November 1, 2005
Risky Reporting
The book, It Ain't Necessarily So says that "reporting about hazards 'is ordinary reporting about events rather than issues, about immediate consequences rather than long-term considerations, about harms rather than risks...'"
The conventions of journalism lend themselves to reporting actualized events rather than possible threats. This creates conflict when journalists report on risks. After being required to collect information about what happened rather than what will happen, journalists run into the pitfall of reporting figures of prospective risk.
The language of the past differs greatly from the language of the possible. It's like a historian trying to write a science fiction novel. Granted, it is hard for journalists to shift thinking when they have deadlines to meet. However, thinking critically about risk reporting is a major issue. Some ways to address the reporting issue of risk:
- Give all the little details of the study being reported.
- Make clear who is affected by the statistic.
- Don't speak in absolute terms!
Posted by EvanReynolds at November 1, 2005 10:34 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
Comments
Sometimes the right things to do aren’t always the easy things. Risk is something worth reporting on, but it is nearly impossible to be accurate when you speak in absolute terms without context.
The pitfall is the clash of conventions. Journalism was designed to report on things that actually happened. Risk has the possibility of happening, but it didn’t already happen.
Posted by: Evan at November 11, 2005 12:28 AM
Evan I agree with the second tip you give, but the first and third tips are difficult to accomplish, particularly if you have a word count or a hot issue that seems to speak in absolutes—or an editor who wants a hot topic with some prevalence and relevance.
The ideal is to give all of the information, but the actual is that many roadblocks stand in the way of this type of full reporting that you would find in a journal article or book.
Posted by: Amanda at November 2, 2005 12:01 PM