I think many times it comes down to a journalist's misplaced sense of
thinking that the story is in the public interest, which most of the
time it will be. However that doesn't excuse those that construct a
narrative from a particularly narrow viewpoint. Neither does it excuse
those hacks who write pieces to deliberately frighten their readership.
I suppose their excuse is that good news doesn't sell as well as bad
news. If the journalist can take the time to call people up for a bias
comment they can of course get an unbiased one. Not having ever worked
in the printed media I cannot say this from an evidence based standpoint
but perhaps the agenda of the individual newspaper/editor/overlord
(thinking a certain Australian/American octogenarian!) has something to
do with it. We see it all the time in British politics, and none more so
that in the past few weeks so why should the reporting of science be any
different from the newspapers' perspective! It should be but as we know
its not!
Oliver O'Hanlon
Researcher
Science Council
32-36 Loman Street
London SE1 0EH
Tel: 020 7922 7881
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-----Original Message-----
From: psci-com: on public engagement with science
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Simon Raggett
Sent: 27 April 2010 14:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PSCI-COM] Reporting Science
This type of problem with journalism is not confined to the science
sector. I was in finance. We had people ring with a pre-prepared story,
which they wanted us to rubber stamp. If we disagreed they could become
quite annoyed, and sometimes rang off with the comment that they would
get someone else - presumably better informed - to confirm their story.
What is the point of this type of journalistic activity? - Simon Raggett
Andrew Russell wrote:
> The Telegraph article looks pretty good compared to this one in the
Mail:
>
>
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1268794/Remember-ash-cloud-It-di
dnt-exist-says-new-evidence.html
>
> The satellite image that they use as "proof" that there was no ash
cloud is from the water vapour channel of Meteosat which only sees a
relatively narrow vertical range and wouldn't pick up the ash anyway.
Meteosat does have a channel that picks up ash, this channel showed the
cloud.
>
> What really dissapointed me about this story was that someone from the
Mail phoned me and some of my workmates to ask about the ash cloud,
trying to get us to say that the decision to ground the planes was
"stupid". Instead, we spent quite a while explaining some plots from
our lidars (linked to below) that clearly show the ash layer on the
relevant dates. They ignored this.
>
> http://data.cas.manchester.ac.uk/lidar/
>
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