The use of Internet in newsgathering among European science journalists

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beat. This means that the media they are working for – newspapers, magazines or
news agencies – are willing to spend money to cover a specialized area of the
news, assigning several reporters to it.
One of the main conclusions we can draw from the identity of European science
journalists, as portrayed in this survey, is that we are dealing with a very
experienced and educated population, working for media outlets that give them
the space and the resources to write about science full-time. These science
journalists certainly have a big influence in what gets covered in other media, with
fewer resources and less space for science.

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6.4. What are their attitudes and expectations?

European science journalists write mostly about articles published in peerreviewed
scientific journals. When asked about their three main sources for
science news, 86 in 96 respondents to this question (89.6 percent) mention
scientific journals.
Other researchers had already identified this dependency of science writers from
scientific publications (Hansen 1994; van Trigt, de Jong-van den Berg et al. 1994;
Hotz 2002), but this survey stresses, in our view, that the tendency is now
widespread in the whole European Union. Science journalists cannot live without
the continuous flow of information coming from scientific journals every day of
the week. One of the old problems of science journalism, identified by Dornan
(1990), has now completely vanished:

Unlike the court or the city hall correspondent, the science journalist
has no set forum whose affairs can be covered on a daily basis.
(Dornan 1990, p.56)

Scientific journals succeeded in filling this gap, identified by the literature 15
years ago. By continuously and periodically feeding science journalists with their
issues and press releases, science journals became an indispensable part of science
journalism itself. Science writers no longer have to wander through laboratories
and conferences trying to get the latest scientific news to their readers. Now, they
can wait in their newsrooms for the press releases of the journals, without fearing
if their competition is going to get a scoop:

Journals are probably the closest thing we have to ‘pack reporting’ in
science writing (…). To miss a major research story in a journal –
with every wire service and major newspaper on top of it – is an
acknowledged sin’. (Greenberg 1997, p.97)

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The other sources identified by the surveyed science journalists also show the
dependency of science journalists from what comes out of universities and other
media.
Of course, science journalists still go to scientific meetings and rely on their
personal contacts to report the news, but they give a big credit to what comes out
of science journals, universities and other media. “Pack reporting”, as Greenberg
called it, is not confined to journals. When 47.9 percent of science journalists
mention university press releases as one of their three main sources of science
news, that is pack reporting. When 38.5 percent say that other media are their
main source for science news, that is again very close to pack reporting.
As a term of comparison, who were the sources of science journalists when
Dennis and McCartney (1979) did their survey in the US?

Government agencies, 26.4 percent; university researchers, 29.4
percent; private sector research, 9.7 percent; public interest groups
and citizen organizations, 9.6 percent; professional societies, 8.6
percent; secondary sources such as journals, scholarly and
professional papers, etc., 10 percent; other (including individual nonexperts
citizens, physicians, hospitals, etc.), 6 percent. (Dennis and
McCartney 1979)

Andreas Hansen also identified “government departments and government
research establishments” as a “major and important source of news” for British
science journalists (Hansen 1994). This survey of European science journalists
shows that these sources [government departments and government research
establishments] are becoming less important for these professionals. As we will
see in the next sub-chapter, this is also a consequence of the way science
journalists are working in the era of Internet: the concentration of sources, even if
they are working in very different countries.
This uniformity in the science journalists’ sources for science news – nowadays,
mainly peer-reviewed articles from science journals – brings another problem,

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already identified by the literature: the science-media coupling (Weingart 1998).
According to Weingart, science adapts to media, in order to get more support and
funds to scientific activities. And the media help, by acritically publishing what
comes from the scientific field:

An example of the science-media coupling is the strategic adaptation
of scientific discourses to the (anticipated) desires of media attention
(…) The results are simplified, dramatized pronouncements and
prognosis calling for immediate action which are taken up and
amplified by the media. (Weingart 1998, p. 876)

To test this hypothesis, we asked science journalists a simple question: “How
would you describe the majority of your relations with your sources?”, and
presented two possible answers: “Cooperative” or “adversarial”. All the
journalists surveyed answered “cooperative”.
In their survey, Dennis and McCartney (1979) did a similar question, adding the
possibility of the journalists answering “neutral”: 52.8 percent characterized their
relation with their sources as “cooperative”, 31.9 as “neutral”; 2.7 as
“adversarial”. 12.5 percent said that they could not answer the question as the
situations varied a lot.
Because our survey did not give science journalists the opportunity to answer
“neutral”, results are not directly comparable. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that
100 percent of the surveyed journalists classified their relations with their sources
as “cooperative”, a very diverse situation from other beats. For instance, when
Tunstall asked specialist-correspondents how they regarded news sources, only
two-thirds said they were positively helpful and/or cordial. For some specialists,
the situation was even worse: ‘Only a minority of both Football and Crime
specialists see their sources as positive’ (Tunstall 1971, p. 168).
The specific nature of science journalism, where reporters depend so much on
their sources to understand and evaluate the research they write about, can

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probably help to explain this situation. To sum up, we would say Sharon
Dunwoody was right when she wrote:

Although relationships between journalists and scientists are
becoming more equitable, it is the scientists who maintain the lion’s
share of the power. It is entirely possible that a true shared culture
for scientists and journalists would be one dominated more by
scientists’ rules than by those of the journalist. (Dunwoody 1999,
p.75)

This situation is particularly true with the embargo system. Science journals
control the information by establishing a precise date for an issue to be released to
the public. To have access to this embargoed information, science journalists have
to accept the conditions set by the publication. As a result, all science journalists
know that everybody else has the same information and will probably publish it at
the same time – there’s no need to rush for the scoop –, and all science
publications have guaranteed publicity, as important articles will be published not
in one, but most likely in all newspapers at the same time.
In order to test European journalists’ acceptance of the embargo system, we
decided to ask the respondents of our survey if they agreed with it. The majority
of respondents (72.6 percent) said “yes”, which means they accept the restrictions
imposed by science journals to journalists and media of all sorts. Older journalists
seem to be a little more skeptical about this device, but they also clearly support
it: 65.8 percent of journalists with more than 20 years experience declare they
agree with embargo system.
When asked who, in their opinion, benefits more from these embargo system,
respondents to the survey say “scientific journals” (42.4 percent; N=39) or
“journalists” (41.3; N=38). A smaller percentage refers “audiences” (8.7 percent;
N=8) or “scientists” (7.6; N=7).

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These results show than even though a significant percentage of journalists
acknowledges that “the embargo serves mainly the interests of journals because it
guarantees them more publicity”, most of these journalists agree with the system.
Contrary to what others have written in the past about the probability of Internet
changing the attitude of journalists towards the embargo (Finn 1997b, for
example), this survey shows that European science journalists feel very
comfortable with embargoed information from science journals. Moreover, it
seems that the voices recently raised against the embargo system (Kiernan 2002;
Leifert 2002; Penenberg 2004) will have to keep on praying in the desert, for there
is no professional support for them, at least among European science journalists³⁵.
The pressures inside the journalistic organization, mostly of an economic nature,
and the growing expertise of science sources may have contributed to this
situation. News organizations are comfortable with the status quo, because the
acceptance of the embargo system means access to the most important science
news without much effort or spending. On the other hand, science sources have
understood that the maintenance of the embargo rules could help them get more
publicity, something very difficult to obtain if important reports or articles started
to appear on the Internet, without any publication restrictions. Finn (1997b)
probably didn’t count on this when he hypothesized the Internet could kill the
embargo.
European science journalists not only cooperate with their sources or support the
embargo system of peer-reviewed journals. From the results of this survey, we can
also say that the large majority cooperates with science journalists working for
other newspapers. When asked to describe their relations with journalists in other
media, 81 percent of the respondents qualified them as “cooperative”, 16 percent
said they were “adversarial”.

35

In a recent editorial in PLoS Biology, Hemai Parthasarathy dicusses the need for an embargo
and opens the door to changes in the policy of this journal: ‘Perhaps science news, then, should not
be considered a special case of the news’ – see Parthasarathy, H. (2006). "Science in the News."
PLoS Biology 4(2): DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040055. His offer, too, will have to wait.

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More than half of the journalists surveyed (59.4 percent) say that they
“sometimes” or “most of the times” discuss story ideas with science journalists
working in other organizations. A larger number – 86.5 percent – says that, when
covering an event, science journalists cooperate with each other “sometimes”,
“most of the time” or “always”.
These findings corroborate the conclusions of Dunwoody (1980) and show that
cooperation between science journalists is now completely widespread. This
cooperation is a way of guaranteeing a consensus among the community about the
issues worth being covered. In his study of specialist-correspondents, Jeremy
Tunstall found cooperative behaviour between journalists form other beats, but on
a much smaller scale:

43 percent of all specialists will not tell any specialist what story
they are working on; but only 28 percent will definitely not hand on
information which other specialists will get before the next deadline
(Tunstall 1971, p.228).

Science journals have taught science journalists that scoops are very hard, if not
impossible, to get. In this scenario, to discuss story ideas with colleagues in other
media seems a wise step to take, so that the issue can be covered from a similar
angle in different media. Editors will be pleased, reporters too. ‘Cooperate with
other journalists means that reporters have an answer when asked about it by
senior editor’, wrote Ericson, Baranek et al. (1987, p. 268)
The pressure from management is also part of journalism and one of the main
constraints these professionals experience. Literature has shown that the pressure
coming from management can push journalists to make obvious choices, avoiding
conflict by following the rest of the pack. If management is pressing on journalists
to write the same stories as other outlets, why worry to find a different angle, a
different story, a new perspective?

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Organizational constraints are not only limiting on what the
journalist can do, but enabling in justification and excuse for the
choices he makes. (Ericson, Baranek et al. 1987, p.349)

Asked to classify several sentences on a seven-point agree/disagree Likert scale,
European science journalists disagreed with the sentence: ‘I feel pressure from
management to be “more creative” in writing science stories’ – mean 3.4 (1 =
very strongly disagree; 4= neither agree nor disagree; 7= very strongly agree).
Respondents from countries with a GNI per capita lower than 22,000 USD feel a
little more pressure from management – mean 4.10. A similar question was made
by McCleneghan (1994) in his survey of American science journalists. In his case,
the respondents agreed with the given sentence (mean 3.6 in a five-point
agree/disagree Likert scale). The management pressures on American science
journalists seem to be higher than on their European counterparts.
European science journalists were also asked to classify two other sentences about
the pressures of the organization, and they disagreed with both. The first sentence
read: ‘My credibility is tested more often than the credibility of other journalists at
my organization’ (mean 3.82). The second was: ‘Other journalists and editors at
my organization do not take science journalists seriously’ (mean 3.42).
McCleneghan (1994) obtained similar results for the same sentences.
Again, journalists working in countries with a GNI per capita lower than 22,000
USD had different results: On the second question, their mean was 4.29, which
indicates that these professionals feel they are not taken seriously by other
journalists and editors. The fact that science journalists in these countries are
younger (and mostly female) may help to explain the result.
These journalists also showed they were being more pressured when asked about
the frequency they compare their work with the work of other journalists in
competing organizations: 42.8 percent of the journalists working in countries with
a GNI per capita lower than 22,000 USD say that they do this exercise ‘most of

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the times’ or ‘always’. Only 21.4 percent of the journalists in countries with a
GNI per capita higher than 28,000 USD do the same.
Journalists from poorer countries also say that their managers compare them with
journalists in other organizations more often: 33.3 percent say this happens ‘most
of the times’ or ‘always’. In richer countries, these same frequencies are only
reported by 17.8 percent of the respondents.
Audiences have always been a mistery for journalists of all kinds. Science
journalists are no exception. In their survey of American science journalists,
Dennis and McCartney (1979) asked ‘who do you have in mind as you write your
stories?’. The results? ‘In spite of the growing sophistication of readership studies,
the respondents presented a vague image of their readers’. In 1994, Hansen
reached a similar conclusion (Hansen 1994).
Twenty-five years after the first study, and more than ten after Hansen’s
interviews of British science journalists, the situation has not changed. At least,
among European science journalists. In our survey, we also decided to ask an
open-ended question, in order to understand if the respondents had any ideas
about who their readers were. The answers fell into five different categories: 1 -
Ordinary/average readers (33 answers); 2 – Interested/curious readers (28); 3 –
Educated/knowledgeable readers (20); 4 – People who are close to the journalist
(8); 5- Others (5).
As in McCartney’s study, we got completely diverse answers, showing that
science journalists do not really know who they are writing to. ‘Ordinary Joe from
the street’, ‘a reader without university degree’, ‘college and university educated’
or ‘my husband’ were some of the answers, certainly representing very different
people. Some respondents, working in the same newspapers, had also completely
different answers. Two examples: ‘Myself! I am the only reader I really know’
and ‘general public’; or ‘common reader’ and ‘educated’.
European science journalists also don’t have a lot of contact with their audiences.
When asked about how often they receive feedback from their readers, 52.6

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percent say that they are contacted once a week or less. Older journalists are
contacted more often than younger journalists and this can be explained by their
own experience: as they get older journalists tend to have more sources and to be
closer to them.
To finish this sub-chapter on the attitudes and expectations of European science
journalists, we must also explore the idea these professionals have of themselves.
Studies done in the past, have shown that science journalists have a very good
idea of their work and their role in society. In his study of American science
journalists, McCleneghan (1994) showed that these professionals consider
themselves useful for society, more accurate and more valued than other reporters
in their respective newspapers. Tristani-Potteaux (1997) has found that French
science journalists feel as part of the research world and want to be seen that way.
The European science journalists are also a group of very confident professionals.
As it had happened in the McCleneghan study, the big majority of the respondents
to our survey agrees with the sentence ‘as a science journalist, I make a
contribution to society by the type of reporting I do’. They also think, as in
McCleneghan’s work, that ‘science journalists are more accurate in their reporting
than other journalists’.
For 68 percent of these journalists, quality of science news is better than ten years
ago, and 79.4 percent say that the quantity of science news has increased. In 1979,
Dennis and McCartney asked the exact same questions and obtained similar
answers: 51.3 percent of science journalists thought science coverage was
increasing and 62.5 percent thought coverage had improved (Dennis and
McCartney 1979).
Eleven years ago, in an article written for Public Understanding of Science
resulting from 31 interviews to British science journalists, Anders Hansen found
that most professionals don’t see formal education in science as an indispensable
precondition to science journalists (Hansen 1994). A recent survey of journalists
and scholars in the US found that these professionals are worried about the