Journalists and Journalism Education Must Grasp the Democratic Science Opportunity

"Serious thought should be given urgently to training working journalists and journalism students to deal successfully with science topics by abandoning failed models and taking up the democratic opportunities offered by new communications technologies."

Presented at the JourNet international conference on Professional Education for the Media (Newcastle, Australia, February 16-20 2004), this paper explores strategies for getting science to the public. In it, Steve McIlwaine challenges "the pedagogically inspired notion of news audiences being filled with knowledge like so many empty vessels is nonsense." He argues that, to date, the media's role in scientific literacy has failed because of the "top-down" model of science in the news media, where information flows in one direction only: from science through the conduit of journalists to the public. And yet, he contends, "this discredited and ethically suspect model is still the basis for teaching people to write about science as science specialists. The central thrust of courses continues to emphasise one-way transmission from science to the public."

For McIlwaine, this model of media development in the context of science communication is problematic because it does not allow for healthy scepticism - questioning - which he says is a fundamental element of democracy. He points to "public awareness of government science's equivocal or obfuscatory responses to 'scientific' disasters", such as the uncertainties of the global warming debate and developments in genetic modification of crops and animals.

This is where, for the author, information and communication technology (ICT) and the new modes in which news is being consumed come into play. Not only do technological advances, such as the internet, allow a number of participatory opportunities (from "have your say" sites and online polls to recorded interviews), but, according to him, technological advances allow news consumers to interact with news providers, including experts. "Just as part of the democratic change has included the perceived right not only to question authority but also to engage in dialogue with authority, part of the recent revolution in communications is that citizens are now obtaining the means to do precisely that....This is just the environment in which the science issues of the day could be most fruitfully explored. That is, a forum is becoming available for citizens to meet on equal grounds with science authorities to discuss doubts and fears. Here is where real engagement with science could be achieved and where answers to specific questions and responses to specific anxieties could be evaluated and pursued further. Here is where citizens could become 'science literate' as far as they need or want to be."

However, McIlwaine suggests that journalism generally has failed and is failing to take the opportunity to include science in this democratic and technological revolution, and, he says, this failure is directly the outcome of science's refusal to make itself available in such a forum. He cites several articles that have provided hypotheses for this refusal, such as these: "science finds it hard to accept democracy's apparently irrational forces of popular belief" and "science is an elitist calling and that it requires an intelligence and special skills far beyond what 'average' people could attain."

For these and other reasons, McIlwaine acknowledges that a transition will not be easy. But he argues that "media organisations may have to learn to exploit the great potential reader/viewer/listener involvement that would flow from a democratic engagement with demonstrated audiences in the science arena....They need to offer web sites, discussion groups, access to on-line journals and to scientists themselves....Journalists must also function as they always have by winnowing the issues, preventing overloading of the discourse...while still allowing voices from all sides to be heard." Furthermore, he says, journalists must engage in advocacy to bring their scientific partners on board with this communication strategy. Finally, McIlwaine urges journalism educators to prepare their students for new ways of professional work in writing about science.

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