Credits: CC by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiagoafpereira/4091399998/sizes/z/in/photostream/} Tiago A. Pereira{/link}
“Look at me! I am a piece of history – I started in journalism when typewriters were still being used,” Tim Radford stated during his workshop at SISSA – the International School of Advanced Studies of Trieste. Currently a freelance journalist, he also worked at The Guardian for 32 years as the letters editor, arts editor, literary editor and science editor. Radford began his career at 16 when he joined the New Zealand Herald as a reporter. He believes that journalists have very ambitious goals to accomplish: to aim at the truth, or at least at fairness; to defend democracy; to take the reader very seriously and to aim for clarity.
“What’s the future of science journalism?” he asks. “We don’t know. Science journalism is actually still a messy and undefined thing and as science journalists, we have a great opportunity: since we still don’t have science journalism, we can create it. There is no point in not being an aggressive journalist: go and hunt your story. Bear in mind that every story is plastic and can be manipulated to build up other stories and each story can interest different audiences. There are three great stories in science to tell: where the universe came from, where life came from, and where we came from. If you think about popular science stories, you will realize that they are all included within these brackets. Science doesn’t provide answers, it provides more questions; a journalist must interpret science while selecting interesting stories and providing perspectives. Indeed, it’s a difficult job”.
In an interview conducted by Laura Caciagli, he talks about the role of a journalist and explains how to catch the reader’s attention by shaping scientific facts into narratives, focusing on climate change media reporting.
“Dealing with climate change is indeed a complex issue, but not a very controversial one. Climate change is now a reality; the entity of its effects is only now under discussion. To deal with climate change honestly, a journalist must avoid a balanced attitude.”
Clisp – When you talked about science journalism, you mentioned Sheherazade. What does media reporting have to do with One Thousand and One Nights?
Tim Radford - A reporter is like Sheherazade because if people read what he writes, his life will be spared just as hers was, so that he can continue telling the story. I have a great deal of sympathy for Sheherazade and I like to use her as a metaphor to say that we are all storytelling animals. Telling stories is still the best way to teach, advise, show and instruct people while enhancing society; if you look carefully at anything that happens in the world you can find narratives. We are all natural storytellers and story listeners, and journalists are simply storytellers with a focus. As journalists, we have a purpose: to defend democracy, to take the reader and the truth very seriously. We cannot be pompous or self-regarding when we write. We need to tell stories to entertain and enlighten.
Clisp – Can science be enlightening and entertaining?
T. R. - Science is astonishing, a wonderful enterprise. A great attribute of the 20th Century is that science has appeared. It’s difficult to be aware of how quickly our lives have changed; now my legs are not damaged by polio, my lungs are not carved by tuberculosis, my face is not pitted by small pocks, but when I was born, these things happened to children everywhere and it was still possible to get sick and die. Just to provide you with another example, people forget that the World Wide Web, something that has dramatically changed how we communicate, was designed and realized by researchers from CERN of Geneva to make it possible to archive, analyze, distribute and share large amounts of data.
Many scientists today talk about their studies through their blogs or personal websites; in a digital ecosystem, it has become easier for scientists to speak directly to readers. Fifteen years ago if you wanted to read about science you had to buy science magazines. I actually think that a journalist is an intermediary, a selector, someone who says what is interesting and what is not. In my opinion the role of a journalist is fundamental. The “quantity of science” is in fact huge today, so huge that the editor of a science journal doesn’t expect to understand half of the science that he, himself, publishes. Science today is a profound and self-sustained ambition of curiosity which most of us are unable to follow: it is difficult to follow because it involves new languages, new concepts and often new mathematics, all of which are beyond the public. According to a recent analysis, 60,000 new words have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary just by one discipline: Biology. Shakespeare wrote all his plays, sonnets, and poems with a vocabulary that consisted of a little more than 30,000 words!
Nevertheless, science has to be for somebody: there’s no point in doing research only for the sake of research. In this sense, journalists are important for communicating science to the public. Journalism matters because science must be told to people.
As a science journalist, three or four times in a lifetime you will get the chance to write things you never would have imagined to write, and that is just so wonderful!
Clisp – Journalists and scientists sometimes don’t understand each other. Scientists in particular don’t trust journalists who report their studies. Journalists think that most scientists communicate badly. What do you think about that?
T. R. - Just try to imagine a young scientist in his laboratory. He has an idea, so first of all, he will search the literature to find out what has previously been written about it. He will then acquire more and more information and test it against his hypothesis. Ultimately, the researcher will sit down and write a paper. He will then submit the paper for peer-review to be published. In this sense, scientists and journalists are similar: they both ask questions. When a scientist writes a scientific paper, or when a journalist writes an article for a newspaper the questions they have to address are the same and the 5W rules (who, what, where, when, why) apply to both of them.
There are just two main differences. One is time. In scientific research time could be long (it could take years to obtain a result to be published), while in a newspaper or a press room time is a limit, you have to write the article usually in a few hours or in a day. The other important difference is that a journalist writes for a reader (without a reader, how can he be a journalist?). There are many scientific publications that have been read only by the scientists who realized the study (and perhaps their mothers).
As a journalist, you never want to write a story that nobody reads. You must aim at the unforgettable.
Clisp – You have experienced different eras of journalism. What differences do you see in the role of a journalist?
T. R. - Well, I don’t think the role of a journalist has changed, but I think the function and the operating model have changed dramatically. What’s the purpose of journalism? The purpose of journalism is still to defend democracy: we have a free state because we have a free press. You can’t separate the role of the media from the condition of the country and the government.
I think that science tells stories that are so compelling, so exciting and so adventurous that it has everything to become an appealing story, as everything dealing with human endeavors and ambitions.
Clisp – What makes a good science story?
T. R. - Details and emotions, I would say. Details are important to make a story interesting and to highlight different and novel points of view. As a journalist, it is important to use emotions and sensations in reporting science while avoiding cliché and sloppy metaphors; write a story that appeals to the senses while using simple but precise words. Express what you want to say with clarity and vividness (I must admit, quite a difficult goal, especially when you write in a hurry).
Phenotype, neuroreceptor, albedo, photosynthesis, Paleozoic, DNA, and my favorite, Bose-Einstein condensate, are all scientific terms that are irreplaceable. Consider now a few words that a journalist uses: Pandora’s box (a metaphor for science that has gone wrong), Frankenstein, the magic bullet, the slippery slope. These are very common but often meaningless. Scientific words have a very precise meaning that you must not misuse: as a science journalist, you can become a “translator” of the language of science by staying away from technical jargon or trivial words.
A good science story may be hard to define, but it will always have these qualities and features: there will be something you can say in an opening sentence that will leave the public wanting to know more. When I write, I think about what my first sentence will be. If I don’t have my first sentence, I don’t have the story at all. The first sentence of an article must provoke the questions why, when, and where. People like to be thrilled, they don’t like to be lectured.
When you sit down to write, remember that there is only one important person in your life, a person you will probably never meet: the reader. You have to please the person who reads the article, not the scientist you interviewed. You can’t allow scientists to dictate the terms of science reporting.
Moreover, ignorance could be a good starting point for writing about science. Don’t be afraid to ask one more question and if in doubt, assume the reader knows nothing. A classic error in journalism is to overestimate what the reader knows and underestimate the reader’s intelligence. A reader can ignore the secrets of biology or astrophysics, however, never assume that he is stupid! An important ambition to have is to tell science to ordinary people. An even more important ambition is to aim for quality: it might be the only way in which newspapers can survive.
Clisp – What are the major problems a journalist has to address in writing about complex and controversial issues like climate change?
T. R. – Well, I think that climate change is indeed a complex issue, but not a very controversial one. Twenty years ago climate scientists tried to predict the future and they said: «the climate is likely to warm». They were right. It’s happening, there’s no doubt that it is happening. It’s foolish to pretend otherwise and actually I think there’s an element of dishonesty in refusing to address the evidence of climate change. The evidence says that for the time being, the climate is warming.
You can’t sensibly claim that it is a conspiracy of climate scientists to cover up the evidence because the conspiracy is too large: researchers from NASA, NOAA, University of East Anglia, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, among others, are all confident that human activity is altering the climate. But the next question is: “How bad will it be?” Since we are talking about the future, nobody knows exactly.
I first covered the topic of climate change during the Toronto Conference in 1988. At that time, most climate scientists were saying : «Yes, climate change is a serious problem for the future, it’s not happening now, but clearly we need to study it ». Now, the scientists are more conservative than they were in 1988 and claim: «We are going to be careful, it’s going to be much worse than we expected». In 1988, the questions we faced were: is the climate warming? If so, why? Now the questions are: how will climate change affect regions? What are we doing to tackle climate change? What are we doing to cut greenhouse gas emissions?
The real problem for a journalist dealing with climate change is to keep himself away from polarized attitudes. Our job is to report what climate science is saying right now and what it continues to say; and when science changes its mind, we have to report that, too. Most importantly, our job is not only to provide people with news, but also to provide perspectives; that’s our responsibility as well. Aim for the truth and if it is elusive, at least aim for fairness while being aware that nothing is definitive.
Clisp – A journalist often thinks he can reach impartiality simply by telling both sides of a story. In your opinion, how much does the journalistic norm of balance (maybe the biggest potential pitfall when writing about science) influence today’s media reporting on climate change?
T. R. – I don’t think that any journalist or editor now needs to say «here we have some stories about climate change, let’s consider the other side», for which there’s not another side. I don’t think, for example, that a journalist who has access to stories from Nature, Nature Climate Change, PloS, PNAS needs anything more.
Consider this example: if we were talking about fascism, we would not talk about “the other side”. We don’t actually need to present it like “fascism versus democracy”. That’s not the other side, that’s just madness. Moreover, I think it could be criminally irresponsible: if you believe that something is dangerous you have an obligation to say so.
Nevertheless, get into the media and stay there. As journalists, we have a responsibility to defend democracy and to tell the truth, but not to present a balanced view, if there’s no balance to be presented.
(Interview by Laura Caciagli)
You may also be interested in:
- “A manifesto for the simple scribe – my 25 commandments for journalists” In an article written for The Guardian, the journalistic experience of Tim Radford condensed into a handy set of rules for aspiring hacks.
- “Take big, wonderful and startling ideas and make them comprehensible”. The secrets of science writing in an article by Tim Radford
- Read the article by Tim Radford “Science writing prize: Capture the drama, it’s rocket science!”. A reflection on his favorite science writing.
- Watch the video “Tim Radford on how to be a science writer” by The Wellcome Trust
- Tim Radford’s profile at The Guardian
- The official webpage of Tim Radford’s science writing workshop at SISSA (International School of Advanced Studies)