The Observatory — July 01, 2009 10:23 AM
NSF “Underwriting” Coverage…
And other controversies from the World Conference of Science Journalists
LONDON — The sixth World Conference of Science Journalists got off to an enjoyably controversial start here on Tuesday afternoon.
The event takes place against the backdrop of concurrent editorials in the world’s leading scientific journals, Science and Nature (the former by CJR contributing editor Cristine Russell), exploring the ongoing “crisis” and potential “swan song” of science journalism. To be sure, these dire perspectives are no mere exaggerations.
The opening session of WCSJ featured three provocative speakers, introduced by BBC News correspondent Nick Higham, who posed the questions: “Do we need a new kind of science journalism?” and “Where do traditional journalists fit into the new media landscape?”
The ensuing discussion quickly revealed that regardless of whether or not we need a new type of science journalism, we are surely getting one, and that traditional science journalists are being marginalized in the process. Of the three speakers, it was perhaps Jeff Nesbit—the director of the Office of Legislative and Public Affairs at the National Science Foundation—that most riled up the audience.
The consternation stemmed from the fact that the NSF—a federal agency that funds twenty percent of all federally supported, non-medical basic research in the United States—is now “underwriting” a wide array of media projects. Some of these are fairly traditional in nature. For example, the NSF has provided major funding for a number of PBS reports and plays no role in the editorial process or creating the final product. In partnerships with U.S. News & World Report and LiveScience, however, the outlets are posting content created by the NSF, researchers, or public information officers (all of which is labeled as having come from the NSF). There are also a few miscellaneous projects, such as Science Nation, a video series produced by members of CNN’s former science team (which the network axed last December); a recent panel event with Discover magazine; The Discovery Files, a series of podcasts that air on about 1,500 commercial radio stations in the U.S.; and Science 360, a Web site which aggregates all NSF-generated content (which, being publically funded, is available to anybody that wants to use it).
A number of audience members stood up to challenge Nesbit, arguing that the NSF is dangerously blurring the lines between journalism and PR, and is attempting to “disguise” publicity as objective reporting. Higham, the panel’s moderator, also asked whether or not it is “healthy for science journalism to be supported by NSF.”
To his credit, Nesbit, a former journalist, seems to be well aware that the NSF’s media endeavors pose a threat to journalism. “We realize that there is high risk,” he said in response to Higham’s question, “but at this point I would say that it’s a necessity.”
Indeed, LiveScience senior editor Robin Lloyd was in the audience and stood up to say that the outlet, which has recently lost about half of its editorial staff, “appreciates” the content that NSF provides. In an interview after the panel she added that the NSF maintains a high standard of quality, but also acknowledged that posting pre-packaged content is not an “ideal” situation. “We are throwing up their press stuff,” she said.
Nesbit wasn’t the only controversial figure on the opening panel. Ben Hammersley, associate editor at Wired Magazine UK, made a powerful case that the problems engendered by the rise of new media have, in fact, been chipping away at traditional journalism for ten to fifteen years. “We’ve been chased down the street by a snail,” he said. As such, Wired is “not asking what to do about new media, but what to do in the post new media age.”
Hammersley argued that there would eventually be a “re-specialization of journalists.” The current popular wisdom that the modern journalist should be a jack-of-all-trades, fluent in writing, video, radio, Web production, and a host of other skills is a flight of fancy, he said. If we ask journalists to do everything, they will fail. Eventually, Hammersley believes, we’ll come to understand that readers and audiences follow those who can produce “extreme quality” in individual disciplines from feature writing to Twittering.
“The market is about to shake out even harder than it did five years ago,” he said, and from its applause, most of the audience seemed to agree with him. But some took issue with Hammersley’s further conclusion that “the appearance that we don’t need science journalists comes from the uncomfortable conclusion that we had too many to start with.”
While most conceded that there will be, unfortunately, fewer journalists overall, some conference goers found Hammersley’s perspective defeatist. One questioned why he is ready to concede jobs rather than examining why new publications have failed to sustain more of them—a fair point.
With so many pressures on the journalism industry as a whole, such anxious debates are to be expected and desired. Case in point was the session’s third panelist—Krishna Bharat, the principal scientist at and founder of Google News. Bharat said that the Web site’s mission is to “get people to read more news, bring the best information to people who need it, and to promote freedom of speech.”
Yet while many in the audience lauded the utility of Google News, a number questioned its impact on the industry (such as news outlets’ efforts to improve search engine optimization at the expense of quality, or criticism that Google should share some of the money it makes off news links). One person pointed out that, for all Bharat’s noble goals, Google has done little to engage journalists at major outlets in an effort to find wasy to alleviate some of the industry’s woes.
Among the 800 or so participants at the WCSJ there are clearly many differences of opinion about whether these trends will prove to be banes or boons for informing the public about the relevance of science. One thing is happily certain, though—nobody is taking any of it lightly.
h/t to T J Overton
I have long railed against so called journalism which in reality is little more than agenda peddling agitprop – a process which has reached a new low in reporting on climate issues.
I am also a long standing contributor to a blog on world events and geopolitics. It’s our practice to edit out the ‘journalism’, leaving the facts and then add our own commentary. Not much different to what happens here at WUWT.
This made me realize 2 things.
1. For most people, all news of relevance is local. They don’t care what is happening in Yemen or the Antarctic icecap, except to the extent it affects their neighbourhood or hometown.
2. Those of us who are interested in what happens in these places, generally know more about what is happening and why than the journalists who write the news articles and consequently their journalism is just annoying noise to be filtered out.
A nifty story to follow the ones about WaPo selling access to administration officials and relevant reporters to lobbyists, and well known left-wing bloggers asking prominent questions at important press conferences:
http://gawker.com/5311055/white-house-press-corps-spent-the-fourth-of-july-hanging-out-with-obama-off-the-record
It would seem that the White House Press Corps got an off the record fete on Independence Day, replete with singers and comedians.
Ms Gray has part of the problem: us. Another commenter hit on the moguls aspect. Another, major factor: The J Schools. For decades now, they’ve transitioned from reporting driven journalism to agenda driven journalism. The reason that most of the traditional news media don’t cry foul on the current events (with a couple of notable exceptions) is that they simply agree with what’s happening, therefore, it must be protected.
TamRob 14:29 “This is not about a “Government Controlled Socialist State.” Unfortunately, it seems that the conservatives who frequent this site seem to want to blame it all on the Liberals. But the fact of the matter is that control of the corporate media has been just that: Corporate.”
And I pretty much agree with most of the rest of the statement. Both parties. Corporate leadership. All mainstream media (which is all corporate). Much of academia. Most of the science publications. Google by all means, front and center. Corrupt — the whole bunch. With respect to science there is not much to trust; it is all filled with propaganda, with a multitude of new centers set up in our prestigious universities to create false science that the media then ply us with. I took Nature for years. Cancelled a number of years ago — too much propaganda. Science Mag is coming close. Scientific American, Science Digest, gone, never to return. The only place an honest, inquiring mind can go these days is to the internet. What our brave bloggers need is some of the money.
TamRob (14:29:20) :
It’s the same thing.
Socialism, Communism, National Socialism, Corporatism, read Fascism, all failed experiments from the past.
They all caused and still cause numerous deaths, wars and disasters.
We can do very well without.
Ron de Haan (08:25:24) :”This is all “change” we did not ask for. This President is dangerous.”
No doubt, but so have a lot of presidents been dangerous. FDR paved the way for the ‘Great Society’ by removing from domestic circulation and the private ownerhsip of Constitutional money. And not to be out-done by those shamelessly less limited democrats, Nixon cut it out of interanational trade to create the bubble-bust market for Wall Street speculators. A feud between two types of robber-baron dictators, most presidents after FDR, in my estimation, were either dangerous men or taging along with the philosophies and agendas of dangerous men.
And so we got the change we allowed to take place, as the result of a growing government over the last century. We may not like it, but it is what we allowed.
Obama is dangerous because he is defending the failing base of the expanded government/bank power structure… as rabid wolf in sheeps clothing (but the wool is terribly worn and rotten. Some emperor we have, eh? But if that is the emperor, our empire is in shambles just the same). Yet even without him, the power structure would still exist. Another wolf it more than likely would be that took his place.
Except Ron Paul. At this time, he is the only presidential candidate that understands the problem. He gets on the back of the central banking system that is FORBIDDEN by the supreme law of the land, our Constitution. Trouble is, even if he became president, Congress is rife with corrupt supporters of the status quo. I think we will need to rebuild the nation through reclaiming local and state government first, from the bottom up. Top down never works. If no suitable replacements exist, then the incumbent must be RELENTLESSLY guided by our voice to conform to our Constitution as originally penned by our Founding Fathers, until they do or suitable replacements are found.
As for the media… perhaps when such a movement took root and grew in momentum, their objectivity might return as a matter of professional survival.
Benjamin (15:28:39) :
http://www.moronpolitics.com
Ron de Haan (15:52:49) : ….
I know. And? All the more reason to disassemble not just his base of power, but that of the unconstitutional government as a whole. Trust me, if this is not done whoever replaces him will only continue down this path. When our money is based purely on imagination to create a debtor nation that is slave to it’s creditors, there can be no ethical government. Not here, not anywhere in the world.
Our Founding Fathers knew this, thus they wrote into the Constitution what the definition of money is, in hope that a society free from bankers breeding big governments would spread to the world.
http://www.professorfekete.com/default.asp
http://www.professorfekete.com/articles/AEFOpeningTheMintToGoldAndSilver.pdf
Guys,
Why are we here? I’m reading THIS site, instead of watching Good Morning America because I want REAL news and analysis on Climate Science. Many of my colleagues go to a number of financial blogs because they want REAL news and analysis on financial markets and individual companies of interest.
This site IS the replacement for MSM. Not totally, to be sure, but in time, it’s going to be sites like this who become the gold standard for news and analysis.
Make sure you give Anthony’s sponsors a gander.
Jon Jewett (09:51:40) :
Ron de Haan (08:25:24) :
“You only have to elect another President to solve the problem”
I pray that I am just being paranoid, but it may not be that easy to make a “change”.
When you consider that Obama told us what he was going to do prior to the election (some stupid promises yet unfulfilled) and yet 50%+ voted for him, I think the ignorant masses waiting for a bailout will continue to override reason.
TamRob (14:29:20) : What we have here is not a socialist agenda.
What do you call income redistribution?
This move (free) explains how the news media have always operated:
http://www.archive.org/details/his_girl_friday
Playboy: Implicit in the Administration’s attempts to force the networks to “balance” the news is a conviction that most newscasters are biased against conservatism. Is there some truth in the view that television newsmen tend to be left of center?
Cronkite: Well, certainly liberal, and possibly left of center as well. I would have to accept that.
Playboy: What’s the distinction between those two terms?
Cronkite: I think the distinction is both clear and important. I think being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause – but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it’s a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they’re not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they’re preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can’t be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism.
I don’t think that there is any doubt ABOUT BBCs position on global warming, but look at:
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1199104/Peter-Sissons-BBC-standards-falling–bosses-scared-it.html
The quote from the article is:
“In a wide-ranging attack, he also claims it is now ‘effectively BBC policy’ to stifle critics of the consensus view on global warming. He says: ‘I believe I am one of a tiny number of BBC interviewers who have so much as raised the possibility that there is another side to the debate on climate change.
‘The Corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that “the science is settled”, when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t.
‘But it is effectively BBC policy… that those views should not be heard.”
There are not enough good science journalists around probably because there aren’t enough readers anymore. It’s all about entertainment nowadays. Science journalists would probably prefer writing PR for science companies than write about Brangelina…I could be wrong though.
carbon dating
And yet, the pendulum sometimes swings back unexpectedly.
Somewhere Esquire went from being a vacuous rag for narcissistic homosexuals to a magazine that publishes stuff like this:
http://www.esquire.com/features/new-solutions-to-global-warming-0809
I was impressed.
It tells me that I’m not as smart as I think I am about media.