The use of Internet in newsgathering among European science journalists
91
Disagree / Strongly disagree /
Very strongly disagree
Sex
Male Female Total
34 (55.7) 15 (44.1) 49
Neither agree nor disagree 11 (18) 3 (8.9) 14
Agree / Strongly agree / 16 (26.2) 16 (47) 32
Very strongly agree
Total 61 34 95
(percentage in brackets) χ² (2) = 4.640, p > 0.05
Table 17 - ‘Other journalists and editors at my organization do not take science journalists
seriously’ according to sex
Disagree
Strongly disagree
Very strongly disagree
Neither agree
nor disagree
Agree
Strongly agree
Very strongly agree
<22,000 USD
GNI per capita
22,000-28,000
USD >28,000 USD Total
8 (38.1) 24 (53.3) 17 (58.6) 49
2 (9.5) 7 (15.5) 5 (17.2) 14
11 (52.3) 14 (31.1) 7 (24.1) 32
Total 21 45 29 95
(percentage in brackets) χ² (4) = 4.629, p > 0.05
Table 18 – ‘Other journalists and editors at my organization do not take science journalists
seriously’ according to GNI per capita
One of the ways management puts pressure on journalists is by comparing the
writing of their employees with the articles written by other science journalists in
competing media. This fact often leads to a strategy of cooperation between
science journalists on the field (Dunwoody 1980), in order to avoid being
‘scooped’. In this survey, we also asked respondents to tell the frequency of this
practice in their media. They were presented with two sentences – ‘What other
journalists write is used by me to assess the quality of my work’ and ‘What other
journalists write is used by my superiors to assess the quality of my work’ – and
were asked to choose in a four-point scale the following possibilities: (0) Never;
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(1) Sometimes; (2) Most of the times; (3) Always. The results are expressed in
figures 16 and 17.
60
50
40
30
Number
of
cases
20
10
0
Never Most of the time
Sometimes Always
Figure 16 - ‘What other journalists write is used by me to assess the quality of my work’
50
40
30
20
Number
of
cases
10
0
Never Most of the time
Sometimes Alw ays
Figure 17 - ‘What other journalists write is used by my superiors to assess the quality of my
work’
Both these attitudes – checking their own work by looking to the work of
competing journalists; and having their work checked by their superiors by
comparison with other media – seem to be more prevalent in countries with lower
93
GNI per capita. Once again, science journalists in these countries seem to suffer
more internal pressures than other journalists working in more developed
countries.
(percentage in brackets) χ² (2) = 2.694, p > 0.05
Table 19 - ‘What other journalists write is used by me to assess the quality of my work’
according to GNI per capita
GNI per capita Total
<22,000 22,000- >28,000
USD 28,000 USD USD
Never / Sometimes 12 (57.1) 30 (65.2) 22 (78.6) 64
Most of the time / Always 9 (42.8) 16 (34.8) 6 (21.4) 23
Total 21 46 28 95
GNI per capita Total
<22,000 22,000- >28,000
USD 28,000 USD USD
Never / Sometimes 14 (66.6) 34 (73.9) 24 (85.7) 72
Most of the time / Always 7 (33.3) 12 (26.1) 5 (17.8) 24
Total 21 46 29 96
(percentage in brackets) χ² (2) = 1.738, p > 0.05
Table 20 - ‘What other journalists write is used by my superiors to assess the quality of my
work’ according to GNI per capita
94
4.5. Science journalists and their audiences
Journalists have a weak perception of their audiences (Gans 1979) and science
journalists are no exception (McCleneghan 1994). In this survey, we only asked
two questions about audiences. The first was aimed at understanding the level of
feedback European science journalists receive from their audiences. The second
was completely open: ‘What kind of reader do you have in mind when writing
your stories?’
In what concerns the first question, the results show that science journalists
usually receive feedback from their audiences: 47.4 percent receive it at least
twice a week. Results are expressed in figure 18:
40
30
20
Number
of
cases
10
0
Daily Once a w eek or less
2-3 times a w eek Once a month or less
Figure 18 - ‘How frequently do you receive feedback from your audience?’
The frequency of the feedback is related with the age of the respondents, as older
journalists tend to be more contacted by their audiences (table 21)
30. These older
science journalists live in countries with a GNI per capita higher than 22,000
30
Spearman’s rho = - 0.263, p = 0.005
95
where the mean level of education is higher and, consequently, reader
participation too.
Frequency of contacts Total
by audience
2-3 times Once a week
a week or less
25-34 years 9 (33.3) 18 (66.6) 27
35-44 years 12 (44.4) 15 (55.5) 27
45-54 years 15 (55.5) 12 (44.4) 27
55-64 years 9 (60) 6 (40) 15
Total 45 51 96
(percentage in brackets)
Table 21 - Frequency of contacts by the audience according to the age of journalists
The second question about audiences in this survey gave respondents the
opportunity to fill a blank space in order to define who they were writing for. As
expected, the answers were quite different, but we coded them into five different
categories: 1 – Ordinary/average readers; 2 – Interested/curious readers; 3 –
Educated/knowledgeable readers; 4 – People who are close to the journalist; 5-
Others.
Thrity-three (33) of the 94 answers to this question fall into the first category –
‘ordinary/average readers’, who are qualified by expressions like ´everybody’,
‘general public’, ‘lay person’ or ‘common readers’. Twenty-eight answers (28)
fall into the category of ‘interested/curious readers’, and respondents qualify them
as ‘interested but not expert’, ‘interested in science and technology’, ‘with
curiosity and without science background’ or ‘common people who are curious
about science’.
Into the category defined as ‘educated/knowledgeable readers’ there are 20
answers. Respondents qualify these readers as ‘higher education, but not in
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science’, ‘educated reader’, ‘non specialist, educated’ or ‘science community’.
Eight (8) respondents also used proximity to define their readers. In these cases,
they talked about ‘me’, ‘myself! I am the only reader I only know…’, ‘my
mother, my husband’, ‘a dumber version of myself’ or ‘my friends and family’.
Five (5) answers could not be coded into the defined categories and were put
under a fifth category we called ‘others’. The answers were ‘a 16-year old high
school boy or girl’, ‘a person who is not interested in science’, the one who
mainly needs respect: the ill person’, ‘a 15 year-old immigrant’ and ‘semiintelligent’.
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4.6. Self-evaluation among science journalists
Seven questions of this survey were aimed at understanding what European
science journalists think about themselves and the work they are doing. Do
science journalists feel superior to journalists in other beats? Should science
journalists have a science background? What perception do they have about the
quality and quantity of science news in the last ten years?
In the first five questions of this group, respondents were confronted with several
sentences they had to classify on a seven-point agree/disagree Likert scale. The
first of these sentences was: ‘As a science journalist, I make a contribution to
society by the type of writing and reporting I do.’ Results are expressed in figure
19.
30
20
Number
of
cases
10
0
Strongly
disagree
V
strongly
disagree
Disagree
V
sstrongly
agree
Strongly
agree
Agree
N
agree
nor
disagree
Figure 19 - ‘As a science journalist, I make a contribution to society by the type of reporting
I do’
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As we can see, a majority of European science journalists thinks it makes a
contribution to society: 77.9 percent of the respondents agree, strongly agree or
very strongly agree with the given sentence. Scepticism about the importance of
their role grows with experience, as we can see in table 22 (Pearson R = -0.174,
p= 0.047)31.
Number of years as a journalist
0-5 years 6-19 years > 20 years Total
Disagree / Strongly disagree / - 5 (12.2) 5 (13.2) 10
Very strongly disagree
Neither agree nor disagree - 3 (7.3) 8 (21) 11
Agree / Strongly agree / 15 (100) 33 (80.5) 25 (65.8) 73
Very strongly agree
Total 15 41 38 94
(percentage in brackets)
Table 22 - ‘As a science journalist, I make a contribution to society by the type of reporting I
do’ according to journalistic experience
The next sentence journalists had to classify was: ‘Science journalists are more
accurate in their reporting than other journalists’. Results are on figure 20.
31
To calculate all the correlations, we used the original scale obtained by the survey and not the
recoded ages and experience of journalists.
99
30
20
Number
of
cases
10
0
Strongly
disagree
V.
strongly
disagree
Disagree
V.
strongly
agree
Strongly
agree
Agree
N
agree
nor
disagree
Figure 20 - ‘Science journalists are more accurate in their reporting than other journalists’
In this sentence, 59.3 percent of the surveyed journalists agree, strongly agree or
very strongly agree with it. Twenty-four (24) percent of the respondents disagree,
strongly disagree or very strongly disagree and 16.7 percent neither agree nor
disagree. In this case, age of the respondents seems to make the difference (see
table 23): as they become older, science journalists feel more accurate than other
journalists (Pearson R = 0.233, p = 0.012).
Disagree / Strongly
disagree / Very
strongly disagree
Neither agree nor
disagree
Agree / Strongly agree
/ Very
strongly agree
(percentage in brackets)
25-34
years
35-44
years
Age
45-54
years
55-64
years
Total
11 (40.7) 5 (18.6) 7 (26.9) - 23
6 (22.2) 4 (14.8) 2 (7.7) 4 (26.7) 16
10 (37) 18 (66.6) 17 (65.4) 11 (73.3) 56
Total 27 27 26 15 95
Table 23- ‘Science journalists are more accurate in their reporting than other journalists’
according to age
100
Literature points out that science journalists dependent too much on their sources
(Nelkin 1987) and seldom make any efforts to uncover fraud in their area
(Lafollette 1992, Dunwoody 1999). In order to see if science journalists recognize
this fact, respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the following
sentence: ‘Science journalists have “more tenacity” than other journalists to
uncover fraud in their areas’. The results are in figure 21.
40
30
20
Number
of
cases
10
0
Agree
N
agree
nor
disagree
Strongly
disagree
V.
strongly
disagree
Disagree
V
strongly
agree
Strongly
agree
Figure 21- ‘Science journalists have “more tenacity” than other journalists to uncover fraud
in their areas’
The majority of European science journalists (49.5 percent) disagree, strongly
disagree or very strongly disagree with the given sentence, against 20 percent
which agree, strongly agree or very strongly agree with it. Respondents who
stated ‘neither agree nor disagree’ represent 30.5 percent. There are no significant
differences in the obtained answers according to sex, age, origin, professional
experience and education of the respondents.