Edelson (1979) describes science news as a “ghetto of journalism” [where] “most of the coverage is done by people other than science writers” (p. 13). Friedman (1986) gives an explanation for this occurring. As she notes, many smaller news organizations do not have dedicated science writers and are, therefore, obliged to send more general assignment reporters to report on science stories. Normally only organisations with large full-time staffs have dedicated beat or round reporters. These latter reporters often have an educational background in science and may have a great deal of experience in reporting science news. Friedman (1986) argues that misunderstandings and inaccuracy can be caused because of the lack of scientific knowledge held by the more generalist reporters. Friedman (1986) suggests that scientists should make themselves aware of the reporter’s level of understanding if inaccuracies or misquotes are going to be avoided. This seems to place the blame with reporters and yet scientists’ lack of understanding of the needs of reporters, and in many cases inability to simplify their work can also compound the problem.
Even when pre-packaged news is uncritically reported, misquotes and inaccuracies still occur, due to the demands of the various media that report these stories. For example, as Friedman (1986) points out, the hard news portion of a newspaper is limited with the rest of the space being taken up with advertising, the lifeblood of newspaper profits. Therefore, articles need to be brief. When this brevity is combined with the inverted pyramid method of writing news stories, where the conclusions are written in the first sentence, it can lead to the scientific details of the story being cut off by a sub-editor looking to conserve space. This leads scientists to accuse journalists of distorting and oversimplifying stories (Friedman, 1986).
The situation gets increasingly worse when stories are reported on radio or television. Time constraints in both of these media make it very difficult for the detail deemed necessary by scientists to be reported. One reporter recalls his colleague asking, “Nobel Prize winner David Baltimore to explain in twenty seconds or less how recombinant DNA worked”
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(Friedman, 1986, p. 35). Time constraints were also found by Pfund and Hofstadter (1981) as a possible cause of inaccuracy.
The factor of time is not solely limited to television and radio reporting. Time is also a factor in newspaper reporting, with printing deadlines that must be met by reporters on a daily basis. This reality is often not appreciated by scientists who ask to check the accuracy of a reporter’s story and then become unhappy when the request is refused. This refusal is not only based on time but is also a move on the part of journalists to maintain some autonomy over the writing of their story (Friedman, 1986).
As already alluded to in section 2.3.5, the types of stories reported are also affected by time demands and journalistic training. As Tuchman (1978) argues, reporting the news is a daily activity and is driven by immediacy and the ability to report stories in an uncomplicated manner. She states “the tempo of newswork, including covering a different story every day, mandates an emphasis on events, not issues” (1978, p. 134). Louw (2005) argues that, journalistic training privileges the writing of hard, factual news stories using the inverted pyramid style of reporting where the conclusions are written at the top of the item and deeper explanations at the bottom of the article. Moreover, he argues that journalists gather news using the six-question-formula of (who does what, when, where, why and how), a formula well served to capture the essence of immediate events-based stories. Unfortunately this formula does not serve journalists well to uncover the complexity of long-running issues. Philips (1976) supports this view, arguing that journalists present news as a series of discrete events that are unrelated to other events in society.
Long-running or complicated issues, therefore, are often not reported because they do not fit the daily tempo of the news routine. If such issues are reported the background information is normally missing or the long-running issue is reported on only when newsworthy events occur. For example, a study of newspaper coverage of the identification and lengthy clean up of three major pollution sites in the U.S. found that journalists only reported these issues in terms of a series of, “intermittent ‘newsworthy’ events” (Dunwoody & Griffin, 1993, p. 47). By concentrating on events the journalistic frames about these issues were limited in two ways. First, journalists were reliant on sources when the events occurred and as a result these sources could control the framing of the issues. Secondly, it absolved journalists of examining the wider picture (Dunwoody & Griffin, 1993). Therefore, issues such as these, or others where the reading public may require a large amount of background information to
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understand the issue, often go unreported, even though the issues could have serious ramifications for the public (Dunwoody & Griffin, 1993).
Even when reporters write stories with great care in order to maintain balance and accuracy, they are still at the mercy of their chief reporters or sub-editors who can alter their stories to the detriment of these ideals. Eventually, journalists come to realise their sub-editors’ particular preferences, and write their stories accordingly, in order to gain continued acceptance and success in the newsroom (McGregor, 2002; Popovich, 1986).
These journalistic practices can produce science stories that put journalists at odds with one of their major news sources for such stories, the scientists themselves. This situation can result in an antagonistic relationship between the two groups; how these two groups interact with one another is now explored.