Short [criticism on the media]
- Brendan O’Neill reflects on the cynicism among journalists:
the media’s self-obsession knows no bounds. This assumption on the part of some journalists that it’s their job to harangue the government over every issue also points to a hole at the heart of British politics. They are effectively trying to fill the gap left by the decline of political and public debate, and presenting themselves as a new Opposition. Instead we get the New Cynicism and an increasingly degraded public debate.
- Why is science news in newspapers always wrong, or at least rather incomplete?
Statistics are what causes the most fear for reporters, and so they are usually just edited out, with interesting consequences. Because science isn’t about something being true or not true: that’s a humanities graduate parody. It’s about the error bar, statistical significance, it’s about how reliable and valid the experiment was, it’s about coming to a verdict, about a hypothesis, on the back of lots of bits of evidence.
[x]#1410 fan zondag 11 september 2005 @ 14:05:35
gelkinghe op 11 september 2005 @ 19:33:25
Nieuws is altijd incompleet, bij gebrek aan ruimte. En zelfs bij wetenschapsnieuws gaat het om het verhaal, daarom gaat er ook wel eens wat mis.
Kennelijk wil O’Neill de lezers opschepen met eindeloze nuances, overvoorzichtige hypotheses en allerlei slagen om de arm, maar ik denk niet dat de lezer daar nou zo op zit te wachten.
(Ben zelf overigens geen wetenschapsjournalist.)