the relationship between science and journalism contains very little that will surprise NASW members. But it may make edifying motivational reading for their often tech-averse editors and publishers.
The Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center hired physicist and former astronaut Rick Chapell and NBC/PBS newsman Jim Hartz to produce Worlds Apart: How the Distance Between Science and Journalism Threatens America’s Future as part of its continuing investigation of how the press handles major topics such as religion and business.
Released in January, and based on interviews with some 1,400 researchers
and journalists, the report is broadly pitched to scientists in general
and the news media at large, and offers a three-part conclusion that’s
pretty much what you’d expect:
1. Scientists (correctly) mistrust the competence of most reporters; only 11 percent of those interviewed professed a great deal of confidence in the press, and twice that many had hardly any confidence at all. However, two thirds graciously do not believe that the news media are biased against science.
2. Most reporters (understandably) are dismayed by jargon and the endless qualifications researchers employ, find them often less than accessible and regard their day-to-day labors as a bit short of entirely newsworthy. A clear majority, though, have a great deal of confidence in scientists.
3. As a result, both sides (incomprehensibly) fail to communicate and bond to the max, with the result that the American people slide ever further into astrology-besotted ignorance of science and technology.
This ostensible reporter-scientist rapport gap may not appear on your personal list of the top 25 problems imperiling science writing in this country. Indeed, a good case could be made that businessmen and reporters have at least as little in common, both by temperament and terminology, as do scientists and journalists. Yet there seems to be no shortage of financial news, and no diminution in prospect.
Still, the report as a whole is well-meaning and familiar enough, with the sole pernicious exception of a clear implicit call to journalists to help halt the decline in funding for research. And few of us are likely to take much exception to yet another hand-wringing plea to boost public understanding of science and technology Before It’s Too Late.
Whether this analysis will help matters much, however, is another question.
For one thing, the 173-page report rests on two undemonstrated assumptions that seem at least dubious, if not outright wrong.
One is that there has been a substantial recent decline in public support for, and enlightened interest in, science and technology. This purported cognitive slump has not shown up in the polls that NSF has commissioned since 1979, which show the percentage of persons claiming a high level of interest in science discoveries relatively constant at about 40 percent. (Science & Engineering Indicators 1996, pp. 7-1 ff.) Indeed, several surveys cited in the report itself seem at odds with this conclusion.
The other questionable assumption is that the dim state of public comprehension and awareness is in large measure the result of inadequate news media coverage. That’s a plausible hypothesis, and might even be worth testing. But this document does not do that. It simply takes it for granted, and that makes no sense. By virtually any bulk measure—column inches, linear feet of videotape, slots in broadcast or cable TV listings—there is vastly more science journalism (broadly construed) around today than there was 30 or 40 years ago in what the report regards as the presumed heyday of the average American’s enthusiasm for science.
So if public awareness and understanding have declined calamitously during precisely the same time interval in which the volume of coverage has grown, what is one to make of the authors’ thesis that support for science and technology in the country has dwindled—in part, it appears, because of media inattention?
Incidentally, a corollary assumption here is that the more coverage of something you give people, the more interest and fluency they will develop in the subject. If this were invariably true, the nation would be in a frenzy of fascination over campaign-finance reform, health-care legislation and the myriad details of the Whitewater investigation. In fact, however, the sedative effect of these three issues alone may be responsible for the sudden proliferation of coffee bars around the nation.
The report is often as vague about remedies as it is about the problems it identifies. No doubt the authors—both intelligent and sophisticated men—tacitly recognize that the actual practical ability of the press to change public attitudes toward science is trivial compared to the retarding effects of the current educational and cultural value systems.
Nonetheless, they bravely make a number of suggestions. Some are quite general: Scientists and journalists should begin a dialogue to educate each other and journalists should increase their understanding of and training in the sciences. Well, sure. Fully 77 percent of the journalists interviewed for this report agreed with the statement that few members of the news media understand the nature of science and technology.
Other recommendations are more specific and thoughtful. For example, the scientific community should train communicators to speak for different scientific disciplines—an effort already underway in many fields. (The report survey shows that an astonishing 81 percent of responding scientists would be very or somewhat willing to take a course that “would help you communicate better with journalists and the public”!)
They also call for journals to require their authors to include summaries of their findings—written in plain English, for the press to be more circumspect and avoid overplaying potentially questionable work, and for scientific associations to develop press-friendly web sites, all of which might be cross-linked in one master site maintained by NAS or AAAS. Major findings would be flagged there as a guide for improving coverage.
But it is far beyond the scope of this report to address the larger, stubbornly intractable questions of which all the others are a comparatively minor part: How is the press to deal with the minimal scientific literacy of its audience? What, if any, is its responsibility to educate, as distinct from merely reporting the news? And when print and broadcast institutions enumerate the range of topics they feel professionally obligated to cover, where and how does research fit in?
Copies of the report can be obtained from the First Amendment Center, 1207 18th Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37212. Phone (615) 321-9588. Or try www.freedomforum.org.
Mark Schleifstein of the New Orleans Times Picayune said editors are often afraid to turn reporters loose on big projects or to track stories, particularly science-related ones. He said Times Picayune editors nearly passed on “Oceans in Trouble,” an 8-day series on the nation’s fisheries that netted the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize for public service. But are the Washington Post and Times Picayune doing it right? Suplee said he doesn’t know.
“I don’t have a clue what people think of our coverage,” he said. “If we get one thing wrong in the bridge column or we have one third-string junior varsity kid’s name wrong in the high school basketball championship, there’s a work stoppage. But you know what happens if we skip a major science story? Deafening silence.”
—From the Freedom Forum and Newseum
News, vol. 5, No. 1, January/February 1998
As a first step in improving communication with the public, then, scientific societies and other organizations, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, should make better use of the World-Wide Web to dissemi-nate information about major advances in science. For instance, a scientific association could make readily available on the Web, for journalists and the public alike, several clearly written paragraphs about important new developments, indicating which new papers and discoveries were the most significant. The groups also could use the Web to make it easier for the news media to contact scientists with the ability to discuss new findings in terms that non-specialists could understand.
Journalists could use that information to decide which stories to pursue. The gatekeepers of the media—editors and producers—would find the information valuable in their efforts to understand the relative importance of various developments. That, in turn, would help them make decisions about whether to allot space to the stories. Further, interested members of the public, including policy makers, could use the information to help them interpret media coverage of recent research and to find other sites on the Web with relevant information.
[Excerpted from an article, “The Challenge of Communicating Science to the Public,” by the authors of the report reviewed here by Curt Suplee. The article appeared in the March 20 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. See also AAAS advertisement on page 31 of this issue of ScienceWriters.]