[MUSIC] Welcome to this, the third module of the online course communicating trustworthy information in the digital world. My name is Richard Hudson, I am a science and technology journalist. I'm the editor in chief of Science Business, a European based media company. In this session, we are going to be looking at the role of science journalists in misinformation, disinformation. Hopefully on what they can do to prevent that from spreading or debunk it, and the ways in which they have to deal with it. So big questions for this discussion, I am joined by Deborah Blum. She is the director of the Knight Science Journalism program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. In this session, we're going to be talking about how science journalism works or how it's supposed to work. We're going to be talking about what happens with this problem of disinformation and misinformation, and how professional journalists could or should deal with it. And then how science journalism fits into the broader world of science and policy. So join us now as we begin the discussion with Deborah. [MUSIC] Welcome Deborah. >> Thanks Rich, it's great to be here. >> Let's start this discussion with just explaining a little bit about how science journalism happens. I mean, you could call it journalism 101, first of all what is a science journalist? Who employs them? What's the variety of them? >> Sure will, science journalism is a distinct specialty at this point in the great landscape of journalism that wasn't always true. The real professionalism of science journalism probably started about the 1880s or so. When you start seeing training programs at different universities saying so, you want to communicate science. Let's make that an actual profession, let's teach that as a specialty. But right now what you have is a subset of journalists who are trained in communicating, explaining, illuminating, even investigating science. And to do that, some of them are scientists who go on to get communications training. Some of them are journalists who go back to graduate school and study more science. >> Right, as with your own program. >> As with my own program at MIT. And so you take this group of people who are very focused on how do I best explain, tell, explore the landscape of science, and you will find them scattered across the media landscape. >> And, so take me through a little bit, how does a story happen? How does a journalist decide for one thing? What's the story? Out of all of the universe of science news out there, why does that story get published and that one doesn't? >> I think that's one of the great mysteries for people who are not in journalism. Why did you decide to write about this, right? And I want to say, and I'll come back to this point, it's not one size fits all. I mean, every journalist will operate slightly different in the stories they pick that are not what I'm going to call part of the common news feed. But just to pick a standard science journalism at work kind of story. Sometimes it's, you mentioned, you referenced the journal nature or the journal science or in medicine. Maybe the Journal of the American Medical Association >> Yeah >> Or some of the big medical >> Or Lancet or British Medical Journal >> Or Lancet or BJM, right >> Yeah. >> Just a whole host of these, they'll actually put out a whole advanced notice of what they're going to publish. And you can look a week ahead of publication and what's going to appear in the big journals. >> Yeah. >> You are a science journalist, you get this list, this is what I think of sort of the pack part of the reporting, right? And the journalists themselves will promote certain stories, this is going to be our big story. >> Yeah. >> And we may even have a press conference about it, it's such a big story. So that you have this sort of prod to the whole community of science journalists, everyone's going to be doing there, you should be there too. >> That's what happened for instance, when the latest discovery on black holes >> That's exactly right. >> Huge, across the globe, there were coordinated press conferences. >> That's exactly right, and I think people who are working in journalism don't realize how this can sometimes be led by the science community rather than the journalistic community, right? So all of that's kind of the predictable part of a normal news cycle. And in that sense, that's not so different from the machinery of any other story. A sports team promoting a specific event >> Yeah. >> A government promoting a specific piece of legislation, the big institutions of science put these things forward, and that drives some of the news cycle. Individually, >> Yeah >> I might look at that same list of stories that was sent out to me by science and say, well, everyone else is going to be doing this. But I find this small, obscure study of the disappearance of insects in tropical rainforests. Really interesting and important part of the whole cycle of the, that we're now seeing with the loss of biological diversity. >> Yeah. >> And I'm going to pull that out, one because I'm an environment reporter and I recognize it, is something in a way that other journalists might not. Or there's a really interesting scientist at the heart of this story and he, and I happen to have >> The story can be personalized perhaps, yeah >> Yeah, am saying this guy eats insects and he's mourning the loss of lunch. >> [LAUGH] >> Right? Without making any prod >> Okay, all right, I'll beleieve that one >> Right? So you'll see something in there that no one else saw, and those stories are more fun. And journalists, and you would get this Rich as a longtime journalist, we all of us tend to play to our storytelling strengths. So, we'll sometimes just look at these and we'll say this is a great story. Other people wouldn't see it because of the way you like to tell a story. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> So there's a lot of individual idiosyncratic chance in this problem. >> That's exactly right, and that's one of the reasons that if you're a scientist, it makes a lot of sense for you to know the people in your area. Not everyone, but who covered this, because then you would have a sense of what kind of stories they're going to pull out of the grab bag, for instance. >> So you think of researchers should actually try to make friends with journalists? >> Yes, I do actually, and as a longterm science journalist, I've had scientists quite often reach out to me. When I was a reporter in California, I actually had a physicist and I'm not a physics writer. But I had a physicist who called me up and he said I have this really interesting study. And it's so complicated that the university press office is not going to do a press release and they've rejected me. >> And that is a wonderful way to get a journalist to be intrested >> [LAUGH] Just call me up. >> [LAUGH] >> But I had to, and I had to say to him, because I don't cover high energy and particle physics. >> Yeah. >> And it's also important to know where your strengths are, I said to him, okay, I think this is a really interesting story. I'm going to do it, and I'm going to send you all the technical descriptions so you can tell me if I'm screwing this up or not, right? And that's also important in your relationship with the reporter, that you're able to have those kind of conversations. >> Yeah, okay, so now how, however this is the idea that this story arises, what happens the writer just writes it? The TV journalists just shoots it? What? >> Right, and I'll tend to talk from a print perspective, because I'm a print journalist, either online or in actual on paper. >> Yeah. >> But once I have finished the story, I may, depending on how complicated the story is, talk to my editor about it, right? What I'm doing, where I think it's going, I might even, what I think the primary, sometimes we'll call this a hook. What is it that's going to make this a story that the publication is going to want to pick up. >> Right. >> And every good journalist does that because they want their editor to be behind the stand. >> And I would say you are a good journalist also, who is able to summarize what's the hook in one sentence. >> That's right, the magic one sentence >> Yeah >> That tells you what the story is about. But you also want to do that because you want your editor to get behind the story. And a lot of times at publications, all the editors will get together for the big, a roundtable of editors. In which they'll talk about what are the stories that are coming up, and where we're going to put them [INAUDIBLE] >> Wait, hey, you're jumping ahead and here is the [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay >> So the writer writes it, and then it's read by others? >> It is totally and should be read by others. In the normal news structure, you write your story and you have talked to your editor about it because you want your editor to be jazzed about it. And so I did get ahead of myself there, and then when you finish it you turn it into your editor. And in a standard structure, I mean, and I'm really talking about a paper that's regional to major size here or a large newsroom. >> Yeah. >> And even a large digital newsroom. The writer turns in the story, it goes to what I think it was the first editor, and the first editor works with the writer until they think that story is worth pushing forward another level. It may go to a fact checker, it may go to a copy editor, and then it, I'm going to use as an example just for a minute. Your story goes to your primary editor, it goes to a fact checker, and then it goes to the top editor who polishes, and smooths, and improves, and looks for additional holes. So there's usually that sort of three to four step process in any good newsroom operation, because you want people coming up behind you. Reporters talk complain a lot about editors >> Yeah. >> But editors catch mistakes >> Absolutely. >> And fact checkers catch mistakes, and two heads are always better than one in this process. So the normal process is not that it's the reporter turns it in and it just appears. And quite often at publications, the reporter does not write the headlines say >> Yes. >> This is a common mistake that people who don't know the industry, they'll, I hate the headline to the reprot, I hated the headline you put on that and the reporter hated it too. [LAUGH] Right? >> Yeah. >> But had no say in the headlines. >> And in a big organization, the reporter has little direct influence >> That's exactly right >> Except for if, unless it's going wrong and inaccurate. >> And so you really, you want the reporter to, good reporters wanted to go through a multistep process, and it should before it gets published. I have written a couple of freelance pieces for science, the news side of science recently, and those have gone through three or four editing steps. >> Now, that's for big publications. >> Yes. >> And that's when I used to work for the Wall Street Journal, that's exactly the system that you described. There would have been, there were, there still is, at least six or seven pairs of eyes that are going over this before it actually gets published in different ways. But then if you come to a small organization like Science Business, half dozen people in the whole news organization. We don't have a dedicated fact checker, we have a managing editor, a copy editor if you will, who is a superb journalist and she does it, she does fact checking herself. But it is possible even in small specialized organizations to have this kind of checking balance. >> It is, but copy editors can often be exceptional fact checkers, right? >> Yeah. >> I mean, I am throwing around the fact checker label and there is a whole specialty of fact checkers. It's something we've been working on in my program, but the much more standard model is the copy editor who both goes through the piece and edits it for flow >> Right. >> And all of the other things you want to know and as smoothly told story, but also is able to say that makes no sense. Or did that really happen? Or did you spell that person's name right? >> Is there an ethical code of some kind for journalists? I mean, for science journalists are science journalists objective for instance? >> I do think that there are sort of immutable ethical standards in the way we should work, not making a case that everyone follows them. But there are certain sort of absolutely don't cross this line kind of rules that I think apply to all journalists, not just science journalists. You can also have in journalism situational ethics. And I think of that as you're going to decide, here's a good example, at least from my own experience. I was writing about primary research and I found through public records, the home address of a researcher. She actually was doing primary research on the property, she had her home with her children. And she also had a research lab, it was in a rural part of California, and so she completely freaked out when I contacted her. >> All right. >> Because she thought that once I put this out in public, people would attack her at her home or hassle her children, and they would all feel unsafe where they were. And so classic journalism standards, this information is public record, anyone can get it. And if I could get it, I knew animal activists could get it to. But situationally, is the story worth >> Causing that pain. >> Causing that pain? And I decided it wasn't. >> Yeah. >> So even though by classic journalistic standards, I had gotten the information and could have used it, I didn't. I quoted her anonymously in a way that didn't disclose where she was. So I think we do have to make those kinds of decisions. >> What about two sides of every story? >> Which I can >> Is that in science? [LAUGH] >> No, actually, and I'm not sure there's two equal sides to every story in any situation. And that's sort of an artifact of political reporting as much as anything else, right? We used to, I think falsely tell journalists that in order to be objective, we had to represent the equal two sides of every story. In that here's the republican side, I'm using US government. >> Yeah >> Let's say conservative and Liberal. >> Yeah. >> Here's the conservative side, here is the liberal side, we present them both equally as if neither >> And you decice, yeah. >> Yeah, you, just good luck out there reader >> [LAUGH] >> Because I'm not even going to give you a clue as to what the right decision is, right? >> Yeah. >> That particularly, I would argue that actually isn't all that great in politics all of the time. But it definitely isn't true in science because when you're covering science, what you want to do if you're good as a science writer. And I don't think of this as subjective, is do the research to figure out where the weight of the evidence slice, and tell the story from that point, right? >> Right. >> And to qualify your sources. So just to give you an early example, what I'm going to call false balance and I'm not the person who discovered this. Early in the reporting of global climate change, report journalists, and I would include myself in that, were required by their editors to write about climate change. And always showed that there were two sides to it. And this often meant interviewing people who were right where the consensus was, this is happening. And then interviewing someone who was actually often paid by the Oil and Gas Industry. But it was a contrarian scientists who would say, no, no, no, no, there's just still a lot of uncertainty in this. >> Yeah. >> And presenting them as if they were equal. And when we in the community of science journalists go back and look at that, we realize we did a huge disservice to the science and to our readers and listeners or viewers. Because we led them to think that there wasn't a consensus, and we didn't give them any information as to where the weight of the evidence was. And we created this artificial Smaltz balance when there actually wasn't a balance. >> Yeah. And so it's on us as science journalists to acknowledge that truth is a lot more complicated than two sides. And to do enough homework, not only to figure out where the evidence is, but to vet the sources enough to know who should be taken seriously. One of the things we've learned from covering issues like climate change, is not to do the equal balance, pretend to be objective. Full the reader into thinking, wait, there isn't actually a point here where there's some weight and evidence behind it. And learning that, I think we're much smarter at what we do. [MUSIC]
