I’m asking that because it was one of the topics discussed at a talk at Imperial College yesterday. Journalists complained about the sanitisation of science and the excessive interference of press officers. “It’s like going on a date with someone and her mother too,” summarized David Cohen from New Scientist.
Well, I’ve done a bit of entertainment journalism, been to press conferences, junkets, shootings of films and so on. And what I can say is that most of the times what you can get out of it is anything but PR journalism.
In the end, the piece you write is nothing more than a press release. After all, you meet the actors, beautifully produced, with lots of make up and clothes chosen by an assistant. Then you have 10 minutes to talk to them (if it’s not a press conference – in this case, you will shout one question or two and get them answered if you’re lucky), and sometimes the press officers are just by your side all the time. And all other journalists have exactly the same material, so all of you end up writing the same article, with minor (almost irrelevant) differences.
Boring.
No real people, no real talks, no real journalism.
(of course there are exceptions. The people from Bourne Ultimatum were great – but that’s because they are “grown ups” – experienced and smart actors, directors and producers doing a film for the money and the fun of it, and being really laid back about this. But most actors are not nearly as bright as them, and they really need a safety net – otherwise you will find out how they are in reality)
These experiences made me think. Maybe all this annoying “PR driven journalism” is precisely what makes the audience is so eager for paparazzi pictures of celebrities wasted, drunk or with torn clothes. Because then you can see they are real people! What other reason would explain pictures of the Brangelina couple picking their kids at school – every single day? Can anything be less interesting than someone at the school door, with a child in their hands, with normal, mortal-people’s clothes?
But I digress.
What I wanted to say is that all this excessive PR (and believe me, some PRs are just great and helpful and the thank them for being there. But not all of them) may be in the truth putting people off science. Creating a sanitised and boring science journalism.
We need paparazzi science journalism.
I don’t know exactly what that would be, but I’m really into finding out. Something to make science (and scientists) interesting and alive. Not a bunch of perfectly groomed talking heads saying uncompromising things – so uncompromising that no one cares about.
Perhaps if we didn’t have all this PR-laden entertainment journalism, celebrity press would not be so insanely invasive?
I really believe that sometimes playing too safe is riskier than letting things go.
I think you have a point Barbara; science is being processed to become media friendly and through this process has a tendency to become sanitized. However, I am not sure I would welcome a paparazzi style journalist chasing me around the lab photographing my every move while trying to set up a PCR. It would make it more entertaining I agree. I think we have a duty as scientists to make our science accessible to the general public. Science affects and is utilised in everyone’s daily life and therefore is inherently interesting, we don’t need to therefore use cheap sensationalism to get our point across.
Changing tack a little. I was reading the font of all knowledge i.e. The Metro last week on my way to Imperial College. I admit I had to stifle my laughter on the tube after reading an article about ugly bug toys (for example, a toy in the shape of the bacteria that causes gonorrhoea). But it did make me think about the interaction between science and the media. In response to Pallab Ghosh’s question what should the role of a science journalist be? I think they should not only entertain and inform but also educate, in particular children. One of the most effective ways we can engage young people in the importance of science is through the media. A classic example of this is the Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures, I remember watching them myself and really found them fascinating. This year I went to two schools as part of the INSPIRE initiative at Imperial (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/inspire/) and one of the best tools we used to engage young people was the use of news articles which grabbed their attention. We went on to discuss the science behind the article and its accuracy. A former boss of mine said once, “Science should be fun”. The trick for us, as scientists, is to communicate that sense of fun, excitement and knowledge to the general public.
Both examples, PR-styled science journalism and paparazzi science journalism are two extreme images on a scale of many possible strategies. Remodelling science into an extremely media-friendly undertaking has, as Charlie also mentioned, resulted in science becoming more media-prepped and simultaneously more media-unfriendly by displaying a distrust towards science journalism with respect to the content of the message. A proposed paparazzi-style could imply that science journalism would often be conducted without scientists knowing and approving, perhaps resulting in only a part of the message getting out – enough to publish, too little to fully grasp.
I would propose a middle-ground, a combination between the retro New Journalism and the scholarly Laboratory Studies (example 1) and (example 2) A combination which would require some fine-tuning, but nonetheless would enable the exiting, the funny, the tragic, the beauty and the frustration of science to be displayed in a novel way.
It would require scientists to cooperate with the media besides preparing press statements and grating interviews which are “corrected” afterwards; it would require them to open up their labs, their minds and their archives.
This would be demanding for journalists as well, since they would be the ones entering the labs, conferences, meetings, minds and archives and diligently studying them: a lot of work, but a fine kind of work. For patient people, that is…