Last week, AU Prof. David Johnson said that some of journalism's inherent values are that it both saves time and narrativizes otherwise dense issues. Media outlets are typically used by people--the general public--who wish to learn the basics of an issue, who want to be well-informed enough to hold a debate or sound intelligent in a public forum. They print the issues, but in the ways that appeal to the public or are easily understood by the public.
In this sense, journalism exists to sell itself. And this is the main constraint under which science journalism in particular must operate.
To obtain a drastic result, one must enact drastic changes. It's true that science journalism is limited because of the limitations of its audience. The problem begins in youth, in the lack of effective science education that public schools offer. If a more educated public is needed, then students must be taught how to analyze and understand scientific data and information from an early age. For instance, I attended a magnet high school that focused on technology and science, and every student was required to independently engineer his or her own investigative scientific research project: propose a question and follow it through using the scientific method. If the issues themselves weren't interesting enough, we were encouraged to pursue the topics further through the media of competitions and fairs that offered scholarship money as prizes.
If every public school in America required its students to pursue such an endeavor--both through personal conduction of scientific research and learning about their classmates' projects--these students might grow to become more appreciative and informed of science as a discipline. They might understand the work of scientists better, no matter what field they eventually enter into. And in an ideal world, science journalists would not have to "dummy down" their coverage of scientific discoveries because they would be dealing with a public that has experience and on some level, can understand.
Of course, such a project would require much dedication and funding. But I would defend the value of such time and money: making science relatable from an early age can reduce the intimidation factor it tends to present in later life for many people.
Another way of making issues more understandable is the concept of "framing," which was discussed in the readings and in class this week. "Framing," at least to my understanding, makes all science journalism sound like something that must be constructed, that journalists must force the issues to fit into some special wording that appeals to the public. Most science issues, in my opinion, are issues in the first place because they are already important to the public in some capacity, even if it's difficult to explain how. If scientific topics were not relevant, they would not be receiving grants and funding to be pursued at all. That is the purpose of science: to learn about the world and to apply that knowledge to better people's lives. I would tend to think that most people are interested in the betterment of their own lives, and in this sense, they both have a duty to be and will be interested in what science journalists have to say.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science gives out annual awards for excellence in science journalism. In 2010, Richard Harris of NPR won a Kavli Science Journalism award for a series that challenged initial estimates of the damage of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Deepwater Horizon was and arguably still is a hot-button issue; one can simply talk to a Gulf Coast resident or business owner to be assured of that. Without the work of Harris and his colleagues, and those who read his work and took action, the scale of the catastrophe might not have been realized for some time.
In this instance, understanding the science of the matter isn't the most important part of the issue. People will read an article about the Gulf Coast because, to understand how much money they will be making in the year or what will happen to their family tomorrow, they need to learn about the science behind an oil spill. Science is important because it affects us; it has become personal; in fact, it has always been personal. It isn't a matter of being intelligent; it's a matter of being informed. It's a matter of understanding the complex interplay of science, economics, history, culture, and politics to live one's daily life at a higher quality.
Therefore, I don't think that science journalists need to convince the public that science is important. Whether they actively realize it or not, this is a fact that they already know. The challenge is in forcing people to apply that knowledge to greater understanding and political and social action.
Just like any other issue given attention in the media, I believe that science is a field whose value must be engrained in the population from the beginning: both in terms of its significance on its own but also its policy and day-to-day implications. In this way, journalists will eventually stop having to "sell" science in the media; like journalism itself, stories on science will be printed because they are important enough to sell themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment