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European Science Writers Award |
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Scientific Journalism - a Risky Business I have a secret to confess. It is the secret behind successful scientific journalism. And it can be described in a single word: fun. When everything falls perfectly into place, scientific journalism is a lot of fun - for the scientists, the journalists and the readers. Of course, that sounds trivial. After all, the ink is hardly dry on the obituaries of our so-called "fun society". Dark times are upon us, I know. But there is an anthropological constant that just won't go away. Humans want to be entertained. They want to play. That is, after all, a form of learning, and human beings are indeed animals craving to learn. That is their evolutionary advantage. Humans' yearning for fun and games also serves as a form of psychological hygiene, something to shore up the soul. It helps them come to terms with life's adversities. As a result, the desire to be entertained becomes a true need, particularly in times of crisis. Science writers have a huge advantage: Their subject is extremely entertaining. And that has a lot to do with the aim of scientific research: It is always chasing down something new. Thus, times of crisis - perhaps more than any other - need scientifically fuelled stimulation. People immersed in a culture of curiosity will - possibly - come up with new ideas. "Knowledge Keeps No Better Than Fish" In the natural sciences, the daily focus is on discovering the new and re-evaluating the old. Or in the words of the logician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead: "Knowledge keeps no better than fish." This sentence also reveals the deep kinship between science and journalism. We have a close relationship with fish, too. Today, we print journalists pack a newspaper full of words. Tomorrow, the reader packs it full of fish. This saying has a long tradition: The Roman poet Martial described the process of wrapping fish in writing paper way back in the first century after Christ. However, Martial didn't know a thing about television. For their part, German broadcast journalists have their own saying that expresses the same sentiment somewhat differently: "This'll be a winner." I say this with a feeling of regret. But it is actually a good thing when "a winner" goes out over the airwaves and the printed word disappears. This creates room for the new. The media's short attention span, a phenomenon that is the repeated target of criticism, does indeed have its positive side. We always have something new to tell, we science writers in particular. Curiosity and Scepticism About the "New" But it is not easy to maintain a sense for the new. People who have toiled away in this business for years often hear about something that is apparently new. Just how many final breakthroughs in solar technology have I experienced! Again and again, a schizophrenia gene is being discovered, cancer nearly conquered, and engineers take a page out of nature's book in their efforts to design in resource-conserving ways. And if that is not enough, then hydrogen is on its way to becoming the dominant force in energy technology, cars will one day be ceramic and newspapers electronic. When you hear that time and time again, you run the risk of rejecting every story idea. Been there. Done that. The subject's worn out, there's nothing new here. And it can get even more discouraging: This is just as trivial and boring as the stuff we just had. Falling prey to this sort of attitude is an occupational hazard for a journalist whose job is all about the scientific search for the new. Sure, scepticism is a virtue, but curiosity is, too - at least it's a journalistic virtue. If you carefully retain your sense for the new, you will keep discovering stories that have not been told before and finding pictures that have not been shown before. And because this is possible in scientific journalism, it is becoming increasingly interesting to the media economy. Science Is in Demand The media are a branch of the economy that produces products and services just as other branches of the economy do. The products and services that are actually produced depend largely on the demand for them. And how do things look at present? The demand for scientific journalism appears to be growing. That is proven by the new scientific programs with their widely known hosts. That is also proven by the steady circulation figures of magazines that focus on science. In the fight for attention waged by the media, scientific journalism has some clear advantages. But the question is: What is scientific journalism? At this point, though, it would be helpful to think for a moment about what science actually is. Whatever it may be, one thing is certain: It is a social process. Humans are present and acting. That makes it a social process. It is a social process that creates knowledge. Regardless of what knowledge is considered to be, one prerequisite for it is that somebody is convinced of its validity. A social process in which convictions are created. At the least, that is science. We Don't Create Acceptance What, then, is the duty of the scientific journalist? What is his or her beat? Earlier, the widespread view was that the journalist should act as science's interpreter. But that's wrong. The scientific journalist is supposed to write critically about science. About the process that creates convictions and, of course, about the convictions themselves. The scientific journalist, in other words, is not someone who creates acceptance. Just as the political reporter may not be the mouthpiece of the government, the business writer may not be the mouthpiece of business, the restaurant critic may not be the mouthpiece of food industry, the science writer is not the mouthpiece of the scientific community. The journalist doesn't have to politely wait for the German research foundation to make up its mind about a scientific scandal - as was recently suggested to me in a letter. Instead, he or she should be a service provider for the public in scientific questions - to the best of his or her ability. Well-Told Stories Should Rouse The Reader Reporting about science doesn't mean simply regurgitating its findings. The political journalist does not just report about the latest change in federal law or about some other activity of the government. We broadcast and print information about the process, about the production of knowledge or politics. And, as a result, about the actions of human beings, about social relationships and interactions. That is not just important. That is also more interesting. This way, we can tell stories. And nothing rouses the viewer or reader more than a well-told story. In a cultural and historical sense, the journalist is descended from storytellers. And I have no wish to see a wall between entertainment and information. At this point, though, I need to carry out a reality check. Even though scientific journalism is expanding in Germany, the total number of scientific programs and articles is rising and the number of young, capable and well-educated colleagues on the beat is growing and educational initiatives are being conducted - despite all of these positive signs, danger lurks. This danger lurks in the crisis that is eating away at the media economy business model known as the newspaper. In the face of this crisis, some publishing companies are reacting unimaginatively by cutting the very resources that create knowledge: the number of editors, the pay of freelance writers, the subscriptions to trade journals, and the trips to congresses and laboratories. Risky Tendencies: Surfing Replaces Reporting Trips This business policy limits knowledge and the time to acquire it. That's very risky. Such a strategy has no place the knowledge economy. And it promotes extremely bad habits. Like reading the press release instead of the original study. Or surfing in Google instead of going to see for yourself. Clear, critical ways of thinking are endangered. The outcome would be the end of enlightening articles, the end of real stories. At this point, I can only issue a warning. The reader is not stupid, he or she will notice - at some point. And then the image will start to suffer as well. Media products, newspapers in particular, are brand products. Just like cars. Heaven forbid that cheap plastic should turn up in the interior of a luxury car and then begin to peel off after a couple of weeks. Bad habits, carelessness, shallowness - these risks lurk in areas where potentially hazardous jobs are performed. Journalism is also a potentially hazardous job. Risky Business The law books tell us what a hazardous job is: "A job is considered to be hazardous when the type of work performed by the employee involves an extremely high level of probability that mistakes can be made, leading to damage that is out of proportion to the income of the employee." I'll ignore the second part of the definition for the moment and focus instead on the "extremely high level of probability that mistakes can be made". In a full-speed profession like journalism, such conditions definitely do exist. Millions get mixed up with billions, millimetres with nanometres, atoms with molecules, carbon with carbon dioxide and stem cells with embryos - and that's before statistics come into the picture. A good newspaper in Berlin once reported that "in Japan and China, average temperatures are way above the mean measurements." The mysterious East. But journalism has a tendency to make mistakes. It is indeed risky. The temptations that members of the media face are also filled with risks. The journalist who always has to comprehend and explain scientific work may start to believe that he or she is some sort of scientist, too. This happens to political journalists as well. Increasingly, you become drawn to the people whom you cover. The Danger of Assimilation And these people think it's great. They'll ask the journalist to write a foreword for a book, invite him or her to moderate an event or give a talk, or hand him or her an award. First names start being used. There is really nothing wrong with this in principle. A journalist shouldn't stay outside the communities he or she covers, but should move around within them. But the journalist should never believe that he or she actually belongs there. If that happens, the journalist simply becomes a mouthpiece. That is a harmful side effect of the recognition that a journalist can experience. Being a press spokesperson is something else entirely. That is an honourable job. But not the one for which the journalist is being paid. The journalist's job is to serve as a scout who conducts reconnaissance missions in the jungles of research on the behalf of readers. The journalist journeys to a site, asks questions, takes a long look around and returns with stories to tell. The greatest occupational hazard faced by science writers is that they will forget this responsibility. In the long term, journalists won't find much satisfaction in their work when they no longer have any stories to tell and instead become mere regurgitators of information. Only those journalists who feel joy in the object of their work and the journalistic forms can also create it in readers and viewers. It doesn't matter how useful scientific journalism is for country, business, understanding or whatever. Perhaps, its most appealing quality is this: It makes fun. (c) Gero
von Randow |
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Gero
von Randow received the European Science Writers Award in June
2003 from the organization