I have just returned from the World Conference of Science Journalists in Doha. Sadly the conference had to be moved from Cairo earlier this year because the revolution was literally exploding on the streets when conference centres, hotels and flights needed to be booked. But the spirit of the Arab Spring ran through the conference and it was exhilarating to be surrounded by people who had just changed the world. The Egyptian conference organizer, Nadia El-Awady, joined others at a plenary session to talk about the tension between their professional roles as objective reporters and their growing passion for the revolution. Nadia and Mohammed Yahia, the young Editor of Nature Middle East, who were part of the daily demonstrations in Tahrir Square described the exact moments when they each decided that they could no longer be neutral observers and must take sides.
Yahia closed the Conference with a plea to journalists in Egypt, Tunisia etc to fight to define a new form of free journalism. Echoing others he said the revolution was 'the easy part' and now science journalists must play their part in fighting for a new form of independent journalistic enquiry; "It can’t be the passive science journalism that was taking place in many of the state-run agencies. It needs to be more active – we need to push for more freedom."
These brave young science writers should make us all feel just a little less comfortable in our safe, easy lives as journalists and press officers and it frustrated me that more UK science journalists were not there to be inspired.
Restrictions on scientists speaking out
Talking of being slightly shamed, one of the themes of this conference for me was a growing tendency amongst western countries to prevent government funded scientists from speaking out. Editor of Research Fortnight Ehsan Masood cautioned early on in the conference about assuming that restrictions on free speech for scientists come only from authoritarian regimes. This point was graphically illustrated in the session on 'Secret Science' at which talks from Russia and China were followed by one from democratic Canada. Veteran science reporter Margaret Munro shocked the audience with the revelation that almost all the government environmental scientists she has relied on in in her 30 year career are now prevented from speaking directly to her under new government rules. Munro described the rapid rise of the 'wrong kind of press officer’ who see their job as controlling scientists and ‘corporate messaging'. The new restrictions have at least caused a stir in Canada and even made front page news. While there are no blanket rules restricting government scientists speaking out here in the UK there are some worrying signs. People still cite the now notorious sacking of Prof David Nutt, an independent government drugs adviser, but few have commented on the fact that more recently several government funded agencies with useful scientific expertise were told by government not to do media interviews throughout the Fukushima crisis.
Inaugural meeting of SMCs
The subject of restrictions on scientists speaking out became a hot topic at the first ever meeting of the rapidly growing collective of SMCs held to coincide with the conference. Present at the meeting were the established SMCs from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada, with Denmark due to open its doors soon. But we were also joined by representatives from possible new SMCs in Norway, Italy and China. While none of us have lived through a revolution, the sense of being on the brink of something new and exciting marked the meeting where we discussed the huge added value of being part of a truly international collaboration. Obviously there are threats as well as promise and probably the most important item on the agenda was the drafting of a Charter of Principles governing the establishment and running of SMCs. The challenge for the meeting was to get a Charter which does not restrict different national models of SMC while also ensuring that there are core values around independence that all SMCs must subscribe to to be part of the Collective. The first draft of the Charter should be ready soon and will be one of the first things to appear on the new international SMC website being created by our colleagues in New Zealand. By the way, any ideas for a name for the new Collective are welcome – perhaps the lack of easy access to alcohol in Doha can be blamed for the lack of inspiration so far!
SMCs challenged
The SMCs had a session in the main programme using the Fukushima crisis as a case study for the way we operate in different countries with very different media landscapes Given we were at a journalism conference we decided to invite a journalist onto the panel to critique the SMC model. BBC science reporter Pallab Ghosh had agreed but had to pull out at the last minute, so we got the wonderful Connie St Louis instead. Connie is Chair of the Association of British Science Writers and runs the new masters course in science journalism at City University. Connie took on her role as critic enthusiastically and told the audience that the SMCs are actively encouraging the trends towards lazy 'copy and paste' journalism, are becoming too powerful and are vulnerable to being hijacked by maverick scientists, campaigners and funders alike. Connie told us that she teaches her students to do real journalism - to 'dig out' original stories, ask the tough questions to mainstream scientists and to keep a distance between themselves and the scientists they report.
I was first to respond to Connie and said that I tended to agree with much of her characterization of the problems within journalism. I also conceded that by adapting great science to the needs of a media the SMCs can be seen as part of the problem. But I countered that we are Science Media Centres and not Journalism Media Centres. It is not our role to fix the problems of journalism but to ensure that a media under pressure is still able to report science well. The notion that if the world’s SMCs disappeared tomorrow all the science hacks would become 'diggers' rather than 'churners' really does credit us with way too much influence. It also misses the point that the SMCs have a wide variety of contacts with journalists and actually often help them to do the kind of original reporting that Connie and I so admire.
Many of Connie’s comments on that panel were echoed in her interview with Martin Robbins for his excellent blog post on the lack of original and investigative reporting which became a talking point at the conference. While I stand accused of denying the extent of the problems with science journalism I have always argued that there is a shocking lack of investigative reporting in science – a point that came out of my report for Government last year which recommended that the scientific community should fund a science strand at the new Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
However I baulk at the assumption that anything short of original investigations is 'not really journalism'. Running 2- 3 science press briefings a week puts me at very close quarters to the process of science reporting and the truth is that journalists do interrogate the scientists on SMC panels – so much so that we warn scientists to prepare for every claim they make to be pulled apart. They do use their years of specialist reporting to put studies in context and they often add comment and information even when the briefing has been about an extremely in depth and complex piece of science. The briefing I ran just before leaving for Doha was a case in point – ask the UEA and Cambridge authors of the paper on polypharmacy if they felt that journalists failed to challenge their claims during the hour long SMC press briefing and they would probably choke on their tea – I think Channel 4’s Tom Clarke alone asked about 4 times in different ways how the scientists could prove that the effects they saw were not caused by the illnesses themselves.
Both Connie and Martin would have enjoyed the WCSJ conference session on global health reporting with London’s very own Andrew Jack from the FT and Maria Cheng from AP, joined by American science journalist Jon Cohen and chaired by Martin Enserink from Science. Maria Cheng started by showing heart wrenching photos of African children – but only to warn us of the dangers of giving public health stories an easy ride. She also objected to the use of celebrities and hype around global public health and called for a higher standard of interrogation of some of the claims in this arena. Andrew Jack showed us a succession of FT stories – primarily exclusives – that had exposed problems and ultimately forced companies and governments to change policies and withdraw products. Jon described his role as a 'miner' and then showed how journalists can exploit the new openness of institutions like Gates Foundation and WHO to mine the figures and reveal inconsistencies. They also mocked some of what passes for investigative reporting on global health with Enserink lampooning a story that sought to blame Bill Gates for the worldwide obesity epidemic because he invested in McDonalds. Enserink also revealed his pet hate when newspaper articles open with 'We have learned that……' when all they have actually 'learned' is how to read a university press release. But there was no sign on any 'churnalists' on this panel and it was a refreshing reminder that we don’t have to look too far to find great reporters doing proper journalism
All in all, it was a great conference and a great opportunity for science journalists and those like me who care about their trade to reflect on our role and challenge ourselves. The next one is in Helsinki in 2 years. I am taking bets on how many new SMCs will be up and running by then, and hoping to persuade one or two more British science journalists that they would love this conference. Plus, I hear the Finns make excellent vodka…
Showing posts with label WCSJ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WCSJ. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 July 2011
Monday, 13 July 2009
There’s life in the old dog yet: in defence of journalism
Any notion that the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists held in London last week was going to be a tame, cosy affair was shattered at the opening plenary when a row broke out as to what constitutes science journalism. Jeff Nesbit, Director of the office of legislative affairs at the US National Science Foundation, which is a bit like our research councils, offered his prescription for the current crisis in science journalism – the scientific community should step in and do it ourselves. And this was not just a provocative idea – we learned that no sooner had Jeff heard that CNN had closed their entire science unit, than he hired two of them to write and film content for NSF’s websites. When I leapt to my feet to describe what he was doing as ‘science communication’ not ‘science journalism’, Nesbitt fought back with two contentious statements. Firstly he argued that because the two people he hired are journalists with journalistic training that they will still be doing journalism for NSF. And secondly that we no longer have the luxury of this academic debate – science journalism is disappearing before our eyes and the scientific community is obliged to step in and replace it.
For me the issue became the defining theme of the Conference and raised its head in almost every session. Most people spent the week trying to tell me that arrival of new media and the pressures on science journalism around the world mean that the lines between journalism and PR have now been blurred. Press officers tweeting all day and creating video clips for their University websites told me that the term press officer has become a misnomer as they spend as much time creating ‘content’ as helping journalists to create it. And science writers who have moved from national newspapers to write for popular science blogs insisted that they are engaged in the same craft. But just because we are blurring lines doesn’t mean those lines no longer exist. And nor does it mean that we should not pause at this time of change and reflect on whether those lines are important to maintain. One of the delegates challenged Nesbitt to give the money spent hiring the ex CNN reporters to CNN to keep them on. Unrealistic maybe, but a neat way of making the point that we have some choices here. Faced with a crisis in journalism we can look for ways to shore it up and defend it, or we can simply declare it in terminal decline and set about replacing it.
I think one of the reasons Nesbitt’s talk left me bristling is that I’m finding it increasingly hard to find anyone to defend the craft of journalism. Having decided aged 18 to study it and spent my adult life as a journalism junky I find this alarming. Of course I could talk about its flaws forever and listening to Nick Davies again at the conference we were reminded that ‘churnalism’ prevails. But at its best journalism represents a specific approach which is distinct from other forms of communication; it is a process with a common set of standards including selection, investigation, truth telling, independence, editing, accuracy, balance, scrutiny, objectivity and so on.
Yet for some this fine set of mores is so fragile that it has apparently just collapsed in the face of a barrage of new technologies. Mobile phones, blogs and twitter have, we are told, made journalists of us all. I can’t tell you how mad it makes me to hear the people who were caught up in the July 7th bombings or the poor unfortunates vomiting on some cruise ship, or even the brave protestors in Iran described as ‘citizen journalists’. They are nothing of the sort – they are members of the public caught up in a news story as members of the public always have been. Yes their photos, blogs and tweets have radically changed the face of journalism – mostly for the better - but that does not make them journalists. And anyone who noticed how many conflicting reports came from the ‘citizen journalists’ who witnessed the shooting of John Charles de Menzes should note that a journalist is still needed to sift thought these accounts and apply journalistic standards to the mess.
And I have a similar reaction to Jeff Nesbitt’s approach. I don’t buy the ‘once a journalist always a journalist’ line and in fact I take a sneaking pleasure in watching many journalists who have been rude about PR finally come over to the dark side when needs must. Jeff’s ex-journalists will make great employees, they will understand the way the media works and apply the values of journalism to what they do but they are no longer working journalists. As soon as NSF employed them to produce copy for its website they underwent a career change – they can take their pick of job titles – they can be science writers, science communicators or science PR officers but they are not journalists. Of course I don’t actually know the finer details of their contract so maybe I will stand corrected but since there is a lot of this about I am determined to labour my point here. If NSF selects the subjects that they film then that immediately make this a different enterprise. And here’s a thing – what if in the course of their work for NSF they discover a funding scandal or uncover a scientific fraud– will that end up as a film on the website? Maybe I’ll be surprised by the answers but we should at least ask the questions.
I am not in any way posing science journalism as superior to science communication. I am a huge fan of the latter and believe it's imperative for science in general to get round the very journalistic vagaries that I alluded to earlier. Just because journalism is worth defending does not mean it’s always a good thing for science, as we know to our cost after stories like GM and MMR. Finding ways round some of the less attractive norms of journalism – the perverse news values, the dreaded headline writers, the need to ‘balance’ every article – is critical and scientists should use every method at their disposal to get the full story about science direct to the public. But in the same way that ‘citizen journalists’ would never have claimed that title for themselves, none of the science communicators I know see themselves as journalists and while the delegate who described us as ‘cheerleaders’ for science may have gone too far, I think most science press officers and communicators would accept that we are paid to get the best possible profile for the science carried out in our institutions.
Nor am I arguing that some of the new approaches like the one described by Nesbitt will not end up taking the place of traditional journalism. If Nick Davies’ bleak view that the thing we know as ‘journalism’ may be beyond saving is right then we must accept that we need to look at ways of doing something similar which achieves some of the same ends – informing educating and entertaining vast sections of the public about science. Indeed some blogs like RealClimate and PlanetEarth could be said to be doing that already. But that still doesn’t make these things ‘journalism’. It’s perhaps ironic that a week after Davies announced the death of journalism at the World Conference he himself broke one of the biggest stories of the year about the bugging of celebrities phones.
It is precisely because science journalism (as all traditional journalism) is under pressure and in decline that I think we need to fight for it. Instead of standing by passively and allowing lines to be blurred and investing in alternatives, we should consider ways to defend, shore up and champion science journalism – something we did collectively and to good effect at the World Conference.
For me the issue became the defining theme of the Conference and raised its head in almost every session. Most people spent the week trying to tell me that arrival of new media and the pressures on science journalism around the world mean that the lines between journalism and PR have now been blurred. Press officers tweeting all day and creating video clips for their University websites told me that the term press officer has become a misnomer as they spend as much time creating ‘content’ as helping journalists to create it. And science writers who have moved from national newspapers to write for popular science blogs insisted that they are engaged in the same craft. But just because we are blurring lines doesn’t mean those lines no longer exist. And nor does it mean that we should not pause at this time of change and reflect on whether those lines are important to maintain. One of the delegates challenged Nesbitt to give the money spent hiring the ex CNN reporters to CNN to keep them on. Unrealistic maybe, but a neat way of making the point that we have some choices here. Faced with a crisis in journalism we can look for ways to shore it up and defend it, or we can simply declare it in terminal decline and set about replacing it.
I think one of the reasons Nesbitt’s talk left me bristling is that I’m finding it increasingly hard to find anyone to defend the craft of journalism. Having decided aged 18 to study it and spent my adult life as a journalism junky I find this alarming. Of course I could talk about its flaws forever and listening to Nick Davies again at the conference we were reminded that ‘churnalism’ prevails. But at its best journalism represents a specific approach which is distinct from other forms of communication; it is a process with a common set of standards including selection, investigation, truth telling, independence, editing, accuracy, balance, scrutiny, objectivity and so on.
Yet for some this fine set of mores is so fragile that it has apparently just collapsed in the face of a barrage of new technologies. Mobile phones, blogs and twitter have, we are told, made journalists of us all. I can’t tell you how mad it makes me to hear the people who were caught up in the July 7th bombings or the poor unfortunates vomiting on some cruise ship, or even the brave protestors in Iran described as ‘citizen journalists’. They are nothing of the sort – they are members of the public caught up in a news story as members of the public always have been. Yes their photos, blogs and tweets have radically changed the face of journalism – mostly for the better - but that does not make them journalists. And anyone who noticed how many conflicting reports came from the ‘citizen journalists’ who witnessed the shooting of John Charles de Menzes should note that a journalist is still needed to sift thought these accounts and apply journalistic standards to the mess.
And I have a similar reaction to Jeff Nesbitt’s approach. I don’t buy the ‘once a journalist always a journalist’ line and in fact I take a sneaking pleasure in watching many journalists who have been rude about PR finally come over to the dark side when needs must. Jeff’s ex-journalists will make great employees, they will understand the way the media works and apply the values of journalism to what they do but they are no longer working journalists. As soon as NSF employed them to produce copy for its website they underwent a career change – they can take their pick of job titles – they can be science writers, science communicators or science PR officers but they are not journalists. Of course I don’t actually know the finer details of their contract so maybe I will stand corrected but since there is a lot of this about I am determined to labour my point here. If NSF selects the subjects that they film then that immediately make this a different enterprise. And here’s a thing – what if in the course of their work for NSF they discover a funding scandal or uncover a scientific fraud– will that end up as a film on the website? Maybe I’ll be surprised by the answers but we should at least ask the questions.
I am not in any way posing science journalism as superior to science communication. I am a huge fan of the latter and believe it's imperative for science in general to get round the very journalistic vagaries that I alluded to earlier. Just because journalism is worth defending does not mean it’s always a good thing for science, as we know to our cost after stories like GM and MMR. Finding ways round some of the less attractive norms of journalism – the perverse news values, the dreaded headline writers, the need to ‘balance’ every article – is critical and scientists should use every method at their disposal to get the full story about science direct to the public. But in the same way that ‘citizen journalists’ would never have claimed that title for themselves, none of the science communicators I know see themselves as journalists and while the delegate who described us as ‘cheerleaders’ for science may have gone too far, I think most science press officers and communicators would accept that we are paid to get the best possible profile for the science carried out in our institutions.
Nor am I arguing that some of the new approaches like the one described by Nesbitt will not end up taking the place of traditional journalism. If Nick Davies’ bleak view that the thing we know as ‘journalism’ may be beyond saving is right then we must accept that we need to look at ways of doing something similar which achieves some of the same ends – informing educating and entertaining vast sections of the public about science. Indeed some blogs like RealClimate and PlanetEarth could be said to be doing that already. But that still doesn’t make these things ‘journalism’. It’s perhaps ironic that a week after Davies announced the death of journalism at the World Conference he himself broke one of the biggest stories of the year about the bugging of celebrities phones.
It is precisely because science journalism (as all traditional journalism) is under pressure and in decline that I think we need to fight for it. Instead of standing by passively and allowing lines to be blurred and investing in alternatives, we should consider ways to defend, shore up and champion science journalism – something we did collectively and to good effect at the World Conference.
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Fiona creates a buzz at the World Conference of Science Journalists 2009 Programme Launch Party, London
If the Science Media Centre were to close down tomorrow the most important lesson I would have learned in my six years in science media relations is that science specialist reporters are our greatest ally. Quite simply when science reporters cover science stories, the stories are better. I do believe that science is a special case and needs specialist reporting. And I do believe that bad science reporting costs lives.
It's because I think science reporters are a special case that I think we need a special conference for science journalism. Those of you who know me will know I'm a conference sceptic and tend to think that too many people sit in conferences discussing science communication rather than actually doing it, but that scepticism went out the window when I attended the World Conference of Science Journalists in Melbourne, 2007. Being in the company of 600 science journalists from 50 countries was an amazing experience. I knew this conference was different when I slipped into the first session late to hear contributions from the floor from the editor of Scientific American, the editor of Nature, the science editor of the Toronto Star and head of science at the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
As Chair of the Programme Committee for the World Conference of Science Journalists 2009, I was in despair a year ago because we were sitting looking at a blank page where the programme should be. Now I'm in despair for a different reason, because we have such a wonderful programme that the big dilemma is which sessions I can actually go to and tragically which ones I'll have to miss.
On day one there is Jia Hepeng's session on Reporting science in countries with restraints which clashes with Ehsan Masood's session on Reporting creationism, which in turn clashes with my session with Nick Davies, the author of Flat Earth News and creator of the term 'churnalism'.
Then on Wednesday there is the choice between Tim Radford in conversation with Bob May, or Martin Moore's session on Whether science journalism and science PR have become too close for comfort, and I can't go to either because I'm speaking at a session with my fellow Directors of Science Media Centres in New Zealand, Australia and Canada on How science in the media looks entirely different in different countries.
I am really proud of the programme. Pallab Ghosh, President of the World Federation of Science Journalists, has been on our case the whole time to make it edgy and provocative, and he is not disappointed. Put it like this there are likely to be lots of rows and debates that will spill out into the coffee breaks and parties. This conference will generate a very real debate about very real topical controversies in science journalism.
Now all we need is the audience, so please tell everyone, let’s create even more of a buzz, WCSJ2009 is the place to be for everyone who cares about science journalism!”
It's because I think science reporters are a special case that I think we need a special conference for science journalism. Those of you who know me will know I'm a conference sceptic and tend to think that too many people sit in conferences discussing science communication rather than actually doing it, but that scepticism went out the window when I attended the World Conference of Science Journalists in Melbourne, 2007. Being in the company of 600 science journalists from 50 countries was an amazing experience. I knew this conference was different when I slipped into the first session late to hear contributions from the floor from the editor of Scientific American, the editor of Nature, the science editor of the Toronto Star and head of science at the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
As Chair of the Programme Committee for the World Conference of Science Journalists 2009, I was in despair a year ago because we were sitting looking at a blank page where the programme should be. Now I'm in despair for a different reason, because we have such a wonderful programme that the big dilemma is which sessions I can actually go to and tragically which ones I'll have to miss.
On day one there is Jia Hepeng's session on Reporting science in countries with restraints which clashes with Ehsan Masood's session on Reporting creationism, which in turn clashes with my session with Nick Davies, the author of Flat Earth News and creator of the term 'churnalism'.
Then on Wednesday there is the choice between Tim Radford in conversation with Bob May, or Martin Moore's session on Whether science journalism and science PR have become too close for comfort, and I can't go to either because I'm speaking at a session with my fellow Directors of Science Media Centres in New Zealand, Australia and Canada on How science in the media looks entirely different in different countries.
I am really proud of the programme. Pallab Ghosh, President of the World Federation of Science Journalists, has been on our case the whole time to make it edgy and provocative, and he is not disappointed. Put it like this there are likely to be lots of rows and debates that will spill out into the coffee breaks and parties. This conference will generate a very real debate about very real topical controversies in science journalism.
Now all we need is the audience, so please tell everyone, let’s create even more of a buzz, WCSJ2009 is the place to be for everyone who cares about science journalism!”
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