Questions for Journalists

Mark Noble: one of the things that I've come to insist on is that if a journalist comes to talk with me or visits my lab, I have to see what they write before they print.

Our press releases get misquoted.

It's infuriating to spend huge amounts trying to communicate and failing.

The idiots at UPI recently reported that we repaired a damaged human spinal cord--instead of a damaged rat spinal cord.

From my point of view as a scientist who interacts frequently with journalists, the issue is accuracy, and we need for you to be willing to interact with us in such a way as to guarantee that accuracy.

When we ask for permission to review your work pre-publication . . .say yes.

Journalist: first the question is, have you ever made a mistake in your work?

Answer: I've never had to retract a data point.

J: Well that's good, but I'm going to respectfully ask that you drop the idiot label.
Think about whether it would be a good idea to have us be required to call our sources and ask if they liked what we wrote . . . I have actually had scientists try to exert editorial control over stories I've written when all I wanted was to ask for a fact check. We've been burned by scientists, too.

Journalist 2: That's often a matter of policy and not the writer's decision. I work on a magazine where we do fact-check. There's a system in place where a 2nd reporter calls every source back to make sure we got the story right. And we would never allow any of them to read the entire piece. They might get a little paragraph, but never the whole thing. There is not going to be perfect accuracy and we shouldn't expect it. We're better off with some quantity of mistakes than we would be if we tried to print.

Journalist 3: I'm much more likely to work with someone who has given me a story if they say, here's my cell phone, here's my contact info, I know you're on deadline than if they demand it.

Journalist 4: I'm different from these guys in that I depend on scientists to review what I've written . . . but I have the luxury of writing long and complicated pieces that make this process possible. You should know that we take accuracy as often as you do, because the worst feeling in the world is printing something wrong, something you didn't really understand, something you wanted so much to get right.

Same Questioner: Then let me suggest to you all that you start off by saying to the scientist that you're going to ask for a fact check.

Journalist: Well then hold to your end of the bargain . . . don't look at a quote and say, wow, I don't like the sound of that . . . let's change it. You can say, no, that's not what I said if it wasn't what you said.

Moderator steps in to say it would be cool if we had some studies to show what readers take away from stories . . . which is not details usually, but maybe if you're lucky 2 main ideas. Focus on the gist.

New questioner: Recently I had an experience with being the single source of a story that had been perpetuated around the world . . . I was never asked for more details as more and more papers just printed what Reuters had said.

Journalist: This has to do with the economics of publishing. Lots of places pay Reuters for just that privilege -- to copy and paste what they put up. (Mentions that his experience as a writer is to find his words copied and pasted all over the web without attribution . . . ) Also wonders if we really do need to have 6 different people processing what is not that complicated a story.

Journalist 2: It sounds like you were wondering why other reporters didn't pick up on the original story . . .nobody likes to write the story someone else has written. We want to write our own story . . . (scientist says that he kind of thought he would get a chance to explain or answer questions) Nah.

Journalist 3: A trend I've seen is more and more newspapers talking about axing AP or Reuters or other wire services . . . which may not be a good thing. The history of journalism used to be that the competition was all about being there first . . . but now there is also a "we're not first, but we can tell this story better" -- not all stories are going to be considered dead meat.

New Questioner: How do you handle it when people insist that there are two sides when there is really only one? Must we have an equal balance?

Journalist: the tradition in journalism is to tell both sides . . . I think we've finally figured out that we really don't have to find the one guy who will give us a quote that contradicts the main thrust of our story.

Journalist 2: agree -- the insistence on balance is fading.

Question: Is it true that editors title stories? I had a story in which the editor mishandled the content outrageously.

Journalist: Yep. And it does cause problems.