The use of Internet in newsgathering among European science journalists

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Science publications also control the dissemination of information through the
embargo system, an agreement between the provider of information and the news
media. By receiving the information in advance, journalists agree that they will
not release it before a given time established by the ‘news promoter’ – to use the
expression of Molotch and Lester (1974).
The embargo system might go back to George Washington and the Revolutionary
War, but in science journalism it may have started with Morris Fishbein, former
editor of The Journal of the Americal Medical Association (JAMA). He used to
show Howard W. Blakeslee, the first science editor of the Associated Press, page
proofs of JAMA, provided that he would not write about the materials until the
date of the JAMA issue in which the study appeared (Stacey 1985). ‘It is unclear
when the embargo navigated from medical to science journals’ (Kiernan 1997,
p.304).
Science journals defend the embargo as a device that can help journalists produce
more ‘responsible’ articles. By not to rushing into print to beat competitors,
science journalists can have the time to contact sources and write a more
informative piece, hopefully free from speculation and inaccuracies.

We believe that our current embargo policy, similar to the approach
used by other scientific journals, is appropriate, effective, and fair
and serves to help foster accurate, responsible reporting.
(Fontanarosa and DeAngelis 2002)

Science reporters receive embargoed information, in the form of press releases,
from several scholarly journals, but we will concentrate on six of the most
important ones: Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA,
The Lancet and British Medical Journal. The New England Journal of Medicine
does not issue a press release, but provides copies of the upcoming issue in
advance to journalists all over the world (Wehrwein 1998). The publication dates
are Wednesday, for JAMA; Thursday, for Nature and NEJM; Friday, for Science,
The Lancet and British Medical Journal. Because the time of the embargo is set
for some hours before midnight GMT the day before publication, American TV

32

stations can always use the stories on their evening main broadcasts one day in
advance.
‘[Journalists] come to favour those bureaucratic sources who can provide a
regular, credible, and ultimately usable flow of information’, says Gandy (1982,
p.13). And, in fact, because they are aware of the continuous flow of information
coming from peer-reviewed journals, science sections in major newspapers even
save ‘news holes’ in Wednesday, Thursday and Friday editions for embargoed
articles (Lewis 1998). When asked about their dependence on this kind of
information, journalists declare themselves as ‘slaves to journals’ (Kurtz 1991;
Shaw 2000b), but keep relying and reporting on them week after week.

Not a lot has changed in how newspapers treat scientific journals.
Indeed, newspaper editors openly acknowledge their dependence on
them. At The Los Angeles Times, at least half of the science stories
that run on the front page come directly from journals, said Ashley
Dunn, the paper’s science editor. Gideon Gil, the health and science
editor for the Boston Globe, said that two out of three science stories
that run on a typical day were from research that appeared in
journals. (Bosman 2006)

No other area of journalism has such a formalized arrangement between reporters
and their sources (Marshall 1998), and this agreement to delay a story until a
preset time, rather than rushing in to print, would probably get journalists in other
areas fired (Kiernan 1997)⁸. Nevertheless, science journalists keep accepting the
embargo system as part of their beat⁹ and understand it as serving the public
interest (Kiernan 2002, p.240).
Several reasons have been given to clarify this dependence. Gaye Tuchman
(1978), speaking about women issues, explained that one of the problems news
organizations face is to transform an issue, or a sequence of issues, into a beat. In

8

Embargoes are used in other areas of journalism on very special occasions. The embargoes in
science journalism are a weekly habit.

9

Beat is an area of expertise inside a news organization. We can talk about the science beat, the
sports beat, the crime beat, etc.

33

order for a new beat to be created there has to be ‘a routine round of institutions of
persons to be contacted at scheduled intervals for knowledge of events’ (p.144).
Science institutions understand this problem quite well; they know that the rhythm
of scientific discoveries does not match the rhythm of the media, and that science
papers are ‘old news’, because the work was done sometimes months before
publication. The only way to provide the ‘routine round’ that Tuchman identified
as necessary to the creation of a beat is through the embargo system. ‘The
embargo system creates artificial urgency’, writes Kiernan (2002, p.245), and it
gives the reporter the possibility of writing the word ‘today,’ which, according to
everything a journalist learns from day one in the job, is an important news-peg:
‘Most pegs are tied and, in fact, are often generated by, publicity-seeking sources
who know that journalists need pegs’. (Gans 1979, p.168)
Although individual journalists have expressed support of the embargo system
(Finn 1997a; Johnson 1998), there are some voices against it (Turney 1998;
Kiernan 2002; Leifert 2002):

In my view, the main benefit of the embargo accrues to the journals,
not the reporters. (…) The Nature and Science embargoes simply
assure that, every Thursday and Friday, news media the world over
announce the same research news. Editors, who are usually not
science specialists, know that competing media will publish the
stories just released from embargo and believe they would look
foolish by not carrying them also. They budget space and airtime.
And, in a triumph of circular reasoning, they assume that the
embargoed offerings must be that week’s most important science
news; by prominently publishing them, they make it so. (Leifert
2002)

More recently, some journalists and press relations officers have been appealing
for the rejection of the embargo, suggesting that by accepting the rules of the
journals ‘reporters become accomplices in a highly coordinated marketing
campaign’ (Penenberg 2004). One of the most important criticisms that are made
of the embargo system is that it distorts the image of science to the general public:

34

This practice [the embargo system] also ensures that the public gets a
“voilà” view of science. They will see the approved final product,
not the trial-and-error experimenting, debating, and groping that
make up the scientific process. In their concern to protect people
from inaccuracies, scientists mislead them much more seriously bout
the science of the scientific process. Also, by stripping science of its
natural human interest, they leave it for reporters to add artificial
drama. In short, scientists contribute to the very sensationalism and
“discovery” orientation of the press that they criticize. (Goodell
1977, p.131)

No one studied the embargo in science news more deeply that Vincent Kiernan. In
April 1990, JAMA changed its publication date to Wednesday in order to avoid
appearing after the NEJM on Thursday. Kiernan (1998) examined The New York
Times coverage of JAMA from 1989 to 1991, comparing it to the NEJM coverage.
He found that the ‘news coverage of JAMA’s contents jumped by almost 50
percent after its publication date was moved two days earlier in the week’. The
number of stories citing NEJM remained unchanged.
In another study about the Mars Meteorite case
¹⁰, Kiernan (2000) found that
‘contrary to the stated rationale for embargoes on science news, premature
disclosure of the paper in the media resulted in news coverage that was largely
accurate’. Both these studies, and his doctoral thesis on the subject, led Kiernan to
state that the embargo system ‘distorts coverage of science, and consequently the
news the public receives about science’, and therefore ‘should be eliminated’.
(Kiernan 2002, p.252)
The future of the embargo system may be directly linked with the use of the
Internet in newsrooms. Finn (1997b) contends that the Internet may kill the
embargo. Kiernan (2002, p.249) says that the Internet ‘appears to be both
bolstering and undermining the embargo system’, because there are more sites
with embargoed information available everywhere in the world but, at the same

10

In 1994, a NASA team discovered tubular structures that seemed reminiscent of living
organisms in a meteorite from Mars. The case got worldwide attention when, in 1996, Science
published an article on the subject.

35

time, there is a growing number of specialized newsgroups and public sites where
scientists hold their discussions and where reporters can get important information
before it even appears in journals.

2.1.2. Other influences on the news - organization, competition, audiences
and personal background

Sources, as we have seen, have a strong influence on what gets reported in the
media. Most of the issues journalists write about are prepared by the sources, the
so called ‘routine events’, as defined by Molotch and Lester (1974). Several
studies (Tuchman 1978; Gans 1979; Fishman 1980) have shown that the
organization of the newsroom, and the exchanges that take place between the
members of the staff, also exert a heavy weight on the construction of news:

The news reflects not the reality being reported on, but the social and
cultural organization of news work and the frames for news
discourse they provide. (Ericson, Baranek et al. 1987, p.101)

The first idea we must keep in mind when analysing the organizational constraints
of journalists is that the newsroom consists of people who are competing for a
scarce resource – space, have only a limited time to gather information, and must
do it within the budget of the organization. For a story to get published, it must go
through what Gans (1979, p.90) calls the ‘selling process’, which takes place
mostly inside the newsroom: a source (or an editor) sells a story to a journalist,
who sells it to the editor, who sells it to senior editors.
In big news organizations, the editorial operations become more centralized and
more bureaucratised. Beats, which are fixed areas of jurisdiction (one of the five
basic characteristics of a bureaucracy, as we have seen), only appear when
organizations are big enough (Johnstone 1986). And the system is so widespread

36

‘that not using beats is a distinctive feature of being an experimental, alternative,
or underground newspaper’. (Fishman 1980, p.27)
Stocking and Gross (1989), who analysed the cognitive processes of journalists,
say that ‘when time constraints are imposed, despite competing needs for
accuracy, information processing biases are profoundly increased’ (p.54). Sharon
Dunwoody, who studied science journalists’ behaviours at a science meeting,
concluded that reporters operating under a greater number of newsroom
constraints – such as daily deadlines – depended heavily on press conferences.
They would also use fewer sources (usually one or two) than reporters not
pressured by their editors. (Dunwoody 1980)
Science reporters may feel the newsroom pressures deeply than other journalists
(McCleneghan 1994). ‘The most essential part of a science reporter’s job is (…)
to be able to ‘sell’ the story to the most powerful person on the paper’, says
Wilkie (1991, p.577). ‘On busy days, unless a science story can be made
interesting enough to compete with such other stories it will be among the first to
be dropped’. The clashes between editors and science journalists on what is really
important play an important part in these decisions. For instance, Glynn (1988)
showed that editors tend to evaluate sensational treatment of science stories more
positively than do reporters.
This particular aspect of the science beat and the way science news is regarded
inside the news organizations¹¹ may explain why, even when preferring to write
feature stories (Dennis and McCartney 1979; Friedman 1986), science journalists
turn to ‘breaking news’ and, consequently, to peer-reviewed journals and their
press releases:

11

‘Newspapers have historically tolerated science writing, not encouraged it. Health writing is fine
because everybody gets sick. But cosmology and paleontology? Only if you can relate the stories
to the readers lifestyles.’ Dawson, J. (2002). "The devolution of a science page." Nieman Reports
56(3): 16-17.

37

Competition for priority affects the pace of daily newswork,
encouraging the focus on “breaking news” and discouraging the
coverage of long-term issues or issues that require extensive
technical background. (Nelkin 1987, p.111)

Science journalists say that they have three main reasons for disliking ‘hard’ or
‘breaking news’: the unnatural news peg, as if everything that is written on a
scientific paper had happened ‘today’; the unrealistic picture it gives of the
scientific enterprise; and the need for drama and oversimplification, that usually
leads to charges of sensationalism from scientists (Friedman 1986).
The several constraints of the newsroom are summarized by one science journalist
interviewed by Winsten (1985), who compares his job to that of the stoker:

The stoker was the big burly guy without a shirt on, stoking coal into
the hole of the furnace of an ocean liner. Well, we’re sort of
shovelling coal into the maw of this furnace that’s constantly
burning up what we shove in, and we have to keep shovelling it in.
There’s always a demand for news, there’s always a demand for
something new. (Winsten 1985, p.13-14)

One of the ways editors apply pressure on reporters is through comparison with
other news media. Once a story ‘makes the news’, editors feel obliged to run it,
regardless of their personal taste (Sigal 1973, p.50). Kiernan (2002, 2003) showed
that science studies covered by the Associated Press had more chances of being
covered by local newspapers. And if competitors publish the story, any story, the
journalist on the beat will certainly hear from their superiors. Interviewed by
Kurtz (1991), Susan Okie, medical writer at The Washington Post, explained what
happens when a press release from a prominent journal is ignored:

It’s very hard to make a case for ignoring it in a given week. We sort
of know The New York Times will do it, and if we don’t do it, I’ll get
a call at 10 o’clock at night saying “The Times has this on page one.
Why don’t we have it?” (Kurtz 1991)

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This behaviour of editors is not exclusive to science news and was detected in
several studies carried out on the construction of news (Sigal 1973; Tuchman
1978; Gans 1979; Ericson, Baranek et al. 1987). This conduct, however, has some
effects on the role of the media and certainly on the construction of reality through
the media, as Sigal (1973, p.181) explains: ‘So long as newsmen (…) use each
other as their standards of comparison, newsmaking will tend to be selfreinforcing.’
Contrary to some myths on journalism, many times created by movies and
television series, journalists tend to

hunt in packs, continually monitoring each other’s output, and
following very similar editorial strategies, so that news media
agendas tend to be shared across papers and broadcasting channels.
(Manning 2001, p.216)

Sharon Dunwoody studied extensively the cooperative conduct of the most
respected American science journalists, during the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. She noticed that they
exhibited this behaviour in two specific areas: topic selection and information
gathering. There were advantages in this behaviour. When cooperating in the
selection of the topic, science journalists neutralized the competitive aspects of
journalism, and this action was reassuring for both journalists and their editors,
because nobody would be scooped. At the same time, journalists could pool their
expertise on a particular issue.
Dunwoody witnessed the information-gathering cooperation between science
reporters in the sharing of notes and interviews, in the supportive questioning at
news conferences, and in the acting as warning system to one another. Of course,
both these kinds of cooperative behaviour also had some disadvantages:
standardization in story selection and disregard of areas of little interest to any of
the journalists involved. In the case she studied, social science was the ignored
area (Dunwoody 1980).

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This standardization can easily cross frontiers, as science journalists in other
countries read the most influential foreign newspapers to write about the same
things others are writing about (van Trigt, de Jong-van den Berg et al. 1994).
Sometimes, this copycat behaviour can have even more harmful effects as
unreliable science stories get reported over and over again, because of
organizational pressures (Lewis 1998; Finkbeiner 1999; Shaw 2000a). When one
of these stories gets into the media, and reporters feel obliged to report on it even
though they are aware of the story’s weaknesses, audiences are hurt the most.
Ever since the works of Gieber (1964), we know that journalists have a deficient
perception of their audiences. Sigal (1973, p.37) observed that reporters usually
say that they are writing for their readers but ‘the specific content of news
depends on the exchange of information between newsmen and their sources’.
Later, Gans (1979, p.230) showed that journalists have access to formal feedback
from their audience, but they seldom use it. When asked to describe who their
audience is, journalists tend to describe the most educated part of their audience,
perhaps to raise their own status (Gans 1979, p.238-239).
Citing Popovich (1978), Sharon Friedman notes that several studies show that
journalists do not think about their audiences while writing. One study showed
that many times journalists rely on the city editor’s perception of audience tastes.
Another showed that ‘the reporter’s source of reward was located among his peers
in the newsroom’ (Friedman 1986, p.32).
As in other areas of journalism, science reporters have a vague image of their
readers. When asked whom they are writing for, science journalists tend to give
very diverse answers, that go from ‘the layman’ to ‘Joe the plumber,’ or the
‘average high school graduate.’ Some say they are writing for professionals in
science, others are writing for themselves and their editors (Dennis and
McCartney 1979). As Nelkin (1987) observed, science journalists’ perceptions of
their readers are based on their personal observations, and they ‘maintain a set of
assumptions about readers that heavily influence their choices and their styles’
(p.118).

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The personal observations of journalists are also influenced by their own
background. Journalism is not only a production process, and research has shown
that the news product also reflects the personal views of reporters (Schudson
1989). News journalists in Europe the USA and elsewhere continue to be drawn
from mainly middle class and educated elites (Manning 2001, p.71). Science
journalists belong to this elite, as Krieghbaum pointed out more than 30 years ago:

During the past quarter century, science journalists have acquired
better academic backgrounds and certainly have held their own
against two other recognized elites among reporters – those in
Washington and those overseas. (Krieghbaum 1967, p.92)

At that time, science journalists enjoyed a special status in the newsroom, as other
journalists even asked for advice on personal medical matters, ‘so typically these
writers came to be known in the office as “Doc”’ (Burnham 1987, p.198-199).
More recent research has shown that this pattern of superiority is still true (Dennis
and McCartney 1979; Tristani-Potteaux 1997). In this last study, which included a
survey of French science journalists, Françoise Tristani-Potteaux found that a
growing number of these reporters came from science areas and some had
journalism degrees. She also found that, among French science journalists, there is
a feeling of belonging to the world of research, a characteristic that can strongly
influence the outcome of their work.
There is an issue, however, that seems to divide science journalists when
discussing their background: the need to have a science education before reporting
on science issues. Nelkin (1987) and Hansen (1994) found that, in general,
journalists think that excessive science training is not important for the job, and
can even hinder the critical ability of journalists as they absorb the values of
scientists. However, a recent survey of journalists and mass communication
scholars in the United States revealed that most respondents are worried about the
training of science journalists as they are ‘at the critical intersection of the practice
of science and the public understanding of science’ (Treise and Weigold 2002).
Others, have been even more radical: