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--Apple-Mail-18--276843491 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Hi Flora, I've also made a living off and on for the last 30 years as a journalist and so I view my profession with (at various times) admiration and chagrin. :-> As you point out there are some careful, knowledgeable journalists working today. There are, however, a number of systemic problems that effect journalism, that reflect particularly on science and natural history coverage. 1) Almost no journalists have any background in the sciences. They almost all come from backgrounds in writing about business, politics, sports, even the arts, but virtually never with any background in the sciences. As you go up the journalistic ladder to the managing and assignment editors, this becomes even more the case. Some portion of this lacuna is ascribable to journalism schools that almost never require their students to take science courses (although they do frequently take political science, English, business, etc. courses as compulsory or elective classes); some has to do with historical or institutional biases which value business, politics and sports stories as "consequential" ergo what will interest general readers, whereas science stories are relegated to back-corners columns if they appear at all. 2) Many newspapers these days are being increasingly driven for little more than their advertising revenue (take a look at Halifax's Daily News for a good illustration of this trend). Editorial content (following this model of thinking) is just filler to get people to read advertising (which provides the revenue stream) and thus content should be generated as quickly and inexpensively as possible. Such media organizations get an ever increasing amount of their content from the wireservices (very cheap), employ fewer journalists, pay them less, and rely increasingly on novice journalists strait out of journalism school. These writers or broadcasters (and some of them are sincere and well intentioned) have, however, no background in the sciences, have to provide content on very short editorial cycles, are discouraged from doing any in-depth or investigative reporting, and their focus is usually on the local city desk, crime, sports, politics, and business beats that publishers think sell copy. They are also inexperienced, and frequently move on from beat to beat, paper to paper, and city to city so they seldom get a chance to really know their community, get an in-depth familiarity with issues, cultivate contacts, or really get to know a lot about issues. Gone are the days of reporters who covered their patch for decades and knew their issues better than some of the players. All of this is very grim news when it comes to science coverage. The above formula is a recipe for mistakes and shallow coverage. There still are, of course, some excellent writers in the national media, but few and far between are the Bob MacDonald's or David Suzuki's. What science and natural history coverage there is on local and regional levels is mostly done by stringers or free lancers (like Bob Fournier or Clarence Stevens) who are brought in to write a specific column or do a commentary, not by any of the core staff of the media outlets. As a consequence, in my experience, coverage of such stories in the local media tends to range from mediocre to abysmal - on those relatively rare occasions when it even finds a space amongst the welter of sport stories, political scandals, coverage of the Conrad Black's trial, and never-end news about Paris Hilton's recent escapades ... ;-> Best wishes, Chris On 5-Aug-07, at 12:16 PM, Wild Flora wrote: > Journalists are no more careless by nature than members of other > professions > are, and we have a fine tradition accurate reporting. Many are the > journalists who lovingly quote a famous Chicago newspaper saying: > "If your > mother says she loves you, check it out." > > On the other hand, journalism also has a long tradition of > expecting its > practitioners to write quickly and often, and to be able to write > on a wide > range of topics without necessarily being knowledgeable about any > of them. > This tradition is at odds with the other one, and unfortunately, > quality and > accuracy are often sacrificed to speed and versatility. This tends > to be > particularly true at daily papers, and perhaps even more so at the > smaller > ones. > > Nevertheless, there are a lot of careful, knowledgeable journalists > working > today. You just have to look for them. In journalism as in all things, > caveat emptor. > > WF (who made her living as a journalist and editor for 30 years) > > -----Original Message----- > From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [mailto:naturens- > owner@chebucto.ns.ca] > On Behalf Of David & Alison Webster > Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 11:01 AM > To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca > Subject: Re: [NatureNS] "Foreign Plant Invading Little Albro Lake" in > Dartmouth... > > Hi All, Aug 4, 2007 > We all make mistakes but Journalists seem to make a career out > doing > so. I expect the unrealistic deadlines of the profession is a major > reason; just not time to check. But being relatively uninformed no > doubt > helps. > > A favourite passage that suggests almost no traction is "...a > snowfall of 30 centimeters (or at least 12 feet in Celsius)..." [Joel > Jacobson, Mar 11, 1993]. > > Yt, DW > > > > > Andy Moir/Chris Callaghan wrote: > >> Interesting comments about the media, Chris. >> >> "Is it any wonder that there is often so much confusion in relation >> to science or natural history stories on the part of the general >> public when the level of reportage and fact-checking by the media is >> so lamentable (or perhaps this level of accuracy is simply typical of >> the media reporting on stories in general ... :->)." >> >> I recently sat through two weeks of public hearings on the proposed >> quarry for Digby Neck. (Before the hearings, I also read all of the >> 6000+ pages of the Environmental Impact Statement and the >> rebuttals). I heard many scientists discussin