In light of the recent AFP raids on Australian journalists, this article by journalism academic Glynn Greensmith in WA Today is a timely read to remind us about what journalism, why we need it, and why we should care about these raids. “Journalism is the gatekeeper of democracy. We’ve been directly or indirectly told this for thousands of years, yet in our world the only people who seem to understand its worth are the ones seeking to diminish it,” he writes. Read more here.
Category: Articles
Fairfax newspapers The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have published their guidelines for reporting on medical research, which includes a focus on human trials published in reputable, peer-reviewed journals. Other principles include examining conflicts of interest disclosures, seeking independent comment, and avoiding terms such as ‘safe’, ‘guaranteed’ or ‘miraculous’. The full guidelines can be viewed here.
The Open Notebook has waded into a debate that has been going on since the early days of modern science journalism: do you need a science degree to be a science journalist? This great piece by journalist Aneri Pattani tackles the question nicely, by outlining the advantages – and disadvantages – that a science degree confers in various aspects of science reporting.
In my experience and world, I know excellent science journalists both with and without science degrees, and with and without journalism degrees (for the record: I have a science degree, but never studied journalism). The bottom line, according to Pattani, is choose your own path; there is no one right way to become or be a science journalist, which will hopefully comfort everyone. Read about it here.
Science writers aren’t stenographers; an important part of their job in reporting science is also to scrutinise it. To advance that, US science journalist Liza Gross has published The Science Writing Investigative Reporting Handbook: A Beginner’s Guide To Investigations, aided by a grant from the National Association of Science Writers.
I haven’t got to reading this yet, but as the third in a series of handbooks put out by the awesome bunch of science writers known collectively as SciLance, I have very high hopes for it. Their previous book The Science Writers’ Handbook is absolutely the best book on science writing and freelancing I have read, so I have no doubt this new publication will be of the same high quality.
Here’s what Gross has to say in her blog post on the book’s release: “I wanted to demystify investigative reporting for my fellow science writers and give them both the tools and confidence to launch their own investigations. I wanted to share the knowledge I’d picked up on the fly as a greenhorn, and later gleaned from workshops, tutorials, my own accumulated experience and sage advice from veteran investigators.”
You can buy the book via Amazon or Amazon Australia.
It’s an ongoing source of tension between scientists and the science journalists reporting on them: many scientists believe they have the right to review any reporting of their work, while many science journalists and science outlets argue they don’t.
In this piece in Undark magazine, reporter Dana Smith looks into the issue, interviewing both scientists and science journalists to see what they think. “At first glance, this fundamental journalism question appears to be black and white, but it turns out to have a lot of gray,” she writes.
It’s a timely article that picks up on some recent discussions on social media, such as this Twitter post by scientist Kyle Jasmin and another by neuroscientist Chris Chambers.