Dumbing It Down

How much science and technology do reporters think you can handle?

by Steve Weinberg

Do journalists believe the public is incapable of understanding science stories? Or that readers won't tackle difficult subjects, biotechnology chief among them, unless the reporting is dumbed-down and sexed-up? MU's Glen T. Cameron fears the answer to both questions is yes.

"Dumbing down intellectually is almost inevitable," Cameron says. Why? Because, he says, science journalists writing for a general audience feel obligated to try to reach as many audience members as possible.

Nothing wrong with that. "But," Cameron adds, "dumbing down emotionally, or shirking a duty to make the tough call in place of pseudo-balance, is counterproductive to science understanding. It's a matter of having the guts to make a stand, based on substance, for what the reporter thinks is the best current scientific understanding without being a cheerleader or a friend to industry."

Cameron grew up on a Montana ranch where, as a boy, he watched his family lose a wheat crop while neighbors using up-to-date seed strains entirely avoided the blight. The conflict between nature and applied science, seen up close and personal, planted a life-long fascination in Cameron's mind.

As he matured, Cameron came to realize that most of what he knew, or thought he knew, about science came from journalists. During his doctoral studies at the University of Texas-Austin's College of Communication, Cameron began researching the realm of managing conflict, including how science controversies play out in the media.

In 1998, he arrived at MU to fill the newly endowed Maxine Wilson Gregory Chair in Journalism Research. He has since conducted numerous projects that have contained the seeds of scholarly disagreement. But when he and former MU doctoral candidate Mugur V. Geana decided to survey U.S. science and medical journalists, they did not foresee controversy arising. They expected only to publish a descriptive article about the characteristics of the responding journalists. Geana, who has earned an MD degree in addition to his recently granted doctorate, is now an assistant professor of strategic communication at the University of Kansas.

Of the science journalists selected for the survey, 304 chose to participate -- an unexpectedly high response rate of 67 percent. These eager respondents provided a wealth of potentially important insights into how working journalists believe their biotechnology reporting is perceived by editors, sources and, most importantly, by the reading public.

Cameron and Geana presented their findings at the International Communication Association meeting last June in Dresden, Germany. Their work got a prickly reception, thanks chiefly to statements like this one: "[the study] suggests that while these journalists have a high understanding of science and technology and a high regard for the quality of their scientific sources, they do not have a highly positive perception of the general public regarding its potential to understand scientific issues and are fervent supporters of digesting publicized scientific news." In other words, reporters feel the public can handle only short, simple science stories.

More specifically, Cameron and Geana found that about 90 percent of the science journalists surveyed believe biotechnology is beneficial. But almost all thought their own favorable perspective was out of touch with the attitudes of their readers. Journalists believed only about half of U.S. citizens favor biotechnology use, and the reporters tended to embrace the point of view that most Americans are nervous about biotechnology issues because the science is too difficult to understand.

This perception of public ignorance has left science journalists feeling uncertain about how exactly they should write about biotechnology. But they were sure about one thing: close to 75 percent told Cameron and Geana they felt the need to simplify their stories.

What might this mean to a public research university such as MU? The implications are far-reaching, penetrating to the heart of the University's role in building a technologically advanced society. Without the support of a well-informed public, no research-intensive institution can expect to prosper. For better or worse, the vast majority of the public learns about scientific advances, as Cameron's own experience shows, via the mass media.

So why are journalists so pessimistic about the public's ability to understand and appreciate biotechnology, especially applications such as genetically modifying plants to boost yields and prevent diseases? And if the public is indeed incapable of grasping the meaning of biotechnology and other science stories, who is to blame for this failure?

Cameron and Geana began their search for answers by documenting the quantity of science coverage. They accomplished this by using the news-content database maintained by LexisNexis Academic to tally headlines that included the terms "genetics," "genetically modified foods" and "biotechnology." Their count showed that, over the past five years, science news stories on these topics in major American newspapers showed a marked decline.

This initial finding left Cameron and Geana wondering whether today's biotechnology coverage wasn't akin to what had once happened with the United States space program. In the early 1970s, they recalled, network executives decided to scrap live transmissions from Apollo 13 because they feared moon shots were too passé to attract an audience. Apollo 13's subsequent difficulties and perilous descent, of course, soon caused them to revert to what then passed as saturation coverage.

Could today's journalists similarly believe the public has simply lost interest in biotechnology stories? Not likely, the researchers reasoned. Biotechnology has, they say, been increasing its role in almost every aspect of day-to-day living. It has even begun to play a starring role in popular culture offerings such as movies and novels. Perhaps then, Cameron and Geana decided, they should examine just how "adequately, continually and thoroughly does media cover science?"

Following this line of inquiry led the researchers to some disheartening, if not entirely surprising, findings about the state of science journalism today. The articles he and Geana analyzed seemed not only "intellectually dumbed down" but also "emotionally dumbed down." In other words, they found that science journalists were not just reluctant to help readers penetrate the complexities of modern technologies, reporters were also disinclined to communicate, at least to readers, their own enthusiasm for the science subjects they covered.

"While scientific reporters seemed to have a generally positive approach to biotechnology -- and shared these beliefs with friends and peers -- they were not so optimistic about the beliefs of the general public," Cameron and Geana wrote.

Part of this attitude surely derives from the conventions of journalism, which mandate that reporters keep their own feelings out of stories. But the data also suggests that many journalists equate professional distance and nonprejudicial reporting with an adversarial focus that is rarely appropriate for reporting science. This means they often spin important findings in order to emphasize a hyped-up "conflict frame" they feel audiences would more easily understand.

Although the Cameron-Geana survey offers fresh material, the questions it spawns are familiar to Robert Logan. Until a few years ago, Logan taught the science journalism courses at MU, where he also served as an associate dean of the journalism school. Now he is an administrator at the National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

As for journalists simplifying stories for generalist readers, Logan says this is logical, because audience members want to digest a study's major findings and the implications for day-to-day living. "Overall, this decision makes sense and I defend journalists for leaning in this direction," Logan says.

Nevertheless, the practice can cause problems. "The public does not learn how science works," Logan says. "Over time, people are unable to judge how the weight of the evidence in science is advanced and why some research is seen as more definitive or comprehensive than other studies about the same topic. This creates a vicious cycle that means citizens often lack the skills or tools to weigh in authoritatively on science issues, such as genetically modified crops, or to determine if the evidence merits the accompanying hyperbole."

Logan worries that the exclusion of the public from judging evidence is unhealthy, leaving decisions to science elites and political spin doctors. As a result, Logan advocates teaching both kinds of story development in journalism classrooms: the relatively superficial stories that present major findings and the in-depth stories that examine the evidence itself.

Publishing the most informative science stories possible can prove difficult if everything must fit into the sort of conflict frame mentioned in the Cameron-Geana survey, Logan says. The conflict frame is especially problematic when a science journalist feels privately that a particular line of research holds promise for improving day-to-day living.

Logan says an emphasis on conflict within science is sometimes merited "if there really are arguments over evidence, or if the topic at hand is about policy or socioeconomic implications of aggregate results rather than the findings per se." At MU, Logan says, "I trained students not to contrive the introduction of a contrary opinion about research or findings." If ferment exists in a field of science -- ferment not created by a journalist seeking editorial "balance" -- Logan says it should be reported, but in a separate story, when practical.

To illustrate, Logan provides an example involving Gordon Sharp, a physician and professor at MU's School of Medicine. Sharp has published extensively about mixed tissue connective disease, an autoimmune disorder that he suspects might provide an underlying mechanism for the occurrence of arthritis in the human body.

Logan says that numerous scientists around the world agree with Sharp's findings. "But there are other good explanations about how and why the immune system attacks itself, causing arthritis," he says. "Mixed tissue connective disease is one of a few plausible explanations. The definitive account with compelling evidence for its superiority is yet to be determined."

While teaching at MU, Logan turned to this close-to-home controversy to help journalism students explore two tracks -- a straightforward account of Sharp's research and a more contextual story. For the straightforward account, Logan did not ask students to contact other rheumatologists "who may be skeptical about mixed tissue connective disease because their work reflects a different approach."

For the larger story, however, Logan did encourage students to learn as much as possible about scientists on different paths. "I believe the bigger story -- the development and status of robust theories to explain autoimmune disease -- is worth a separate telling," Logan says. "While competitive, it is not controversy."

Journalists with science backgrounds are especially desirable when contextual stories are appropriate, Logan says. But, he adds, training as a scientist is certainly not necessary to reporters looking to move away from the conflict frame, especially in its mindless iteration of "on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand" objectivity.

Journalism researchers have, in fact, identified many storytelling frames for science reporters. One such researcher is Susanna Hornig Priest, who tracks coverage of biotechnology from the Texas A&M master's program in science journalism.

In 2003, Priest collaborated with Toby Ten Eyck, a former radio journalist teaching at Michigan State University, to identify eight "frames" based on science journalism from the presses of multiple nations. Among them were Progress: How is the growth of biotechnology an advancement of existing knowledge? Economic: What financial developments are related to new drugs and crops? Ethics: What role, if any, should humans play in tinkering with genetics? Pandora's Box: What are the consequences of technological advancement? Runaway technology: Do we really know where science is headed? Nature/nurture: Are we moving toward designer babies and alterations of other plant/animal species? Public accountability: Who is regulating biotechnology research? And finally, globalization: Which scientists are doing what around the world, and how will their work affect us here?

These frames, when emphasized by journalism educators, could go a long way toward ending the dumbing-down trend. But Cameron and others caution that the burden of creating better science reporters should not fall on journalism educators alone. Scientists themselves have a role to play by providing accessibility and patience.

Cameron and Geana's survey demonstrates that too often both of these qualities are in short supply. "How easy is it for science journalists to find science resources and stories?" they ask. Not very, is their conclusion.

This seems ironic, given Cameron and Geana findings showing high confidence and strong respect among science journalists for the expertise and integrity of scientists. But researchers don't avoid journalists because reporters don't like them. They shy away because they fear stories won't be accurately reported. Some are also concerned that departmental colleagues will view press coverage as self-promotion.

For their part, journalists hope intelligent, conflict-free, science reporting will change all that. Already there are indications this is happening. Source and reporter relationships are improving, says Ricki Lewis, one of the nation's most prominent science writers. "The best scientists return your calls."