Sunday, March 05, 2006
Remember, it's never the media's fault!
I generally enjoy reading Newsweek's online articles that appear on MSNBC. They're usually full of good information or summaries of news I've missed over the course of a week. The article linked below is a clear exception. The authors are talking about how scientists often give unclear messages about what's good and what's bad for us. Food News Blues - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com:
"To those of us without an M.D., it sometimes seems as if scientists are deliberately trying to mess with our heads--especially when it comes to nutrition research." Then they go on to explain exactly why it's the scientists' fault. But I think the mainstream media has to take much of the blame on this.
They do mention that science is more complicated than fits in a headline, but they take no responsibility for creating headlines that make it sound like the answers are very clear and clean cut. Maybe it's time we started to look at the headline writers as the source of the hype rather than the scientists. If you've ever talked with a reporter, you know that they'll take any little thing you say and blow it completely out of proportion to the larger message. And I'm sure that scientists suffer from their dealings with the media in this way, too.
A scientist might say, "For women 55 and over, eating more saturated fat does not show a significant correlation to the development breast cancer within five years." The headline creator will write, "Fat does not cause cancer."
Whenever we're dealing with commercial magazines, newspapers, TV, or anything else (blogs excepted, of course!), we have to remember one thing. They are not trying their best to impart important information. Instead, they are trying their best to get your attention. You are not their main customer. Advertisers are their main customers. And they metric they use to set ad prices is eyeballs, not brains. If they can attract your attention enough to buy the magazine, they've succeeded. The rest is just fluff. Unfortunately, the rest of us need for the fluff to impart good information, because most of us don't comb through the journals at our local research library.
Read the story and see if you get the same impression. Digg This!
"To those of us without an M.D., it sometimes seems as if scientists are deliberately trying to mess with our heads--especially when it comes to nutrition research." Then they go on to explain exactly why it's the scientists' fault. But I think the mainstream media has to take much of the blame on this.
They do mention that science is more complicated than fits in a headline, but they take no responsibility for creating headlines that make it sound like the answers are very clear and clean cut. Maybe it's time we started to look at the headline writers as the source of the hype rather than the scientists. If you've ever talked with a reporter, you know that they'll take any little thing you say and blow it completely out of proportion to the larger message. And I'm sure that scientists suffer from their dealings with the media in this way, too.
A scientist might say, "For women 55 and over, eating more saturated fat does not show a significant correlation to the development breast cancer within five years." The headline creator will write, "Fat does not cause cancer."
Whenever we're dealing with commercial magazines, newspapers, TV, or anything else (blogs excepted, of course!), we have to remember one thing. They are not trying their best to impart important information. Instead, they are trying their best to get your attention. You are not their main customer. Advertisers are their main customers. And they metric they use to set ad prices is eyeballs, not brains. If they can attract your attention enough to buy the magazine, they've succeeded. The rest is just fluff. Unfortunately, the rest of us need for the fluff to impart good information, because most of us don't comb through the journals at our local research library.
Read the story and see if you get the same impression. Digg This!
