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

[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?