The challenges for science journalism in the UK

Abstract

Science journalists in the UK face a number of significant challenges, some shared by journalists in general and some specific to the reporting of science. The world of journalism is changing rapidly as online media grow, squeezing resources and putting pressure on journalists to produce maximum output on minimum resources. The effect is to threaten to shift the role of science news production away from science journalists to public relations (PR) professionals, and to reduce the essential democratic role of the journalist holding the spenders of public money to account. Evidence for this is offered from recent research into the state of science journalism in the UK, and from a BBC-commissioned report into the impartiality of new science coverage in the UK by the state broadcaster.

Keywords

BBC ‘churnalism’impartiality multimedia press release reporting science science journalism science news

I What is science journalism?

Science journalism is, as its name suggests, journalism that covers science. A science journalist is a specialist whose role is, broadly, to report scientific developments to a wider audience than that reached by the academic journals. A science journalist will also provide analysis and context of research, conduct investigations into the provenance and reliability of research and researchers, and, occasionally, break stories of major significance to a wider audience. In principle, there are few differences between science journalism and any other journalism specialism, but, in practice, there are some dissimilarities.

Historically, there has been significant research into the field of science journalism (Nelkin, 1995), and into the specific problems associated with reporting science, such as communicating uncertainty (Friedman et al., 1999). We also have a good understanding of how the news media have covered different contentious issues, such as climate change (Boyce and Lewis, 2009; Carvalho, 2010), biological science and human genomics (Haran et al., 2008; Hargreaves et al., 2003; Nerlich et al., 2009), and the scandal around Andrew Wakefield’s discredited claims that the MMR vaccine causes autism (Boyce, 2007). By contrast, there is little recent research into the current general health of science journalism in the UK. Much of the information available about the broad state of science journalism in Britain today is anecdotal, albeit consisting of anecdotes from experienced (and often unusually reflective) practitioners, but anecdotal nonetheless (Dickson, 2004; Nature, 2009). This review will discuss in particular two significant pieces of recent research into science journalism in the UK, namely Williams and Clifford’s report into specialist science journalism in the UK national media (2010), and the recent BBC Impartiality Review (Jones, 2011).

This review will also describe the working practices and pressures on science journalists with the intention of providing a guide to working with science journalists. We will discuss the workload of a science journalist and the pressures facing the field as print news declines and online publication ascends. This includes the rise of an increasingly well-organized and slick science publicity machine, and whether the balance of power in news production is moving away from journalists and towards scientific institutions.

II The role of the science journalist

Science journalists are responsible for sourcing and writing science stories, and are likely to cover a very wide area, ranging across all fields of science, often including ‘pseudoscience’ and the borderlands of technology as well. They will most likely have a crucial advisory role behind the scenes of the newspaper/broadcasting company, offering advice on other stories that overlap with science (Williams and Clifford, 2010). The extent of this role will vary depending on the publication or broadcaster, but, for example, one present author (TM) used to provide regular advice on the newsworthiness of stories to other, non-science specialist, journalists across the BBC World Service.

It is important to note that professional norms demand that the role of a journalist, any journalist, is to report on their particular beat and not to become an advocate for the area that they cover. This ought to mean constant vigilance on the part of the journalist, as it is not always easy to achieve. A science journalist needs to ‘sell’ stories to the editor, and so must demonstrate why a particular piece of scientific research is important and worth reporting. This, however, should not extend to being a cheerleader for science in general (an idea developed more fully in Murcott, 2009).

Sources of science stories can fall into two broad categories: those that the journalists themselves uncover, and those sent to a journalist for consideration. The latter significantly outnumber the former. It means that most of a science journalist’s work is in identifying the important stories from the mountain of press releases flooding into their inbox, and delivering these in a way to their audience that provides background, context and, hopefully, compre-hension.

This dependence on press releases has led to accusations that science journalists rely too much on ‘churnalism’ (Davies, 2009), that is merely rewriting press releases instead of sourcing stories themselves. While there is some basis to this accusation – after all, the vast majority of science news stories do originate in press releases – this also reflects much of the practice of the sciences themselves, in that publication in peer-reviewed journals is the principal form of dissemination of research results. This issue is discussed at greater length below, and in Williams and Clifford (2010).

A key element of a science journalist’s work is the relationship with the editor – a point that is important to bear in mind for any reader engaging with a science journalist. While the job of a journalist is to publish or broadcast to a wide audience, they have, first and foremost, to be highly focused on an audience of one, namely their editor. The editor is the gatekeeper for the wider audience. If a journalist cannot convince an editor to publish, then the story on which they are working falls. Pitching to editors is an art in itself – the ultimate speed dating – with often only a few seconds to convince them that the article is worth precious broadcast minutes or column inches. The practical upshot of this is that, for anyone wanting to get their science story in the media, it is well worth trying to help the journalist convince their editor.

III The range of science journalism

Science is covered by all forms of media – broadcast, print, and online/book publishing. All have their own particular nuances and modes of working, but the essence for all is finding and telling a story. It is this story-telling that drives all of the media, and it can, at times, appear to conflict with the constantly revised, provisional nature of science. There is no clear end point to research, no moment of total revelation in which the truth is established. Yet a good media story needs to find a way of generating such an ending at the same time as making it clear that there are more questions to be asked. This is one of the central and perennial conundrums facing any science journalist – how to produce a narrative with a start, middle and end from a sphere of human endeavour that is not clear-cut and also, in principle, never ends. However, this is not a new challenge, and there are many methods used by journalists to get over the problem. Indeed, it could be said that the more significant challenges come from the changing face of journalism itself.

IV The value of science journalism

One role is summed up neatly in the words of pioneering 1930s’ New York Times journalist William Laurence, who described science writers as the ‘true descendants of Prometheus’, who ‘take the fire from the scientific Olympus, the laboratories and the Universities, and bring it down to the people.’ This is, of course, a valid and valuable role for any journalist to play (Nelkin, 1995: 83). Theorists of the democratic value of journalism have long argued that news should give citizens the information they need in order to make rational decisions about how to live their lives (McNair, 2009: 238). Science journalism is no exception. Indeed, one might argue that because of the often complex nature of scientific discourse, and science’s increasing centrality in disputed and heavily politicized policy debates around how we should live sustainably and healthily, this role is all the more important for journalists seeking to communicate with the public about a range of issues from medical research to climate change.

But there is something in the tone of Laurence’s words that alerts us to a potential problem with such reporting. Although the Promethean metaphor suggests a certain amount of distance between science journalists and scientists, it also affords the scientific establishment a God-like status. In the USA in the 1980s and 1990s, Nelkin (1995: 98) identified a ‘reverential attitude’ among specialists dealing with science news sources, and argued that this ‘reduces [their] professional scepticism’ and independence, and means that they can rely too much on their news sources. Boyce (2007: 33) likewise suggests that one of the main criticisms made about science specialist reporters is that ‘their relationships with sources are too familiar to remain “objective”’. Hargreaves (2003: 35) states that ‘science and science journalists are inclined to operate in alliance with each other, rather than in analytical tension’, while Haran et al. (2008) have argued that this sometimes leads specialist science reporters to display uncritical optimism when reporting on the benefits of science. Under some circumstances, this can militate against science journalism playing another important democratic role: that of holding the scientific establishment (in academia, business or politics) to account, and playing a critical, monitorial, watchdog role (McNair, 2009: 238).

In recent years, this kind of journalistic scrutiny has become more difficult because of cuts to journalism staffing levels, and the increasing workload demanded in newsrooms. For decades, political economists of the media have posited that the increasing commercialization of news has caused such pressures, and has led to falling editorial standards (Curran and Seaton, 2010; McManus, 1994, 2009; Picard, 2004). Independent, accurate and critical reporting is expensive: it costs in time, money and human resources, all of which are in increasingly short supply. Nowhere have these economic factors affected specialist science reporting as much as in the USA, where ‘large numbers of metropolitan daily newspapers have done away with their special science pages’ (Kennedy, 2010). In 1989, a total of 95 US newspapers had dedicated science sections (Brumfiel, 2009); by 2004, this number had fallen to just 34 (Mooney, 2008; Russell, 2006).

V Two recent studies of science journalism in the UK

1 Williams and Clifford

Williams and Clifford’s (2010) study into specialist science journalism sheds some light on such trends in the context of British journalism in national newspapers and in broadcast news. Drawing on the findings of an extensive internet survey of 97 journalists (response rate 43%), and 52 semi-structured interviews with current and former science journalists, their report attempts to understand the condition of UK specialist science, health and environment news journalism by gathering new data on the numbers of journalists staffing this national news beat over time, and looking into changes in working practices and working conditions (including increasing online and cross-platformnewswork). They found that there was a significant expansion in the staffing of the UK national science news beat in the 1990s (p. 21), but that this growth tailed off after 2005, when a number of key news outlets started to make cuts in science journalism (p. 29). In line with changes across the industry as a whole (Phillips, 2010: 95–97), workloads for science specialists have risen a lot and this has fuelled a number of problems (Williams and Clifford, 2010: 36).

The principal problem is that most journalists are simply pressured to produce far more news stories than their historic counterparts. Eighty-eight per cent of journalists surveyed said that their workloads had increased between 2005 and 2010 (p. 37), and long-serving science specialists bemoaned the fact that story counts had risen significantly since the 1990s (pp. 40–41). This change is partly down to pressure to produce more online and cross-platform science news: as one reporter put it, ‘the web is never full’ (p. 38). This leads to a newsroom environment where the same number of, or fewer, journalists are asked to do far more with no extra resources. Basic, day-to-day tasks, such as finding original news, researching and fact-checking stories, are now under increasing pressure. Almost half of science specialists claim that they now have ‘less time’ to check facts for accuracy, while almost a quarter say they do not have enough time to make what they regard as ‘adequate’ checks on their facts (p. 49). One national health reporter told the researchers:

We hardly ever have enough time to researchsomething properly. I am often lucky if I get to read the research paper and talk to the author. It’s exceedingly important to do this but there are just so many things to stay on top of it is often impossible to do. We have to take more on trust than I’d like to. (Williams and Clifford, 2010: 52)

This lack of time has led to a shift in the balance of power between reporters and those ‘news sources’ who supply them with the raw materials of the news.

An important element of the democratic value of any news is that it should be independent. Journalists and editors should decide what news to cover and how to present it to their audiences. The decline of journalism in general, and science journalism in particular, has led to elements of journalism practice being outsourced to powerful and efficient science news sources with slick and well-resourced public relations (PR) departments. Long-serving science journalists told Williams and Clifford that their job has been ‘de-skilled’, and has changed significantly for the worse over the last 20 years (p. 12), so much so that actually finding original stories and fresh angles from which to report them has become far less necessary. Only 23% of respondents reported that ‘most of their stories’ originated with their own ‘active journalistic investigation’; 46% say they are more often than not the ‘passive recipients’ of news story ideas from sources (p. 43). Instead, the news agenda is increasingly homogeneous, with a conservative editorial culture of ‘pack journalism’, meaning that there is often little variation between the kinds of stories covered across UK national news outlets (p. 44).

However, journalism’s demise has been more than met by a rapid increase in professional science PR over the last two decades. Not only have those in the pharmaceutical, energy and biotechnology industries hugely expanded their PR efforts, but so have political, public and non-governmental bodies such as government departments, universities, research councils, professional associations, charities, pressure groups and specialist science publications (Göpfert, 2008; Lewis et al., 2008a, 2008b; Rödder, 2009). Williams and Clifford found that, while the extent of the influence of PR on science news varies widely between different news outlets, it is undeniable that science PR has become an increasingly important and unavoidable presence over the last decade. The journalists claim that its influence is mainly as an agenda-setter, providing initial ideas for stories and a starting point for later journalistic work. Nevertheless, it also often facilitates ‘cut-and-paste’ shortcuts, which mean that news stories are increasingly similar to institutional press releases, so-called ‘low-hanging fruit’ (p. 42). A significant minority of reporters, 23%, believe science specialists rely on PR too much, and 25% of respondents said they now use more PR than previously (p. 5). Many report that sifting through the hundreds of emails they are sent by press officers every day, and arguing with news editors about whether or not to publish stories based on ‘bad science’, is a real workload issue in itself. As one national health news specialist put it, ‘part of my job is acting as a shit filter’ (p. 47).

In aggregate, these findings suggest that the prospects for high-quality, independent science journalism in the mainstream news media are diminished. It is less likely that such journalism can adequately fulfil the first role of science news – that of passing on, or translating, information – because of the limited circle of news sources that are routinely used. It seems that in some important respects much of the job of translating or conveying this news from the scientific community is being outsourced to a growing science PR and science communication sector, while journalists are more and more forced into the role of stenographers to strong science news sources. This has potentially serious consequences for the ability of science news to play the second role mentioned above: that of holding science to account. When changes in routine journalistic practice facilitate such a shift in power from journalists to their news sources, it is far less likely that reporters will be able to play a critical, democratic, watchdog role when and where that is needed.

2 The BBC impartiality report and false balance

The BBC Trust, the governing body of the BBC, commissions regular reports on the impartiality of its journalism. In 2011, they commissioned one on its reporting of science (Mellor et al., 2011). It is a wide-ranging document covering several different areas, but one of the significant results was its finding on the idea of ‘false balance’.

‘False balance’ is the notion that the important journalistic principle of balance can – albeit unwittingly – distort science reporting. An oft-cited example is that of the now infamous MMR media story that followed a statement at a press conference by Andrew Wakefield (a qualified doctor and medical researcher) that he had evidence that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine was linked to autism in children (for a sense of the scientific publication history of the research, and the subsequent retraction and exposure of research fraud, see BMJ, 2011).

When this story initially appeared in the media, the requirements of journalistic balance meant that it was often presented as debate between two contributors with equal claims to evidence and expertise, one arguing that there was a link and one that there was not. This arrangement did not reflect the reality that the large majority of researchers in the field discounted any link at all, with only a very small number of researchers arguing that one existed. ‘False balance’, it is argued, lies in the presentation of the debate as one between two individuals, thus giving the minority view far more weight and credence than it deserves.

Allegations of ‘false balance’ have been levelled at coverage of many science stories in recent years, most notably climate change (Boykoff and Boykoff, 2004, 2007). In applying journalistic norms, science is being misrepresented, so the argument goes. It is a powerful argument. Ever since it was first mounted, it has greatly exercised science journalists.

The BBC Report on science journalism involved a detailed content analysis of science reports in 2009 and 2010 (Mellor et al., 2011), and found that there was little evidence of ‘false balance’ in science reporting, particularly in the reporting of climate change. Where two individuals were interviewed to represent minority and majority views, it was generally made clear what their relative positions were in relation to the current scientific understanding. It should be remembered, however, that this study was limited to coverage by the BBC, which has a statutory responsibility to impartial reporting. Other media outlets, notably UK newspapers, have no such requirement, and these can, and do, put an editorial slant on what they report.

Yet this does not suggest that BBC science coverage was given a clean bill of health. While Mellor et al. (2011) did not identify significant instances of ‘false balance’ between news sources, they did find a serious under-sourcing in science news. Only one-third of the news items they analysed included input from more than one contributor (pp. 4, 57). As noted above, a major journalistic role involves testing, critiquing and contextualizing the claims of scientists, which is usually done by drawing on the expertise of other scientists (known as secondary sources). If a significant proportion of coverage relies on only one contributor, then journalists and their audiences have to accept what is presented to them at face value, and are given little chance to evaluate claims in the context of other expert knowledge.

VI The challenges facing science journalism in the UK

The changing nature of journalism in general (for example, the impact of industry changes on news output – see Franklin, 1997; McNair, 1998, 2000) and of science journalism in particular poses a significant challenge to the role of the science journalist in the UK and around the world. The first big challenges are the rapidly growing demands of the online world. Journalists are increasingly required to become skilled in multimedia production, and to produce multiple versions of their stories on different platforms. This leaves even less time to source original stories and to continue to follow existing ones.

The second big challenge is the expanding role of the PR professional in setting the news agenda. The result is that journalists are being inexorably squeezed into becoming ‘churnalists’, re-versioning stories sourced, framed and delivered by PR workers rather than by journalists themselves. While this might increase the number of science stories, particularly uncritical ones, it means that the primary role of the journalist in holding power to account is worryingly diminished. Much of science across the world is state-funded, and, arguably, an important principle of democracy is that recipients of such funding should be accountable to the funders, the tax payers.

This is not to assume that there is a significant misuse of funds to report, but scientific misconduct does happen – the case of Andrew Wakefield noted above being a notorious recent example. The nature of how science proceeds means that such instances are often uncovered through the key process of peer review and by others’ attempts to replicate the research work involved. However, external journalistic scrutiny is an important additional check. If science journalists become little more than a mouthpiece for science, then there are potentially serious consequences. Science may suffer from an increasing lack of credibility due to lack of proper external scrutiny. As already suggested, publishing mainly uncritical reports can misrepresent science itself. For scientific data to be valuable, their provenance and reliability need to be on show, as well as the results and outcomes. This is especially important since the vast majority of results are a balance of probabilities rather than a clear-cut ‘yes’ or ‘no’, ‘true’ or ‘false’. In addition, this will also allow making plain the sources of funding and involvement of any other interests as a matter of routine, rather than as some sort of shocking exposé.

Over the last few decades, there has been a notable acceleration in the attempts to increase the science literacy of the general public. Science communication has become a profession, and working scientists are encouraged to engage with the public in many different ways. For instance, UK Research Councils now look for assurances that the results of the projects they fund will be disseminated to audiences beyond the academy. The success or otherwise of this policy is still hotly debated, but many people in positions of influence both within and outside science see it as important. The UK Government and the EU Commission both assign funds to this role.

One of the constant refrains is that the nature and process of science should be communicated, as well as the results. All scientists know that their results are always a ‘work in progress’, and that they will be superseded in due course. However, science in the media is too often portrayed as a series of clear, well-defined results that offer another truth to the world. This was summed up well by social scientist Jack Stilgoe in a recent BBC Radio 4 programme (Murcott and Stott, 2012) when he observed that the ‘black box’ of science – its workings and processes – needs to be opened up and discussed instead of the current focus on ‘whizz-bang’ results.

An example of the type of idea crucial to, and understood within, science but rarely discussed in a wider context is that of science as ‘organized scepticism’ developed by the sociologist of science Robert K. Merton (Merton, 1973). Merton’s idea has become embedded in science, and every scientist will recognize it whether they have formally studied Merton’s work or not. It clearly explains how scientists are curious about the world but take nothing at face value, requiring solid evidence before they are prepared to accept an idea. It is a description of how an initial observation of a phenomenon is tested and refined to become an established theory, the process of science itself. Yet science is rarely portrayed in the news as a sceptical activity; indeed those with political or ideological objections to particular scientific investigations often portray themselves as sceptics, attempting to take on a mantle of credibility, even superiority, as they do so. If the process and sceptical nature of science were reported clearly alongside its results, the political or ideological agendas of this brand of scepticism would become more visible. This idea is explored in greater depth in Murcott and Stott (2012).

Meeting these current challenges requires much more from a journalist than being a ‘translator’ who re-versions information provided by others. The science journalist needs to be an intelligent critic who understands not only the output of science but also how it was produced in the first place. No political journalist would cover the story of a new piece of legislation without providing context and background, including the procedures of law-making. There is a very strong case for saying that the same should be expected of science journalists.

There are constraints, of course. It is very hard to provide context and process in a short news story, but it is not impossible. Science journalists should endeavour to communicate the provenance of research to their audience, especially in relation to research design, methods used, claims made and, crucially, the sources of funding. This is difficult, and it requires time and money, both of which are in increasingly short supply. ‘Churnalism’ fills pages and air time, and supplies the biggest output for small limited resource input. It also might suit research institutes rather well to have their positive results reported with minimal potentially awkward questions asked. But in the long run this will do science a disservice. Science is provisional, incomplete and often hard to interpret. Presenting it as a series of ‘found truths’, however well intentioned, has to be considered a form of misrepresentation. Science is also, by necessity, a sceptical pursuit. Journalism does it a disservice by reporting on it so uncritically.

Science journalists are aware of all these issues, and they do make representations to their editors for resources to dig deeper. Some succeed, and good stories have been uncovered, partly as the result of powerful investigative science journalism. The discovery of the false claims made by the Korean cloning researcher, Woo Suk Hwang, is a good example (Cyranoski, 2006), as was the eventual unmasking of Andrew Wakefield’s malpractice by the investigative reporter Brian Deer (Deer, 2011).

But more could be done.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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