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Spring 2007 Interview with Fiona Fox |
Stempra newsletter
CB You came to the Science Media Centre from a non-science background. How do you think science communications differ from non-science NGOs/charities? FF Coming into science from a campaigning NGO it is striking how different the cultures are. In the world of NGOs everything is done with an eye to public perception and how to portray this through the media. It is still relatively recently that scientists have woken up to the importance of working with the media to get their message across. This means that while there are many good science press officers around, they often struggle to persuade their scientists of the need to engage with the media. In some ways I think that science is 10 years behind other areas of press relations in terms of playing the media game. CB What do you think the SMC has achieved over the last 5 years? FF I am convinced that the Science Media Centre has ensured that the voices of many more scientists have been heard in media debates around some of the most controversial issues in society. This is strikingly apparent when you look at the long lists of interviews the SMC has set up and the comments that have been used after huge stories like the Sudan 1 cancer scare, human-animal hybrid embryos, polonium 210, the Parexel clinical trial disaster and avian flu. Experts had their say as a story broke and we have seen time and again how this has an enormous impact on the way the media runs these stories. CB Where do you see the future of the media - and what do you think of new media? FF There is no doubt that the future of the media is online, and this would include online news, blogs, podcasts and webcasts. However, there are definitely some people who over exaggerate the trend and suggest that journalism as we know it now will become obsolete and citizen journalism will take over. We have seen citizen journalism come into its own already with events like the tube bombs in London. However, I feel that there will never be a time when this takes over completely, when professional journalists are no longer necessary. There will always be a place for journalists whose aim is impartiality and searching for the truth. Given the amount of pseudoscience and misinformation on the internet, it is important to have journalists acting as a filter to give us credible evidence based information. CB What are the challenges facing scientists when dealing with the media? FF The obvious problem is the cultural clash between the media and science, where journalists are looking for something immediate, brief and definite. Simon Pearson, Night News Editor at the Times newspapers says that in journalism there is only one answer to the question 'do you want it good or do you want it now?' This is the absolute opposite to the way that things work in science. The Science Media Centre is all about adapting the best science to allow journalists to have it both good and now. CB Do you think that science has a good profile in the media? FF Yes. Working at the SMC - far from raging against the media's coverage of science I have become a champion of it. UK science, health and environment correspondents are amazing and report science in a way that is both highly accurate and accessible. Where we find that things go wrong is where non-specialist news reporters cover a science story or just the usual media obsession with the negative or the sensational. And there is no doubt that when science stories become political accuracy is the victim. However, in almost five years of putting scientists in front of the national news media on some of the most controversial issues of our times, we can still count the number of bad experiences on one hand. This has got to be a tribute to the amazing skills of scientists and press officers in the UK. Catch up with Fiona's excellent blog at http://fionafox.blogspot.com/
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