Journalism Q&A -- A Wide Ranging Conversation

What started as a panel discussion has turned into a dynamic conversation that involves the whole room. I'm doing my best to capture it -- I'll add links a little later, and if I miss a question or a name, please leave a comment to clarify or fill us in. People are really engaged, and again and again people are building on, linking to, and drawing in the comments of other people and the contents of yesterday's sessions.

Q: Rita Heimes: Scientists are the most credible spokespeople, but they get to be that credible partly by waiting for a level of 95% certainty. But you guys have said, "it's never too early to start thinking about communications" -- when is it too early to start talking to the public? When do you lose the credibility of the scientists?

A: Justin: You need to think about this early -- not necessarily start speaking early. But you need to have an eye on your communications plan from the very beginning.

A: Jon Sutinen: I'm very uncomfortable being an advocate, as a scientist. I think it's dangerous to ask scientists to be advocates.

A: Justin Kenney: Reporters who hear scientists crossing the line into advocacy hang up, or find another scientist. I work for an advocacy group, so I don't have quite as tough a role.

Peter Lord: it's messy for scientists to get involved in politics. But if scientists don't get in the conversation, the anti-science people win. They're writing op-eds, misquoting literature, and creating stories, while the scientists are doing science. It's not advocacy if you write an op-ed piece talking about how the IPCC came about.

Q: What about balance? Are reporters still asked by editors to go hunt down the few remaining scientists who are saying there is no climate change?

A: Peter Lord -- finally, no. There's lots of debate about how much, and how, and what the impacts will be. But it's no longer a controversial story, finally, that climate change is happening.

Jerry: there's an economic component to all of this, and when you make regulations they almost always have a financial toll. From my eyes, we're always watching the possible burden that will go on the shoulders of fishermen, in an attempt to get to the elusive goal of some kind of climate stability. It's easier to put things on the fishermen -- we're not well-funded, there's no "center of influence" for commercial fishermen. I ask environmental groups why they're chasing the fishermen, and they tell me: because we can't stop pollution, and we can't stop coastal development. Those people have a lot more power. This is all falling on the fishermen, and that's not fair. And climate change is such a rage right now. Maybe you think it's great that it's now on Sports Illustrated or Ms. Magazine, but that tells me the tipping point of credibility has come and gone. It's a frenzy now. Regulations that dump all the burden onto fishermen with more expensive equipment or that restrict our range, etc.

Meinhard: It seems to me, Jerry, that you should be one of the biggest advocates and allies for global greenhouse gas emissions reductions. To the extent we can mitigate and reduce the possible impact, we can reduce the kind of adaptation that's going to fall hardest on your industry.

I also want to say that I disagree with the proposition that problems should always be linked to solutions, or people will disconnect or feel hopeless or overwhelmed. If you want to educate people on this issue, I'm not sure you always have to link it to offering solutions. Solutions are complex, and when you offer solutions you open yourself up to attack -- people start debating the solutions, whether this one is better than that one or whether they will work.

Compare where we are with the Europeans. The average citizen in Europe is fully engaged in this issue. They don't have all the answers, but they recognize what is at stake. You need to motivate people to expect change, and to start to think about reasons to mitigate.

Q: How do you make this a local story? A: Maybe it's not always local -- put the ocean stuff in the travel section, the energy section.

Jeff: It can't all be locally done, although you do need to engage local citizens. Someone, at the national level, has to move the ball forward. I do think that groups like Pew can be leaders, especially if they retain their credibility. Anytime you see environmental groups and businesses partnering, well, something's happening there. As a reporter, a flag goes up -- I want to find out what's going on there. But I also agree that scientists do have to watch yourself when you become advocates. Another flag goes up.

But scientists DO have a role. They provide the science behind a problem. Then other people bring forward a policy solution, and scientists can have a role in evaluating the efficacy of those proposed solutions.

Andy Pershing: I think there's an issue in how science is reported. Scientists don't create problems. Science is the process by which you go about figuring out how the world works. I think you guys are covering scientists as if we're in the business of finding problems. That's not what we do.

Brian: but isn't there a middle ground -- can't you explain your study and it's implications, and at least suggest or point a reporter towards places to find solutions?

Jon: But you have to be really careful. You can be misrepresented by a journalist -- you can suggest that there are solutions out there, and

Comment (no nametag-- Charlie Colgan?): Science IS advocacy: the topic you choose to go after is because you see a problem out there, and you suggest that there's a value in finding the answer. There are millions of things to study -- there's a value judgment embedded in the very act of choosing what to study.

Priscilla: This is really interesting. Scientists have to believe in what they are doing -- that their research has implications to the world. I don't think a passion for what you're doing, and a deep and abiding belief that your research has meaning and value and implications in the world beyond peer-review, that shouldn't be considered advocacy. And to those of us who are advocates, it's fundamentally important that scientists' information is out there.

Dan Holland: The information that often gets out is an oversimplified version of what is necessarily very complex and very uncertain. One reason scientists are reluctant to get information out there is because the complexity, subtlety, and nuance is often lost. I've been really successful in not getting quoted by reporters because what I have to say is too complex.

Justin: Is that success? I understood that the conversation from yesterday had an element of a sense of failure -- we haven't done a good enough job in communicating to the public and policymakers.

Peter Lord: you don't have to, as a scientist, pay attention to who you talk to, who you can trust, and how to explain things. You need a knowledgeable public relations person and public affairs person who can help you out, tell you how the media works, and make sure your scientists aren't always nervous and hesitant to talk to the media. Too often, it's a person in their twenties who's got a drab background from a second-rate newspaper. Unlike Justin at the Pew Oceans Commission. You need high-level, policy-level public relations specialists at institutions who can help the scientists establish real working relations with the media.

William Brennan: I agree this is really interesting. I'm not sure the public is well-informed about the difference between established science and newly emerging, breakthrough science.

Jeff Tollefson: A public relations person can't handle this for you. If a PR person is talking to the media, you're not going to get the kind of coverage you want. In media, we don't have weeks, we have days, and we don't have pages, we have hundreds of words. You already know how to do this. We call it the elevator pitch. In the terms of your research, think about it as the dinner pitch. You go home, and talk to your family, your kids, and tell them what you're doing. This is what we've found. This is what we don't know. This is what we have to do next.

Don Perkins: That's not fair. The media will only do the first third. You cover "this is what we've found". Then you go looking for strong advocates and controversial details or statements. That's how your business works. Example: individually transferable quotas (for fishing) have good points and bad points -- there are winners and losers. Dan Holland did a good job articulating the subtlety and the implications of the whole question. We spent a day with a capable local reporter, but that's not what came out in the resulting story. What we got was one side of the implications, and quotes from people with strong advocacy positions on that one side..... The foundations have managed to pay and train scientists to speak, and that has been wildly successful at making oceans a public interest story. It's controversial, but it has been effective at bringing oceans to the mainstream. How do we train policymakers to anticipate and acknowledge the unintended consequences (of science research? of climate change? of media running away with the implications of science? missed it).

Brian: is more publicity for research always better?

Q: What is the role of investigative journalism on environmental reporting? I don't mean watching someone dumping toxins down a drain in the middle of the night. Example: the impact of a big local storm on two communities: one with a seawall and one without a seawall, and the decisions about permitting and environmental impacts of seawalls.

A: Peter Lord: I give out awards, Grantham, $75,000 for environmental reporting: there's still some great writing out there. But newspapers are under great pressure right now that we don't talk about. Everytime someone leaves they're not replaced. Advertising is moving to the internet.

Q: What's the future of media? If you guys can't even get your message out, what's the key media five years from now?
A: Jerry -- it's still print or subscription electronic media. But there's too much free information -- people still need and trust the editorial role in sorting and sifting information; that gives credibility. People pay for something, and that's implicit in value.
Q: Is that only true for people over 30?
A: Maybe. That's a fair point. We're on a voyage into the internet. We're a repository of information.
A: Brian -- the generation under 30 are far more influenced by one another than by the media, and by conversations. They clearly care about things, but there's chatter that starts to get amplified. But it still originates with mainstream media coverage: a MySpace page article will point to Slate or Salon or a Times article. Even if they're reading it on a MySpace page, their source is somewhere else.
A: Peter Lord: Slate broke the Walter Reed story and got no traction until the Washington Post covered it. There's tons of change, but no form of mainstream media has ever disappeared. Radio didn't go away when television came.
A: Jeff Tollefson: 5 years is still too soon. Ask us about 25 years and you'll stump all of us. Print media currently still has the best system for gathering news. How it's distributed may change, but how it's gathered and paid for is pretty effective.

Q: Rita: how does the way a story is told/advocated in the mainstream press impact how funding decisions are made?

A: Article by Ray Hilborn: Faith Based Fisheries about funding and publications. When dangerous research gets out there, (flawed methodology, advocacy, overreaching conclusions, etc), it harms good research. But a lot of times it gets out there and gets covered and refutations don't get the same coverage that the original research did.

Q: Is it good or bad for science to have its dirty laundry out there, to have arguments of

Q: Do journalists give too much deference to peer review?
A: Peter: I don't give too much credence to that stuff -- it's not local. Jerry: I think mainstream media falls all over themselves when they see that something is peer reviewed.

Q: Sean Mahoney: I'm interested in tying in the scientists' interest in getting their work considered in policy and law, with the problems attached to credibility that comes with being perceived as an advocate.

A: Jon S.: I think the answer is what Jeff suggested: wait to play a role in evaluating solutions

Q: Sean: but isn't that too late -- Priscilla pointed out that economists aren't often invited to think about solutions until the Environmental Impact Statement stage -- and so science doesn't get to play a part in determining which solutions should be on the table to be considered?

A: Robert: There is often an implied advocacy that comes in my work: I evaluate non-market values, and sometimes I find myself saying there's a big source of value that's not being addressed here, or I say, here's how the analysis changes if you do this or that or change a variable. But the next stage in the conversation with reporters, policymakers, etc., is for people to say, well, what will work best, who should do it well, what's the big message, how do we fix the system? I want to pull back and limit what I'm saying to my research, but the media are asking you to take the next step, and they want to pull you into advocacy. It's really hard.

Q: How do scientists who are called to testify act?
A: Scientists are called on the Hill to testify all the time. When I'm reporting on the Hill, I talk to a scientist, and I push them, too. I always ask, "What next"? You can't just tell me "what" -- that's not enough of a story. You can't answer that, and keep your credibility, but you'll always get pushed into the "what next", so you have to be prepared for that.

Scientists who talk on the Hill have to be able to carry the ball forward. You have to speak English, and you have to be clear, and you have to expect to be pushed by people without any scientific background into providing simplified solutions, and know how to sidestep that. But you can't just do your science and leave it on the table. The cat will get it.

Q: How qualified are reporters to do science writing -- not many journalists have degrees from MIT?
A: Peter Lord: There are programs all over the country trying to teach journalists science. Although not a lot of institutions can pay for the training. But most journalists are generalists: Example -- a fellow from Bangor Daily News who was here yesterday morning, then had to drive 2 hours to go cover a hearing, before his day was done.
Q: Do the places that journalists get trained do a good job?
A: We have to write interesting stories that compete with the Patriots! We can't go on and on about we don't know this, we don't know that. The editor is asking, is the bay clean or not? Can you eat the fish or not?
A: Jerry: nuance is a tough sell in the mainstream media. There may be an upper echelon that cares a lot about all the uncertainties, but you have to write for most people. So your job is to translate the false positives and false negatives and the uncertainties into language the reporter can easily make and fit into a compelling story.
A: Peter: example: meningitis went up in RI, but it wasn't a huge amount -- from 12 people to 20. So the legislature were trying to figure out what to tell people to do, given that they weren't sure about what caused the bump. So they held a hearing and they told people that if they had insurance they should take their kids to get screened -- not urgent, but a good precaution. But a reporter asked one of the doctors, who was also a mother, at the hearing, "What would you do if one of your children had a fever." And answering as a mother, she said, "I'd lie awake beside my daughter and take her temperature every hour." And the reporter printed that and it caused a panic in the state -- everyone flocked to the state to be vaccinated and by the time it was done it cost the state millions of dollars, all for a miniscule increase in risk. But when you make something human like that, people respond in a different way.

Q: Article: Altered Oceans. It did a great job taking complexity and making it good -- go check it out.

Comment: Patten: The oceans aren't a local issue. Every town is an ocean town. We're missing the boat as a society here. Every time I've written an Op Ed piece, it's gotten published. If we're going to get Congress to do things, we need to take action. But you need to establish local credibility. You have to do the work so that when a senator or congressman is trying to figure out what to do, they'll call you up and ask for your opinion. Everyone wants to hear about backgrounds, but not take local action if it will cost them something.