Pixelated Semantics

A bit of a contrarian in the soul

The Columbia Journalism Review has an insightful article on the issues of balance in scientific journalism. While acknowledging the "prevalent but lazy form of journalism that makes no attempt to dig beneath competing claims", it skirts around the issue of corporations who fund scientific research presenting favourable scientific PR as news facts. It does however balance that slight deficiency with a valuable case study of the "small cadre of dissenting scientists (some of whom are funded, in part, by industry) in formulating [Bush administration] climate policy". And while laudibly supporting the proposition that "every good journalist has a bit of a contrarian in his soul", the writer cautions that "nonscientist journalists can all too easily fall for scientific-sounding claims that they can't adequately evaluate on their own" - so too the general public who are even less equipped to evaluate "scientific-sounding claims". Hence the ongoing political reluctance to deal with Global Warming despite the evidence being overwhelmingly clear and accepted.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 1:16 pm ::