Science journalists call upon experts for background and for clarification and comment on scientific findings. This paper examines how science writers choose and use experts, and it focuses on several cases of reporting about genetics and behavior. Our research included two sources of data: interviews with 15 science reporters and three print media samples of coverage of genetics and behavior—alcoholism (between 1980-1995), homosexuality (in 1993 and 1995), and mental illness (between 1970-1995). Science reporters seek relevant and specific experts for nearly every story. Good sources are knowledgeable, are connected to prestigious institutions, are direct and articulate and don't overqualify statements, and they return phone calls. The mean number of experts quoted was 2.8 per story, differing for alcoholism (3.5), homosexuality (2.8), and mental illness (2.6). Researchers and scientists predominated among experts quoted. Quotes were used to provide context, give legitimization, as explication, to provide a kind of balance, and to outline implications. For the homosexuality sample, a significantly greater percentage of activists and advocates were quoted (21 percent compared with 5 percent and 1 percent in other samples, X2 < 0.0001). “Lay” quotes for alcoholism and mental illness were minimal. Except for homosexuality, whose advocates are organized, those “affected” do not have a voice in genetics news stories.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
J. Gregory and S. Miller, Science in Public: Communication, Culture and Society (New York and London: Plenum, 1998).
2.
B. V. Lewenstein , “Public Understanding of Science in the United States after World War II,”Public Understanding of Science1 (1992): 55-57.
3.
J. Gregory and S. Miller, 1998, p. 119.
4.
D. Nelkin , Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology, 2nd ed. (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1995).
5.
B. Rensberger , “Covering Science for Newspapers.” In A Field Guide for Science Writers, eds. D. Blum and M. Knudson (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 7-16.
6.
M. Schudson , The Power of News (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).
7.
H. S. Becker , “Art as Collective Action,”American Sociological Review39 (1974): 467-476.
8.
(cited in C. Ryan, Prime Time Activism [Boston: South End Press, 1991], p.283).
9.
H. J. Gans , Deciding What's News (New York: Pantheon, 1979).
10.
P. Conrad and D. Weinberg, “Has the Gene for Alcoholism been Discovered Three Times Since 1980? A News Media Analysis,”Perspectives on Social Problems8 (1996): 3-25.
11.
V. Entwistle , “Reporting Research in Medical Journals and Newspapers,”British Medical Journal310 (1995): 920-923.
12.
T. Wilkie , “Sources in Science: Who can we Trust?”Lancet347 (1996): 1308-1311.
13.
R. V. Ericson , P. M. Baranek and J. B. L. Chan, Negotiating Control: A Study of News Sources (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989).
14.
R. G. Shepherd and E. Goode, “Scientists in the Popular Press,”New Scientist76 (1977): 482-484.
15.
A. M. van Trigt , Lolkje T. W.de Jong-van den Berg, F. M. Haaijer-Ruskamp, J. Willems and T. (D.) F. J. Tromp, “Medical Journalists and Expert Sources on Medicines,”Public Understanding of Science3 (1994): 309-321.
16.
Entwhistle, 1995, p.921.
17.
R. Goodell , “The Role of Mass Media in Scientific Controversy.” In Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology, eds. H. T. Engelhardt, Jr. and A. L. Caplan (London: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 585-597.
18.
Nelkin, 1995.
19.
S. Dunwoody and M. Ryan, “The Credible Scientific Source,”Journalism Quarterly64 (1987): 21-27.
20.
H. P. Peters , “The Interaction of Journalists and Scientific Experts: Co-operation and Conflict between Two Professional Cultures,”Media, Culture and Society17 (1995): 31-48.
21.
It is of course possible—and if you believe some experts, it is common—to be misquoted or misrepresented in the press. This issue is, however, different from those we examine here.
22.
P. Conrad , “Media Images, Genetics and Culture: Potential Impacts of Reporting Scientific Findings on Bioethics.” In Bioethics in Context, eds. Barry Hoffmaster and Alison Wylie (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
23.
To be specific, 14 of the interviews were tape-recorded. The investigator somehow lost the recorder on his way to one interview, so he completed this one by taking notes.
24.
B. Glaser and A. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory (Chicago: Aldine, 1967).
25.
For the homosexuality sample we added The San Francisco Chronicle and a sampling of the gay press (Bay Area Reporter, New York Native, Bay Windows, Washington Blade, and The Advocate). We located relevant articles in the gay press by examining the newspapers (weekly or semi-weekly) for a one-month period before and after the scientific journal was published.
26.
The British press sample included The Times, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Observer, and The Economist. Newspapers were included in their daily and Sunday editions.
27.
P. Conrad and D. Weinberg, 1996.
28.
L. Sigal , “Sources Make the News.” In Reading the News, eds. R. K. Manoff and M. Schudson (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 9-37.
29.
A. Hansen , “Journalistic Practices and Science Reporting in the British Press,”Public Understanding of Science3 (1994): 111-134.
30.
A. Hansen, 1994.
31.
Some of the differences in the number of experts cited can be attributed to the types of news articles in the sample. There were relatively more feature articles in the alcoholism sample, which probably accounts for the larger number of quotes per article. The British sample included some rather brief articles, often a secondary piece on inside pages following a front page article. As is seen in Table 2, gay press reporters seem to have access to nearly as wide a range of experts as the mainstream press.
32.
The large number of “others” in the homosexuality sample mostly reflected an ethics controversy in the U.K. concerning a debate about the “gay gene” and abortion. The controversy centered on some comments by Rabbi Jakovits in 1993. See Miller, 1995 and Conrad, 1998. The “gay gene” debate also included some ethicists and anti-gay activists who weren't represented in the other samples.
33.
D. Berkowitz and D. W. Beach, “News Sources and News Context: The Effect of Routine News, Conflict and Proximity,”Journalism Quarterly70 (1993): 4-12.
34.
P. Conrad and D. Weinberg, 1996.
35.
One might imagine that if journalists included too many highly critical quotes, their editors might ask the question: If there is so much scientific criticism, how could this finding be important as news. While the critics are rarely quoted in science news stories, there have been several articles that have specifically explicated the critics' point of view (e.g., Richard Saltus, “Sounding the Alarm,”Boston Globe Magazine, 26 May 1996, p.14).
36.
A. Hansen, 1994.
37.
W. Evans , “The Mundane and the Arcane: Prestige Media Coverage of Social and Natural Science,”Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly72 (1995): 168-177.
38.
P. Conrad and D. Weinberg, 1996.
39.
In a recent study about expert sources on medications in the news, van Trigt et al. (1994) found that patients were seldom quoted as experts on their own medications. They virtually never found patients quoted without accompanying scientific or medical experts, giving the lay voices very little representation, despite their “expertise of experience.”
40.
J. Kinsella , Covering the Plague: AIDS and the American Media (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutger's University Press, 1989).
41.
M. A. Hallett and D. Cannella, “Gatekeeping Through Media Format: Strategies of Voice for the HIV-Positive via Human Interest News Formats and Organizations,”Journal of Homosexuality26 (1994): 111-134.
42.
P. Conrad, 1998.
43.
R. Gibson and D. Zillmann, “The Impact of Quotation in News Reports on Issue Perception,”Journalism Quarterly70 (1993): 793-800.
44.
See also D. Miller, “Introducing the `Gay Gene': Media and Scientific Representations,”Public Understanding of Science4 (1995): 269-294.
