Sorry, is this the same BBC that employs David Attenborough?
All of that also would apply to political journalism.
American media have moved away from false “balance” when it comes to presenting information on vaccines and communicable diseases (the Wakefield debacle and outbreaks of measles, mumps and whooping cough have awakened news directors and editors to the idea that it’s not a good idea to give antivax loons anything approaching equal time with physicians and scientists).
Also, there are good blogs and websites keeping an eye on and commenting critically on traditional media idiocy, so there’s an embarrassment factor to take into account as well.
It’s not a perfect system, but I’ll take it over the U.K. model which includes a “royal” charter regulating the press and libel laws which still ludicrously favor anti-science hacks.
Factual accuracy applies to everything, of course. What I meant about political journalism is that there are often two sides to an issue and one’s perspective is shaped by ideology, so on political matters there may indeed be a need for balance and presenting both sides of an argument. But on many issues of science, the “other side” is the lunatic fringe. As in the Arthur C. Clarke story about a mysterious wall circling a planet, which ends with the revelation: “there is no other side.”
Not me. Commercial media may be fine for entertainment though I’m not even sure about that (British TV seems consistently superior to me, but maybe because I just focus on a handful of true classics) but the best news reporting always seems to come from public broadcasters. Compared to BBC or even the much smaller CBC, or the NPR radio network, networks like CNN are laughable and Fox is of course an ongoing joke. I don’t know why this “royal” thing keeps coming up (not the first time I’ve seen it), as media respect for royal protocols is entirely voluntary and some of the less reputable British media have violated it egregiously. And the US quite frankly has a lot more anti-science hacks than Britain by my guesstimation, but maybe they’re just louder. But it seems to me that anti-science in the US in a domain like climate change denial is an entire industry, and a well funded one.
In this case a Royal Charter is an instrument used to grant an institution or individual powers, or even to establish an institution. Various universities, professional associations, academic associations (including the Royal Society) and suchlike exist under a Royal Charter. Entities like the East India Company, Hudsons Bay Company and the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company were established this way. The BBC’s one lasts for ten years, and then it’s renegotiated and renewed. It’s a government thing these days, Royal in name only.
They give the false impression that science is less about hard work and more about pondering big ideas and going on exotic holidays. They try to glamourise it and the few serious points they make are extremely laboured. It ends up shallow and patronising, assuming the audience is both dumb and has a very short attention span. So much of it is Pop Science which merely entertains but does not educate.
There, are, however, some exceptions as well. Michael Mosley reminds me of the kind of science programmes James Burke used to make.
The problem is that many policy concepts are based on factual information, science and extrapolation. People arguing for a political position often make unsupportable assertions (cf this thread) based on either questionable science or outright distortions (one of my favorites has long been “since their country instituted nationalized health insurance, 90% of Canadians have moved to within 100 miles of the US border”). In the heat of debate, there is little time to cross-check what they guy at the podium is spewing (e.g., “Reagan’s policies validate lasseiz faire”), and statistics are incredibly easy to distort.
Yes, political debate is about opinion, but opinion is based on information or misinformation. Some people opine that flouridation is bad, vaccines are hazardous, chemtrails are poisoning us or voter fraud is rampant. Some of these opinions are just plain messed up (and fail to even get me started on rape) and should not ever receive balanced airtime.
Just a nod of support from me. I agree. Recently watched Brian Cox explaining something reasonably simple. One moment he’s talking to the camera in England, the next moment he’s paddling in a lake in Canada. All very pretty and the ripples in the water illustrated his point but it took ten minutes for a two minute topic.
However with an amateur interest in science I’m not the typical tv viewer so accept the slow scenic route serves the audience best.
And in fairness to Brian Cox on another occasion he walked through an abandoned mining town in Namibia while explaining how we can see the oldest visible object in the Universe. That isn’t simple and he did a good job.
…I’ve just googled and watched a few videos presented by Helen Czerski, Alice Roberts and Michael Mosley. The videos by Czerski and Roberts were entertaining, and educational. I struggled to quickly find a video by Michael Mosley that wasn’t plugging the fast diet.
I think your judgement is off. None of the videos I watched gave me the impression science is not hard work and about going on holidays. There was nothing “politically correct” either (as if politically correct has any real meaning). Czerski and Roberts appear to have been chosen to present the programmes primarily because they know what they are talking about.
I really wonder if you actually looked at the programs James Burke did, as it seems that you missed some big points. Yes, it is not much about pondering big ideas, it was about reusing them and many times the “creators” did not much hard work as a lot of the greats of history actually reused and even stole their big ideas:
The podcast the one that made that blog is referring to is not linked to, but James Burke talks about that in the interview made by public tv in Silicon Valley to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Connections.
http://vimeo.com/35460984
(vimeo video.)
That is why on issues like science I defer to what was done before, and in issues like Climate Change many lines of inquiry are so clear that are on the same level as evolution regarding how much empirical evidence is there to support them. And there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
And that is also why I have so much disdain for deniers and specially the ones that claim to follow science, it is really insulting when they **also **claim that they got their boiler plate denier ideas on their own when in reality they got them from sources that are just poisoning the discussion.
You remember how interesting this format was the first time you saw it,or maybe you started watching popular science on tv even before it was wrestled from the exclusive hands of the entitled middle class?
My point it this; you are not the target demographic, you got old, this is for the kids, the first timers. Popular science has to be sold differently.
Are you implying that David Attenborough somehow fails to make interesting programmes? If so, good luck with that lonely crusade.
…look at the post he was responding too. He is implying the complete opposite.
The British independent TV channels make up in spades for the good sense of the BBC. There you will see documentaries treating the most absurd of fringe theories seriously.
I won’t say he’s boring, but I will say that parodies of him are a lot funnier.
Irrevelant. The US media is perfectly free to do the same, and leave the crackpots to disseminate their nonsense by ranting on street corners and posting screeds on the internet. If they had an iota of social responsibility, they would have already done so.
That’s no excuse. It would be trivially easy to create the same level of entertainment value by treating the crackpots as reality-TV targets for pointing and laughter rather than as purveyors of an actual viewpoint worthy of consideration. If anything, that would be more appealing to the Roman-Colosseum id of the viewing public.
Yep. I’m saying the corp that employs him has already risen and exceeded the challenge of making science interesting, and has done since the 70s. Cosmos (and occasionally Mythbusters) are the only ones who come close. Just compare the various Life series with the drek on NatGeo…
My mistake - sorry, and in that case, I heartily agree.