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On 8 Mar 12, at 10:01, Michael Kenward wrote: > This owes much to the perception within the (non-specialist) media, especially in the USA, that NASA is the only game in town when it comes to space activity. This has them tearing their hair out over at ESA, for example. > > It would be devious to suggest that programme makers over emphasise NASA's work because that gives them an excuse for long distance jollies while reporting on local activity requires not much more than a ticket on Eurostar. We all know that Michael Kenward OBE is in no way devious. Oh no! I'm not sure that the media focus on NASA has the folks at ESA "tearing their hair out". For one thing, there isn't much hair left on the senior suits who centralise the bulk of the decision making in Paris, Noordwijk and Darmstadt. And the individuals concerned are not known for their passion. One may attribute some of the obsession with NASA to history and a public profile arising from a long string of successful and not so successful missions, but there is also a marked difference in style of presentation between the agencies. ESA must learn how to deal more effectively with the media. A lot of ESA's day-to-day public communications work is handled by private subcontractors - PR agencies and the like - and in my view it is improving all the time. But the agency remains a rigidly managed civil service institution. Everything has to be signed off by a chain of managers, and enquiries from journalistic media are maybe not handled as best they could. There is a tendency to micromanage. NASA is likewise a hierarchical state agency, but it has learned how to function with reasonable efficiency by allowing its project teams a degree of creative slack. If ESA can do likewise, its media and public profiles will grow. Francis -- Dr Francis Sedgemore journalist and science writer www.sedgemore.com ********************************************************************** Further information about the psci-com discussion list, including list archive, can be found at the list web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/psci-com.html You may also change your settings and subscribe/unsubscribe to psci-com from the web site. Psci-com is part of the National Academic Mailing List Service, known as 'JISCMail'. It adheres to the JISCMail Acceptable Use Policy: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/acceptableuse.html and to the JISCMail guidelines for etiquette: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/etiquette.html Email commands: 1. To suspend yourself from the list, whilst on leave, for example, send an email to mailto:[log in to unmask] with the following message: set psci-com nomail -- [include hyphens] 2. To resume email from the list, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message: set psci-com mail -- [include hyphens] 3. To leave psci-com, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message: leave psci-com -- [include hyphens] Please allow up to 24 hours for these commands to activate. Remember that you will need to send commands using the same email address that you used to register on psci-com. To contact the Psci-com list owner, please send an email to: [log in to unmask] **********************************************************************