Science Through The Distorted Lens Of Media
A rather amazing thing happened this week in the often somewhat sorry state of reporting of medical research: a newspaper allowed an author of a scientific paper the chance to correct what he felt were misperceptions in the reporting of his work.
[...] Although the article in the Guardian was, as Baron Cohen noted “mostly correct”, its headline “New research brings autism screening closer to reality” was not and its strapline “Call for ethics debate as tests in the womb could allow termination of pregnancies” likely to cause unnecessary alarm.
- Man bites dog: researcher gets chance to counter inaccurate reporting of article by Virginia Barbour
How often is legitimate science obscured by media hype? Often enough that it is considered quite novel that a scientist should have the opportunity to refute the distortion.
The Public Library of Science’s medical division has prepared a substantial paper regarding this media practice:
[...] The 24-hour news cycle means that media organizations are battling for audience share, which in turn means that “the press has moved towards sensationalism, entertainment, and opinion”. Headlines are often written by news editors, rather than the article’s reporter, and are particularly prone to exaggeration. All of this sensationalism strays far from the reality of biomedical research, a slow process that yields small, incremental results based on long-term studies that always have weaknesses.
The origin of hype in health stories goes even deeper than journalists’ lack of training and the hurried pace of broadcasting. Ransohoff and Ransohoff have described medical researchers and reporters as “complicit collaborators,” both of whom may benefit from a sensationalized story. Researchers benefit from the publicity because it may increase citations to their study and help their chances of promotion or tenure, while a highly visible story of a dramatic medical breakthrough can boost a journalist’s career. Sensationalism occurs, they say, “when the participants stand to benefit from publicity without a corresponding penalty for misleading reports.”
- False Hopes, Unwarranted Fears:
The Trouble with Medical News Stories
PLoS Editors
Now that the news media has thoroughly discredited itself by pandering to viewer market share rather than providing an actual service with reporting, can anyone honestly claim to be informed by it?
There have always been elements of muckraking and sensationalism in print and televised reporting, however, there appears to be a diminished demand for accuracy in reporting outside of the scientific community. The mark of an informed individual is the amount of time which he or she refuses to devote to the “news”.
