Some notes

[garote]

This piece, Don't dumb me down, postulates that science is consistently misrepresented in the media. The two main ways this is accomplished are by deferring unjustifiably to the off-hand remarks of an authority figure, or by intentionally dumbing down the scientific content to the point where the information it conveys is no longer useful, even though it provokes a response. Journalists are compelled to do this in pursuit of the all important "interesting story".

A key paragraph in the editorial describes the media's portrait of science like so:

science is about groundless, incomprehensible, didactic truth statements from scientists, who themselves are socially powerful, arbitrary, unelected authority figures. They are detached from reality: they do work that is either wacky, or dangerous, but either way, everything in science is tenuous, contradictory and, most ridiculously, "hard to understand".

Now, I dunno about you, but to me, that sounds like a perfect description of organized religion.

When I first noticed this, I thought to myself, "Ah hah, this says something interesting about our cultural tension between religion and science."
But then I thought: "Wait a second. Maybe what I'm seeing here isn't about religion versus science. Maybe it's about journalism versus anything."

Maybe, in the pursuit of that "interesting story", journalists make everything look inane.

Can I blame journalism for my opinion of religion? How much of my opinion is based on what the media has presented to me: The over-hyped ravings of vocal fringe dwellers, cranky zealots, and loudmouthed busybodies? When's the last time I read an article about a gentle, polite, open-minded fellow who just happens to sit in church every Sunday with his family? Only about as often as I see mainstream science articles that aren't inane parodies of science. Just about never.

Of course, I still maintain that there are fundamental, obvious differences between the scientific community versus any organized religion. Huge differences in priority, structure, and intent. But these entities also claim to speak for a huge middle ground of people, vastly under-represented, their voices mostly unheard. Temperate, thoughtful citizens almost never make for an "interesting story".

Comments

[thegoodreverend.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: I'm a journalist.

Perhaps you don't read feature-type stories from small papers (or even mid-size papers, like mine), but we daily have stories that are about "normal" people doing either normal things or interesting but otherwise not "breaking news"-worthy things. They get a great response from our readership because they can identify with the subjects. They're certainly not the stories you see regularly on the front pages of major news sites, but many, many papers have them.

That said, I agree with a lot of your points - journalism doesn't always portray science as scholorly as it should. But there are many, many reasons for that:

- Lots of people who read the paper are neither looking for detailed science articles in their paper, nor might they understand all the bits and pieces if they did. I think people are underestimated, but I still don't think most people want detailed science in their morning read.

- Newspapers, and all journalism, exist to make money. They're generally businesses (with the exception of the rare independant journalist, but they're not featured in the kinds of newspapers/websites you're talking about). To make money, most sell advertising, and get more advertising revenue by selling more copies/views of their product. To do this, they have to write things they think people want. They hold "readership institutes", surveys, talk to readers, and seriously read all mail that comes in from readers. They've found, in general, the points I layed out above.

- Third, and most importantly, "journalism" is a term that refers to many people in many companies doing many, many different things. It's not some overwhelming conspiracy; editors and publishers don't get together in a large annual meeting and decide to air too many car chases and not enough human interest stories.

We're thousands of companies with thousands of points of view. We're neither out to get you nor some defender of the public. We're out there, for the most part, to sell papers. When you hear someone say "the media", think about someone saying "computer users", and applying one standard to all of them. It doesn't make much sense unless they're talking about something very basic and unimportant, and even then there are exceptions. There are definately media outlets that give others a "bad name", but it's hard to lump them all together.

[garote]

I'd be interested to see a couple statistics - even general ones - heck, even some informed guesses, if you're got 'em - about the ratio of various stories to each other in a mid-sized paper such as yours. What's the ratio of editorial to non-editorial, the ratio of "human interest" stories to more straightforward event-based "reporting"? Does the ratio change with the age group targeted?

I agree that I've used the term "journalists" in too broad a sense. I'd like to narrow my scope, if I may, to "journalists who pursue an interesting story at the expense of most other things", and postulate that journalists are biased - against their will even - by capitalistic forces to behave in mostly this way. This I think is the middle ground we're both after.

I find it interesting that modern times have apparently created a two-pronged attack on journalistic integrity - one prong being the force of mass marketing, the other prong being the erosion of the line between "journalist" and "loudmouth" that blogging has spearheaded.

Is there hope for journalism as a craft?

[thegoodreverend.livejournal.com]

I don't have figures, and every paper is different. Our paper has a feature on the cover of the A section every day that fits your theme, and our local section usually has one or two of it's 5-6 stories that fit also. Other sections have a mix.

Our editorial is all in one section, and very plainly laid out - 3-4 stories and letters to the editor. Many papers our size have similar layouts, where smaller papers tend to have more human interest (there's often less "news" in a town of 30,000 people as opposed to a large metro area).

Journalists are biased because they're people, and we're all biased in our own ways. But capitalistic forces are CERTAINLY a driving factor - we're a business. But this is nothing new. People need to remember that the idea of "Journalists/Newspapers as watchdogs of the common man" is an idea created BY the media to sell newspapers and airtime.

The craft of journalism certainly exists within this, and reporters honestly and truly care about the work they're doing, but things haven't gotten "worse" or "better" in terms of integrity. It was a business back then, and it's a business now. Styles have certainly changed, but if anything it's better now in terms of "what's news and what's opinion" - in the past stories tended to be sprinkled with much more personal reflection of the writer. American journalists today usually make the point of keeping the two separate.

[garote]

Reading over this again, the last two sentences reminded me of something ... The much-revered Walter Cronkite had an endearing habit of injecting his personal emotional response, or an anecdote about his past, into the course of his coverage. Endearing, but certainly counter to journalistic integrity, and very popular nonetheless.

Perhaps a good illustration of how things have improved since his heyday?