Topic Overview I: Journalism and Science: Conflicting Orientations, Common Goals?

Dr. Lee B. Becker, Director, James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research, University of Georgia, U.S.A.

One of the most frequently heard criticisms of news, in the United States at least, is that it is episodic, rather than integrated based on an accumulation of knowledge.

We see stories on the televison news each night about crime, but we see few stories that really explain trends in crime. In fact, crime news seems to be increasing at a time when most indicators are that violent crimes, at least in the U.S., are on the decline.

International news is particularly flawed in this regard. Stories about famine are covered only at the point where something triggers media attention. Famine exists before and after the triggering event, yet the media ignore it until the event occurs. The same is true of economic issues, in the case of development news and in the case of environmental issues.

Perhaps nowhere is this focus on the episodic more obvious, however, than in the coverage of medical science. The media repeatedly present their readers, listeners and viewers with stories about cures for cancer and other major diseases, raising false hopes and creating frustration on the part of those who know how painfully slow the process of medical science is.

What is the source of this focus on the episodic? Why is it particularly problematic in the coverage of science? And what can be done about this problem?

In my view, the focus on the episodic is a defining characteristic of news. This makes news somewhat at odds with science, with its focus on the cumulative. The solution to this problem of the episodic focus of news is a modification of the definition of news to include more focus on how the episodes fit together to tell the full story and a more sophisticated understanding of those episodes themselves. The solution also involves an education of the audience about how to read and interpret the news. This solution will be possible, in the case of science news, only if journalists come to understand scientists and the ways of scientists, and if scientists come to understand journalists and their ways of working.

The Nature of News

Scientific study of news production shows us that news is a product, shaped by the community in which it is created and by the organizations and individuals involved in news construction. To be more precise, news comes about because news organizations seek to define something as news. Often, those news organizations are responding to individuals and organizations who wish to subsidize the production of a particular event or occurrence as news.

In all cases, news is defined in part by its marketability. News is what attracts listeners, viewers or readers to the news product.

A story about a fire last night or a mugging this morning is much more interesting to read than a lengthy story about the nature of fires or the trends in criminal activity. Or at least it is easier to write or present an interesting story about the fire last night or the mugging this morning than an equally interesting story about fires or crime in general.

The Nature of Science

Scientists do not treat any individual event as particularly meaningful or informative. Scientists believe understanding emerges from replication--across time and circumstance. Scientists know that a given study's findings are tentative, that they must be repeated and the generalizability of the findings examined and determined.

I have worked both as a journalist and as a social scientist. As a journalist, one of the most frustrating experiences was dealing with an expert who refused to be what I thought was precise. These sources refused to say what something meant, what the implications of an event were, what one could conclude. I wanted exact, concrete answers--something I could use in a news story.

As a scientist who deals with journalists quite a lot, one of the most frustrating things for me is to deal with is a journalist who refuses to accept that my findings are tentative, that I know less than I would like and that I think there could be errors associated with the information I have. I cringe when I'm asked to generalize from what I know to what I don't know. I get frustrated when journalists fail to treat my little piece of information as part of a larger landscape that will be filled in only over time and with the work of many.

What I find even more frustrating, however, is the journalist who is uninformed and who refuses to become informed. In sum, I do not like being interviewed by journalists who are not willing to learn something of science.

There is an irony in the fact that so many journalists are not willing to educate themselves. The irony is that the methods of the journalists and the methods of science, in fact, overlap a great deal. Journalists rely heavily on observation, on experimentation, on interviewing and on other techniques used by science. In fact, when journalists do their jobs and do integrate the world around them, they rely on scientific theory to do so.

One of my instructors in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin used to tell us that he got his best ideas for research--and social theory--from a careful reading of The New York Times each day. The individual papers weren't so helpful, he said, but the patterns he saw in the reporting of events--and the speculation of journalists and commentators about the causes of those events--inspired him to create theory from which he generated hypotheses for study.

Solutions to the Problem

Good journalism, in my view, is not only reporting of the episodic, then, but also reporting of the trends in those episodes. Journalists needs to work to tell their readers, listeners and viewers how all of the pieces come together to tell a story.

Journalists can help scientists by their reporting of the episodes, and scientists can help journalists with the weaving of those threads into the complete fabric. Journalists and scientists need to work together.

At the same time, journalists, working with scientists, need to help the general public understand the nature of discovery and how individual episodes of discovery should be evaluated.

The episodic nature of news isn't going to change--at least not quickly. And the cumulative nature of science will persevere.

Scientists and journalists--who, as I have noted, actually use the same tools of the trade--can work together to make the news more meaningful to those who consume and need it--the citizenry of the countries we live in.

I hope this workshop is one little step--one little episode--leading in that direction.