The use of Internet in newsgathering among European science journalists
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Even though we were aware of this special relation between journalists and
scientists, we couldn’t have anticipated the results to this specific question, as all
respondents (N=97) answered that their relations with their sources were
“cooperative”. This is an interesting finding that will be further explored in
chapter 6 of this thesis, where we intend to discuss more deeply the results of our
research.
In one of the questions where we used a seven-point Likert agree-disagree scale,
we presented science journalists with the following sentence: “Most science
journalists give a positive view of their sources”. The majority of science
journalists surveyed agreed (31.3 percent) or strongly agreed (37.5 percent) with
this sentence, as we can see in figure 8.
40
30
20
Number
of
cases
10
0
Strongly
disagree
V.
strongly
disagree
Disagree
V.
strongly
agree
Strongly
agree
Agree
N
agree
nor
disagree
Figure 8- ‘Most science journalists give a positive view of their sources’
The embargo
The embargo is one of the main constraints sources (in this case, scientific
journals) apply on science journalists. By controlling the timing of the publication
in the media, journals can guarantee more publicity, as every journalist knows that
everybody else (in competing media) has access to the same scientific articles at
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the same time. This fact reassures science journalists that they are not going to be
scooped and, at the same time, pushes them to publish about an issue because,
probably, competing media will also do it.
We asked science journalists if they reported on scientific articles from peerreviewed
journals. The majority of respondents (N=78; 81.2 percent) said “yes”.
Journalists working in news agencies do not seem to report on this kind of issues
as often as other journalists, as we can see in table 12.
Type of media
Daily Weekly/monthly News
newspapers newspapers/magazines agencies Total
Yes 57 (86.3) 15 (75) 6 (60) 78
No 9 (13.7) 5 (25) 4 (40) 18
66 20 10 96
(percentage in brackets) χ² (2) = 4.610, p > 0.05
Table 12 - ‘Do you report on scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals?’
We then asked science journalists if the embargo policies of scientific journals
should be maintained. The exact question was: “Do you think that the embargo
system for scientific journals, which states that the media cannot write about an
article before a given time, should be maintained?” The majority of respondents
(N=68; 72.6 percent) said “yes”, 26 respondents (27.4 percent) said “no”.
There seems to be a relation between the number of years as a journalist and the
rejection of the embargo policy. As journalists get more experience, the
percentage of journalists rejecting the embargo in their group becomes higher, as
we can see in table 13. However, this relation is not statistically significant.
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Number of years as a journalist Total
0-5 years 6-19 years > 20 years
Yes 11 (78.5) 32 (76.2) 25 (65.8) 68
No 3 (21.5) 10 (23.8) 13 (34.2) 26
14 (100) 42 (100) 38 (100) 94
(percentage in brackets) χ² (2) = 1.398, p > 0.05
Table 13 - Journalistic experience and acceptance of the embargo
We have also tried to probe the ideas European science journalists have about the
embargo system and about who benefits from it. We asked respondents to choose
which one of four different statements best described their thoughts on the
embargo. The results are presented in figure 9.
50
40
30
20
Number
of
cases
10
0
Journalists
Audiences
Journals
Scientists
Figure 9 - Whose interests does the embargo serve?
Respondents split between two of the options: “The embargo serves mainly the
interests of journalists because it gives them more time to write about a complex
issue” and “The embargo serves mainly the interests of scientific journals because
it guarantees them more publicity.” Again, the number of years as a journalist
seems to make the difference between the options: as they get more experience,
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science journalists tend to perceive the embargo as a device that serves mainly the
interests of scientific journals, as we can see in table 14.
Number of years as a journalist Total
The embargo serves mainly... 0-5 years 6-19 years > 20 years
…the interests of journalists 5 (35.7) 17 (42.5) 16 (42.1) 38
…the interests of the audience 3 (21.4) 3 (7.5) 2 (5.3) 8
…the interests of journals 5 (35.7) 16 (40) 18 (47.3) 39
…the interests of scientists 1 (7.1) 4 (10) 2 (5.3) 7
Total 14 40 38 92
(percentage in brackets) χ² (6) = 4.319, p > 0.05
Table 14- Journalistic experience and perception of the embargo system
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4.3. European science journalists’ relations with other journalists
Scientific literature gives us a picture of science journalists as professionals who
are most of the times ready to share information with colleagues from competing
media. In the United States, Dunwoody (1980) witnessed cooperation, supportive
questioning at news conferences and even sharing of notes by science journalists,
covering a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Does this practice prevail in Europe? How do European science journalists relate
with their peers? Those were the questions we were trying to answer when we
asked European science journalists: “How would you describe the majority of
your relations with science journalists working in other organizations?” Again, as
we did with the question about the relations science journalists maintain with their
sources, we gave them two possible answers: “Cooperative” or “adversarial”.
All 97 respondents answered the question: 81 (83.5 percent) said their relations
with colleagues from other media were “cooperative”, 16 (16.5 percent) said their
relations were “adversarial”. Women are slightly more cooperative than men, as
we can verify in table 15.
Sex Total
Male Female
Cooperative 50 (80.6) 31 (88.6) 81
Adversarial 12 (19.4) 4 (11.4) 16
62 (100) 35 (100) 97
(percentage in brackets)
Table 15 - Relations with science journalists from other media according to sex
We also asked science journalists how often the following situations occur: (1) “I
discuss story ideas with science journalists working in other organizations”; and
(2) “When covering an event, science journalists cooperate with each other”. To
answer these two questions, respondents were asked to choose in a four-point
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scale the following possibilities: (0) Never; (1) Sometimes; (2) Most of the times;
(3) Always. Results for both these questions can be seen in figures 10 and 11.
60
50
40
30
Number
of
cases
20
10
0
Never Sometimes Most of the time
Figure 10 - ‘I discuss story ideas with science journalists working in other organizations’
60
50
40
30
Number
of
cases
20
10
0
Never Most of the time
Sometimes Alw ays
Figure 11 - ‘When covering an event, science journalists cooperate with each other’
In order to understand if science journalists are aware of the fact that, as scientific
literature states, professionals in this field help each other more than journalists in
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other fields, we asked respondents to classify the following statement in a sevenpoint
Likert agree-disagree scale: “Science journalists from different media help
each other more than journalists in other areas”. The results can be seen in figure
12.
30
20
Number
of
cases
10
0
Strongly
disagree
V.
strongly
disagree
Disagree
Strongly
agree
Agree
N
agree
nor
disagree
Very
strongly
agree
Figure 12 - ‘Science journalists from different media help each other more than journalists
in other areas’
Although most science journalists agree that they usually cooperate with each
other, as we have seen from previous answers, when asked if their behaviour is
similar to other fields of journalism, opinions split into three groups: 36.4 percent
are on the disagree side of figure 11, 36.5 on the agree side, and 27.1 percent
neither agree nor disagree with the given sentence.
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4.4. Organizational pressures on European science journalists
Respondents to this survey were presented with several sentences about
organizational pressures that they had to classify on a seven-point agree/disagree
Likert scale. The first of these sentences was: ‘I feel pressure from management to
be “more creative” in writing science stories’. The results can be seen in figure 13.
30
20
Number
of
cases
10
0
Agree
N
agree
nor
disagree
Strongly
disagree
V.
strongly
disagree
Disagree
V
strongly
agree
Strongly
agree
Figure 13 - ‘I feel pressure from management to be “more creative” in writing science
stories’
As we can notice, the majority of respondents (49 answers; 51.5 percent) is on the
disagree side of the bar chart, 27.4 are on the agree side, and 21.1 in the middle.
The majority of journalists working in countries with a GNI per capita lower than
22,000 USD seem to feel pressure from the management to be ‘more creative’ in
writing science stories, as we can see in table 16.
89
Disagree
Strongly disagree
Very strongly disagree
Neither agree
nor disagree
Agree
Strongly agree
Very strongly agree
GNI per capita
<22,000 USD 22,000-
28,000 USD
>28,000 USD Total
8 (38) 23 (51) 18 (62) 49
3 (14.3) 13 (28.9) 4 (13.8) 20
10 (47.6) 9 (20) 7 (24.1) 26
Total 21 45 29 95
(percentage in brackets) χ² (4) = 8.006, p > 0.05
Table 16- Pressure to be “more creative” according to GNI per capita
Respondents were also asked to rate other sentences according to the same sevenpoint
Likert scale. Results for these sentences can be checked in the following
figures.
30
20
Number
of
cases
10
0
Agree
N
agree
nor
disagree
Strongly
disagree
V
strongly
disagree
Disagree
V
strongly
agree
Strongly
agree
Figure 14 - ‘My credibility is tested more often than the credibility of other journalists at my
organization’
90
30
20
Numkber
of
cases
10
0
Agree
N
agree
nor
disagree
Strongly
disagree
V
strongly
disagree
Disagree
V
strongly
agree
Strongly
agree
Figure 15 - ‘Other journalists and editors at my organization do not take science journalists
seriously’
The majority of the respondents (51.7 percent) disagree with the sentence ‘Other
journalists and editors at my organization do not take science journalists
seriously’, 33.6 percent are on the agree side of the scale and 14.7 percent neither
agree nor disagree. Women feel more than man that they are not taken seriously
(see Table 17), and science journalists in countries with a GNI lower than 22,000
USD also feel that kind of pressure. Respect for science journalists inside their
own media in relation with the GNI per capita of the country they work in is
shown in Table 18.