Newspaper coverage of science is governed and shaped by both macro-level factors such as ownership and cultural resonances, and by the more micro-level factors of journalistic practices, professional values, and organizational arrangements. This study examines the characteristics and professional practices of specialist journalists involved in the coverage of science, medicine and related subjects in the British national press. It shows that they share many of their characteristics with specialist journalists in other areas: they value journalistic professionalism and skill more highly than formal training in their particular field of specialist reporting; they deploy conventional news-value criteria, but emphasize in particular the importance of a `relevance to the reader' criterion in the selection of science news; they deploy elaborate routines for securing the credibility of their reporting, including the active cultivation of a relationship of mutual trust with their sources, and a source-orientation which is distinctly institutionally- and authority-focused. Popular and quality press journalists hold clearly different images of their target audiences, although for both categories of journalists the image of the readers owes more to journalistic judgement and casual feedback than to systematic readership data. The overriding key to understanding the work of these specialists is to recognize that they are, in their practices and professional beliefs, journalists first and specialists second.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Golding, P. , and Elliott, P., 1979. Making the News (London: Longman).
2.
Schudson, M. , 1989, The sociology of news production. Media, Culture & Society, 11, 263-282.
3.
Hilgartner, S. , and Bosk, C. L., 1988, The rise and fall of social problems: a public arenas model. American Journal of Sociology, 94, 53-78.
4.
Schoenfeld, A. C. , 1980, Newspersons and the environment today. Journalism Quarterly, 57, 456-462.
5.
At the actual time of interviewing two of these had moved to the now defunct Sunday Correspondent, although at the time of selecting the journalists to be interviewed they were at The Times.
6.
Seymour-Ure, C. , 1977, Science and medicine and the press. Studies on the Press, edited by O. Boyd-Barrett, C. Seymour-Ure, and J. Tunstall (London: HMSO), p. 62.
7.
Nelkin, D. , 1987, Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology (New York: W. H. Freeman), p. 102.
8.
Ericson, R. V. , Baranek, P. M., and Chan, J. B. L., 1987, Visualizing Deviance: A Study of News Organization (Milton Keynes: Open University Press).
9.
Golding, P. , and Middleton, S., 1982, Images of Welfare (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
10.
This point has similarly been made by Gans, who, in his now classic study of news production, argues that `Substantive beat reporters are the only true specialists, but even they must range over wide territories. A science reporter who is a specialist in the natural sciences becomes a generalist when assigned to the social sciences', Gans, H. J., 1979, Deciding What's News (New York: Vintage), p. 132.
11.
Jones, G. , Connell, I., and Meadows, J., 1978, The Presentation of Science by the Media (Primary Communications Research Centre, University of Leicester).
12.
Seymour-Ure, C. , 1977, Science and medicine and the press. Studies on the Press, edited by O. Boyd-Barrett, C. Seymour-Ure, and J. Tunstall (London: HMSO), pp. 45-82.
13.
Galtung, J. , and Ruge, M., 1981, Structuring and Selecting News. The Manufacture of News, edited by S. Cohen and J. Young (London: Constable), pp. 52-63.
14.
Schoenfeld, A. C. , Meier, R. F., and Griffin, R. J., 1979, Constructing a social problem—the press and the environment. Social Problems, 27, 38-61.
15.
see also the analysis of social science coverage by Weiss, C. H., and Singer, E., 1988, Reporting of Social Science in the National Media (New York: Russell Sage Foundation).
16.
Tunstall, J. , 1971, Journalists at Work (London: Constable).
17.
Tuchman, G. , 1978, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press).
18.
Dunwoody, S. , and Ryan, M., 1985. Scientific barriers to the popularisation of science in the mass media. Journal of Communication, 35, 26-42.
19.
Nelkin, D. , 1987, Selling Science: how the Press Covers Science and Technology (New York: W. H. Freeman).
20.
Nelkin, in her study of American science journalism, offers examples of restrictive news-management: `(...) in April 1986, the US Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission responded to the Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union by placing gag orders on their own employees and contractors, including scientists in national laboratories'. Nelkin, D., 1987, Selling Science: how the Press Covers Science and Technology (New York: W. H. Freeman), p. 164. Examples of increased governmental news management are not, however, confined to the field of science journalism; perhaps the most radical example of change in governmental news management is that of government control over the reporting of war and military action in the post-Vietnam era, with the Falklands War, Grenada and Panama, and the Gulf War as prime examples of extraordinary and restrictive news management.
21.
This recognition resonates well with what Stephen Hilgartner has described as the political uses of science popularization in his insightful analysis of `the dominant view of popularization: conceptual problems, political uses'(Social Studies of Science, 20, 519-539): `(...) it would be naive to assume that their [scientists', experts'] simplified representations are politically neutral (...) experts often simplify science with an eye toward persuading their audience to support their goals: whether they seek to motivate people to follow public health recommendations, build support for research programmes, convince investors that a finding shows commercial promise, or advocate positions in science-intensive policy controversies' (p.531).
22.
Hansen, A. , 1993, Greenpeace and press coverage of environmental issues. The Mass Media and Environmental Issues, edited by A. Hansen (Leicester University Press), pp. 150-178.
23.
Doman, C. , 1990, Some problems in conceptualising the issue of `science and the media'. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 7, 56.
24.
Goodell, R. , 1987. The role of the mass media in scientific controversy. Scientific Controversies, edited by H. T. Engelhardt and A. L. Caplan (Cambridge University Press), pp. 585-597.
25.
Ericson, R. V. , Baranek, P. M., and Chan, J. B. L., 1987, Visualizing Deviance: A Study of News Organization (Milton Keynes: Open University Press).
26.
Schudson, M. , 1989, The sociology of news production. Media, Culture & Society, 11, 263-282.
27.
The Royal Society , 1985, The Public Understanding of Science (London: Royal Society).
28.
See also: Wilkie, T., 1991, Does science get the press it deserves?International Journal of Science Education, 13, 575-581.
29.
Fishman, M. , 1980, Manufacturing the News (Austin, TX; London: University of Texas Press).
30.
Dunwoody, S. , 1979, News-gathering behaviors of specialty reporters: a two-level comparison of mass media decision-making. Newspaper Research Journal, 1, 29-41.
31.
Morrison, D. , and Tumber, H., 1988, Journalists at War: the Dynamics of News Reporting during the Falklands Conflict (London: Sage).
32.
Donsbach, W. , 1983, Journalists' conceptions of their audience: comparative indicators for the way British and German journalists define their relations to the public. Gazette, 32, 19-36.
33.
Dennis, E. E. , and McCartney, J., 1979, Science journalists on metropolitan dailies. The Journal of Environmental Education, 10, 12.
34.
Seymour-Ure, C. , 1977, Science and medicine and the press. Studies on the Press, edited by O. Boyd-Barrett, C. Seymour-Ure, and J. Tunstall (London: HMSO), p. 68.
