Yesterday Ben Goldacre spoke at the Reuters Institite Ordering klonopin online, seminar. Order ativan online, For those of you who don't know, Goldacre is a medical doctor (i.e, buy klonopin online legally. Wyoming WY Wyo., a real doctor, not just a doctor of journalism like me) who runs the widely-read Bad Science blog (and who has written a book of the same name) - a blog largely dedicated to criticism of how the media cover health/medical issues, discount klonopin. Buy cheap ativan, Debate was lively, but I didn't ask any of the questions - mostly because I couldn't think what to say as I just simply agree with every single thing Goldacre said, buy klonopin overnight delivery. Massachusetts MA Mass., Media coverage of medicine and science (and of health risks in particular) is so uniformly bad and frequently directly misleading that there is simply no use trying to change journalistic practices in covering these issues - the badness is so entrenched that trying to get journalists to "get it right" is doomed to fail (if you want examples of grossly misleading health/science reporting, look no further than Goldacre's blog - my favourite examples are here, Louisiana LA, Buy ativan cheap, here and here, but there are, Florida FL Fla., Cheap ativan without prescription, sadly, many more), ordering klonopin without prescription. Instead, Goldacre's recipe for countering media misinformation about health and science is two-pronged:
Bypass the media and communicate directly with the audience - skip the middleman as the middleman just distorts (one example would be the NHS Behind the Headlines service, which looks at the actual facts behind the media's top health stories)
Undermine trust in the media through media literacy education.
The last thing is a pretty controversial thing to say to a roomful of journalists, most of whom are concerned with the fact that audiences are losing trust in the news media (for most journalists, trust in the media = good, more distrust = bad), but it didn't provoke as much outrage as you would have expected, ordering klonopin online. Colorado CO Colo., As for me, I have always thought that it is not worrying at all but rather a great thing that people trust less in the media, buy ativan online, Ordering klonopin no rx, so I was in agreement with the speaker.
Goldacre also said that when he's tried to raise these issues with journalists and editors, West Virginia WV W.Va., Purchase ativan online, they generally get very defensive and insists that their science coverage is generally fine (even when it patently isn't). This is the point where I may be able to add something to the discussion, klonopin without prescription. Cheap klonopin online, Of course, no-one likes to have it pointed out that they are wrong (I imagine they like it even less if you point out that they are so wrong it may be dangerous), North Carolina NC N.C., Ordering ativan online without prescription, but the reason Goldacre gets the reactions he does is something more than mere individual ego and insecurity. Journalists and editors don't like to hear it because Goldacre is saying that the faults and problems of the media are systemic Ordering klonopin online, , rather than caused by individual bad apples or one-time lapses of judgment. And it goes against journalistic self-preservation instinct to admit that journalism is flawed from the roots up, klonopin price. Ordering ativan online, If it is any consolation (and it probably isn't) to Goldacre and other science campaigners, journalism research is on their side - one of the most persistent findings of journalism studies over the last 50-75 years is that the faults of journalism are systemic, order klonopin. Order ativan, Everything from the way in which journalists equate objectivity and fairness with "he said/she said"-type journalism (i.e. if you have one source saying the moon is made of rock, you need to balance that with one source saying the moon is made of cheese - the underlying truth of the respective claims is "not the journalist's job"), to the way in which journalists systematically exclude or misrepresent things that do not fit in with commonly-accepted news values (several good examples in this excellent book by Michael Schudson - he's also way more measured and more well-reasoned than I have the space for here) has been well-documented by research over a long period of time. In my experience, news people don't listen very much to journalism scholars either (at least not when we're saying that systemic thing), ordering klonopin online.
This may be why fake news people are the best journalists. In this post, blogger Will Bunch explains why it takes someone who emphatically describes himself as "not a journalist" to reveal the poor practice and astounding poor quality that is built-in - rather than the result of individual mistakes/poor judgments - in journalism. By all means, please also read Bunch's earlier post on another Daily Show takedown (of business journalism - an easy target if I ever saw one).
There are some commentators who say that the only thing that can save the media is more transparency, and I agree with them. Unfortunately, transparency is the last thing most news organizations are interested in, because then people would actually see how the poor science/health stories that Goldacre talks about and the poor business stories that Stewart lampooned are actually made. Someone once said that there are two things you don't want to know how they are made - laws and sausages. I would say there are three things you don't want to know how they are made - laws, sausages and news.
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5 responses so far ↓
kristina // Nov 12, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Tack för en jättefin blog! Det var spännande att läsa om Goldacre. Fortsätt med det!
kristina // Nov 12, 2009 at 5:46 pm
One thing though. I just hate the word “fake news”… why do they call it that? Its not fake news - 1) its not fake, 2) its not news. It does what the court gester has always done. Tell the emperor he has no clothes. Now that Bush is gone, the emperor is the media.
Henrik // Nov 13, 2009 at 11:28 am
kristina: thanks for the kind words. And by all means do check out Goldacre! His blog is worth it.
As for the “fake news” label, it seems it’s Stewart’s own. The Daily Show is routinely referred to as “fake news” by its producers.
It may not be news, but I do think that the Daily Show is (sometimes) journalism - they do research, find out the facts, and then report it, though in the form of satire, rather than news.
Meh // Nov 13, 2009 at 2:45 pm
My view is still that the problem with media is not in the crappy way they report, but in the selection of things to report on.
Even if we magically could transform all reporting into factually correct and responsibly researched stories, what good would it do?
Around the clock absolutely correct coverage of American Idol would still be crap.
Henrik // Nov 14, 2009 at 9:59 am
Meh: Perhaps I should have been more clear. The problem is of course selection as well as actual production. The flaws of journalism are present in all steps of the newsgathering process.
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