Newspaper Proprietor Research Articles

THE SUNDAY TIMES AND ANDREW NEIL

This article contends that The Sunday Times became a champion of the ideas of free market populism after it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch. The driving force for this shift was the editor (1983–1994), Andrew Neil, who argued that free market ideology was a radical set of ideas which was on the side of ordinary people and which was opposed mainly by “elites” and “establishments”. This populist view of markets owes much to the ideas of the American Right and was shared by the newspaper's proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. The market populism of The Sunday Times was allied to a discourse in which opposing left-liberal views were characterised as politically correct “orthodoxies” rather than authentic positions. This article examines the newspaper's challenge to the “orthodoxies” of economic policy, the welfare state and policy on AIDS. It concludes that the popularisation of the market as a vehicle for social betterment was one of the lasting influences of this Murdoch newspaper, rather than simply its support for a particular leader (Thatcher) or party (the Conservatives).

Nathaniel Mist, Daniel Defoe, and the Perils of Publishing

The article concerns a neglected episode in the career of the Jacobite printer and newspaper proprietor Nathaniel Mist (d. 1737). It has been suggested, on the basis of press advertisements, that Mist published his own pirated edition of Daniel Defoe's novel Captain Singleton in 1721. Reasons are given for doubting the existence of such an edition. These hinge on the circumstances in which Mist found himself at this juncture, caused mainly by his prosecution on two separate charges of seditious libel (amounting to high treason) in his newspaper The Weekly Journal; or Saturday's Post . One of these cases allegedly involved Daniel Defoe, who had been a regular contributor to the Journal . On the basis of unpublished documents in the National Archives, as well as extensive newspaper coverage, the course of these prosecutions is described for the first time, including the issue of a royal proclamation for the capture of Mist's two assistants. On the first charge Mist received sentence in February 1721, including a spell in the pillory, where he was hailed as a hero by Jacobite supporters. Eventually the government was forced to drop the second charge. In the aftermath, however, Mist and his assistant Doctor Gaylard were pursued relentlessly by the authorities, and Mist himself absconded. The article seeks to explore the conditions in which publishers (as well as writers such as Defoe) operated at a time of fervent political controversy, intensified when the divisive Atterbury affair was uncovered. It describes the ways in which the authorities attempted to regulate the book trade, and some of the means by which publishers, journalists and printers resisted this pressure.

NRJ Book Reviews: Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, the Wall Street Journal and the Invention of Modern Journalism

Richard J. Tofel, Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal and Invention of Modern Journalism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009), 271 pages, $25.95 (hardcover).Review by Mary Jane PardueRichard Tofel writes that, when it came to technology, Barney Kilgore, a dominant presence at The Wall Street Journal for nearly 40 years, instinctively knew that resting on laurels could be fatal. The time was early 1950s, and great innovation was Electro-Typesetter.The Journal rolled out new technology first to set stock tables from The Associated Press in its Eastern edition. But just three years after it was merely a prototype, Electro-Typesetter was in use at all four of The Journal's printing plants.Kilgore wanted his own paper to remain at forefront of emerging technologies such as offset printing and facsimile reproduction, Tofel writes. learned of promise of such ideas from announcements by other companies and at industry conferences.Struggling journalists and newspaper owners today would do well to look back at Kilgore as a role model or at very least for inspiration. Tofel notes instructive nature of his subject's vision: More than thirty years before advent of digital publishing, Kilgore recognized that well-educated professionals were becoming overwhelmed by amount of information they were being asked to take in, and that a flood of data was actually yielding a drought of understanding.Tofel documents story of Kilgore, once described as greatest business journalist of 20th century, from his humble beginnings through his leadership of TheJournal during challenging years to his success at bringing newspaper to one million in circulation at time of his death.Kilgore's obituary in The Journal noted that his work was more famous than he was. But any journalist working at newspapers today and over last half-century can credit Kilgore for starting trends they follow. He created The Journal's signature What's News summaries, Tofel writes, which became the archetype for display of news on Internet, a medium not then dreamed of and not commercialized until nearly thirty years after his death.Kilgore emerges in book as a man ahead of his time, highly motivated, visionary and willing to take risks.He started at The Journal at age 23 in 1929, taking on his first assignment of monitoring news wire from Dow Jones News Service. Three years later, he began experimenting with journalistic forms that Tofel says would revo lutionize journalistic content. Among those were boxes that summarized main points in important stories and his famous Dear George column, a series of open letters that used clear, simple language.While dealing with complicated concepts such as deflation in a sophisticated manner, Kilgore's new column assumed that its readers were interested but not expert, eager to understand but currently confused, particularly as economic order seemed to collapse around them, Tofel writes. …

Skilled, Loyal, and Disciplined

From the 1950s to the 1970s, during the peak of the cold war, communist journalists had a significant presence in Brazilian conservative papers. They even held high-ranking positions. Newspaper owners were aware of their political orientations, but they did not seem concerned. In fact, some of those communist journalists enjoyed high professional prestige. An unusual symbiotic relationship has developed between conservative publishers and their communist employees. This article discusses such relationship in light of the modernization of Brazilian newspapers that started in the 1950s. To modernize their newspapers, publishers needed to rely on journalists' ability to deal with the news as a technical, industrial product. Journalists with communist sympathies provided skilled work and were willing to be loyal and disciplined in the newsrooms. They had their own reasons for working in the “big press.” The American rhetoric of professional journalism provided a common language for communist journalists and conservative publishers to work together. The Brazilian case has important lessons for analyzing the adaptation of the American model of professional journalism in different national settings.

Slanted Newspaper Coverage of Immigration: The Importance of Economics and Geography

When compared to studies of media effects, relatively few studies of the media focus on factors that influence the behavior of media organizations. Specifically, there are few empirical studies of the attributes and incentives of news organizations that might lead to slanted coverage of particular policy issues. In this study, we identify factors that lead to negatively slanted coverage of a specific policy issue: immigration. Using content analysis, geographic information systems (GIS) data, and contextual data, we find that newspaper ownership and proximity to the U.S.–Mexico border are related to slant in news articles and opinion pieces regarding immigration.

Reading Russia: Forms Without Substance

Reading RussiaForms Without Substance Archie Brown (bio) Twenty years ago, there was a more thoroughgoing political pluralism in Russia than there is today. Contested elections took place for a new legislature, the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR. Along with its inner body, a radically reformed Supreme Soviet, it wielded real power, as Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov discovered when in June 1989 the legislature rejected no fewer than nine of his candidates for ministerial office. At that time, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was still the only legal party in the country, but there was a public political life and an open struggle among several fundamentally different tendencies. In 2009, there is a variety of parties, but the system has been managed in such a way that recent elections have produced little real choice; moreover, the lack of accountability of those elected, already a feature of Russian politics in the 1990s, persists. In some respects, the forms of democracy—including party consolidation—have been enhanced, but they have been so manipulated as to deprive them of substance.1 Elections keep up the pretense of democracy, but their political significance has been eroded. The results of the 2007 parliamentary elections and the 2008 presidential balloting were more predictable than the outcome of elections had been during the last three years of the Soviet Union's existence. Russian voters had a stronger sense of political efficacy in 1989, 1990, and 1991 than they have had over the past decade. As Juan J. Linz has noted, "electoral authoritarianism" and "multiparty authoritarianism" are more appropriate characterizations for many states that have been described as "electoral democracies."2 Either of Linz's terms may reasonably be applied to contemporary Russia, although "façade democracy" is no less apt.3 [End Page 47] That is not to say that Russia has regressed all the way to the pre-perestroika Soviet system. In those years, well-educated Russians were unhappy that censorship deprived them of the right to read the books of their choice and that the closed system denied them permission to travel as freely as did their Western counterparts. Today, Russian citizens possess those civil rights. The full spectrum of political opinion and historical interpretation is to be found in Russian book-publishing. It is highly improbable that a new attempt will be made to restrict foreign travel on political grounds. Hard economic times might keep Russians at home, but their government will not. Retrogression has been greater in television and newspapers. During both the later perestroika years and the Yeltsin presidency, the mass media contained a wider range of political views, including criticism of the authorities, than is now to be found. Yet the degree of freedom today is far greater than it was in the unreformed Soviet system. Then, Russian samizdat was distributed in hundreds of copies. Today, the circulation of Novaya gazeta, the most independent and boldly critical of Moscow newspapers, is over a quarter of a million. It has paid a heavy price, however, for its investigative journalism and critical scrutiny of the authorities at all levels. Since 2000, four of its journalists have been murdered, among them Anna Politkovskaya. The international prestige of Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the newspaper's owners, may help to prevent the paper from being closed down. Its publication can also be seen as a safety valve as well as a contribution to maintaining an image of democracy. It was a modestly hopeful sign that, after the latest murder of a Novaya gazeta reporter, Anastasia Baburova (along with the principal target of the assassins, human-rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov), Russian president Dmitri Medvedev expressed his condolences, albeit somewhat belatedly. He did not do so publicly, but invited Gorbachev and the newspaper's editor, Dmitri Muratov, to the Kremlin to express his "deepest sympathy and compassion." In addition to Novaya gazeta and the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy, there are a number of smaller independent publications, some of them voicing extremist views. Of increasing importance—and naturally a far cry from anything imaginable in Brezhnev's time—is the growth of Internet access. So far, at least, the Russian authorities have resisted...

Content in Publicly, Privately Owned Newspapers more Alike than Different

Almost since the first newspaper company went public in 1963,1 questions have been raised about whether public ownership is compatible with good journalism.2 That relationship is at the heart of this article. It examines the link between two forms of ownership-private ownership and public ownership-and the content that a newspaper publishes. Of particular interest is whether one of these two forms of ownership is linked to a stronger commitment to coverage about vital aspects of civic life, such as government, national security and diplomacy.Previous ResearchScholars have looked at public ownership of newspapers from two perspectives, one loosely grounded in economically oriented theories about how firms operate and the other linked more closely to organizational sociology. The main concern of most economics-based studies has been financial performance or profits. Generally speaking, that research has found that the relationship between public ownership and financial performance is not straightforward.3 There's little doubt that publicly owned newspaper companies have a strong profit orientation, but several studies have found that they don't necessarily seek to maximize short-term profits, as is often asserted. It's also not clear that publicly held companies are any more profit-driven than privately held media businesses. Though the economically oriented studies seldom include journalistic quality or content as variables, concerns about quality and content often animate that research. For example, the impact of public ownership on journalistic quality was a key issue in Taking Stock: Journalism and the Publicly Traded Newspaper Company, which is the most comprehensive examination of public newspaper ownership.4The sociological framework takes a broader approach to understanding the relationship between ownership structure and content. Scholars such as Schudson, Demers and Shoemaker and Reese focus on the myriad of influences on content decision-making.5 For them, ownership is but one of many factors that shape content. Those factors range from the social characteristics of the message makers to the ideological systems in which media organizations operate. In The Sociology of News, Schudson addresses profit motive. While he acknowledges that it's at the heart of the commercial news businesses, he argues that market logic doesn't always dictate how a news organization operates.6 He says the desire of journalists to base decisions on their own professional judgments can constrain commercial motives. That point is evident in multiple ways in the research grounded in organizational sociology. Taken as a whole, it suggests that it's simplistic to assume that public ownership is necessarily bad for journalistic quality-or that private ownership is usually good for it.Research QuestionsCritics of public ownership worry that it creates financial pressures that undermine a newspaper's journalistic mission. Yet scholars have rarely compared the journalistic output-the content-of publicly and privately held newspapers to evaluate that thesis. That's what this research does. The independent variable-ownership structure-is defined conventionally: Publicly owned companies trade their stock on public securities markets. Privately owned companies don't trade their stock on securities markets. Because so little research has examined content differences between publicly held and privately held newspapers, it seems prudent to ask research questions rather than pose hypotheses. They are:RQ1:Is the ownership structure of a newspaper's parent company associated with differences in the subjects that the newspaper covers? More specifically, are there differences in the amount of coverage of civic affairs, crime and justice and softer subjects such as sports, personalities or entertainment?Economically oriented theories suggest that publicly owned newspapers face financial pressures that undermine coverage of civic affairs in favor of cheaper or more popular fare, such as crime, celebrities or other insignificant subjects. …

Canadian Newspaper Ownership in the Era of Convergence: Rediscovering Social Responsibility (review)

Canadian Newspaper Ownership in the Era of Convergence: Rediscovering Social Responsibility (review)

Saudi Arabia’s Media Influence

When Saddam Hussein’s forces rolled across the border into Kuwait in 1991, Riyadh kept the Saudi population in the dark for three days before realizing that most Saudis had tuned into CNN to find out what was going on with their Gulf neighbor. This rude awakening was the beginning of a fundamental turning point in kingdom’s media strategy which until the early 1990s, had been largely confined to newspaper ownership. Over the past seventeen years the Saudi establishment has used its deep pockets to influence the region’s media and minds, morphing from an approach that paid off and intimidated media that ran negative reports on the kingdom to become one of the Middle East’s most influential media owners. As a result of the 1991 Gulf War, individuals close to the royal family decided to internationalize the kingdom’s media presence, launching the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) in London, backed by the then Saudi king’s in-law, Walid Ibrahim. “In the first Saudi era there was more of a tendency to buy individuals,” said As‘ad AbuKhalil, a politics professor at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of The Battle for Saudi Arabia. “Before 1990 there were competing ownerships of Arab media – Libya, Iraq, UAE and Saudi Arabia. These were the major contenders. Ever since that time it is fair to say the media came entirely open for Saudi Arabia and the multiplicity [of media outlets] reflects the multiplicity of princes [that own media outlets].”

Mr. Big, the Big Fella and the Split: Fault Lines in Bankstown's Labor Politics, 1955

Rodney Cavalier has shown how useful micro local studies can be in shedding light on broader events such as the labour Split of 1954-55. This article returns to one of his case studies in south-west Sydney. The redoubtable figure of Raymond Fitzpatrick, newspaper proprietor and contractor of Bankstown is introduced to Australian labour historiography. Known as the 'Mr Big of Bankstown' Fitzpatrick serves as an uncomfortable reminder that the labour tradition in Australia includes racketeers and gangsters. The article also examines the enduring legacy of the 1931 Split in the Australian labour Party in New South Wales. Twenty-four years later the considerable shadow of former premier J.T. Lang must also be taken into account in negotiating the terrain of labour politics in Sydney. So must the role of local movers and shakers like Ray Fitzpatrick. Local tensions impacting upon Charles Morgan, MHR for Reid, the federal seat surrounding Bankstown, shaped one of Australia's constitutional landmarks, the Fitzpatrick and Browne privilege case of 1955. This article relates how the scheming politician responded to threats to his position posed by Fitzpatrick, Lang and the Split.

Capital and Control: Consequences of Different Forms of Newspaper Ownership

Debates over the effects and efficacy of different forms of newspaper ownership are rising. This article elucidates the debates by exploring private, public, not-for-profit, and employee ownership using economic and managerial theory about ownership and control of enterprises. It shows the managerial and economic conditions that emerge under the different forms of ownership, their implications, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. The article concludes that there is no perfect form of newspaper ownership.

“Mosaic Arabs” between Total and Conditioned Arabization: The Participation of Jews in Arabic Press and Journalism in Muslim Societies during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Jewish involvement in Arabic press and journalism accompanied the process of modernization of Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa from the second half of the nineteenth century. There was a connection between the nature of the Jews' involvement in the canonical Arab culture and the development of the Arabic-Jewish press and journalism: wherever Jews tried to integrate socially, politically and above all culturally into society, there were always active Jewish owners of Arabic newspapers and periodicals as well as editors and journalists writing in standard literary Arabic (fu ā). But wherever Jews showed no interest in the canonical cultural activities of the relevant society, only periodicals in Judeo-Arabic dialects written in Hebrew letters are to be found, in addition to newspapers in other languages. However, due to the gradual demise of Arab-Jewish culture because of the national conflict in the Middle East, Jewish involvement in Arabic press and journalism is coming to an end. The distinguishing feature of the Muslim-Jewish symbiosis under the Arab cultural umbrella up to the twentieth century was that the great majority of Jews under Islamic rule adopted Arabic as their language. This symbiosis does not exist in our time because Arabic is gradually disappearing as a mother tongue mastered by Jews.

Self-Censorship In The Pakistani Print Media

Though there is no formally enforced press censorship in Pakistan, journalists have been indirectly forced to curtail their reporting due to various external reasons. This article examines the print media's potential role in Pakistan and identifies the direct external causes of self-censorship such as unofficial government controls, the oligopolistic newspaper ownership structure, the legal system and the lack of security for journalists. In addition, the paper looks at specific structural characteristics of the Pakistani print media that have created an environment for self-censorship to thrive, namely the reach and accessibility of the print media and the isolation of the Pakistani journalist from the international community. Finally, the paper puts forth three strategic recommendations to address the problem of self-censorship, first, legal reform to create an environment conducive to free journalism; second, ownership reform to increase plurality and create free market competition in the newspaper industry; and third, development of a self-regulating, professional Pakistani journalist association.

BRITISH JOURNALISM AND THE CAMPAIGN FOR INTERVENTION IN THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR, 1918–20

This article deals with the debate that took place in the British press in the years 1918–20 on the issue of Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. It looks at the editorial campaign mounted by some key newspaper editors, proprietors and correspondents in favour of intervention and identifies some common themes that recurred in their arguments. It also examines British press coverage from the fronts of the civil war and looks at some of the difficulties faced by correspondents in the field. While coverage from the fronts was patchy, the editorial campaign was highly organized and those involved did all they could to influence the decision‐making process. Although military and political decision making on intervention was more concerned with the war against Germany than with Russia, the accompanying press debate was closely focused on the nature of the Soviet regime.

George Parker, Defoe, and the Whitefriars Trade: A ‘Lost’ Edition of A Tour thro’ Great Britain

The article considers issues raised by a rare work, Curious and Diverting Journies, thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1734). This was the first reprint of Daniel Defoe's famous Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-26), and it was issued first in serial parts in a newspaper and then in volume form. The publisher is identified as George Parker (1654-1743), astrologer, printer, newspaper proprietor and purveyor of patent medicines. Evidence is brought to show that Parker was one of a number of printers active in the district of Whitefriars, close to Fleet Street. Together with men like Thomas Read and John Purser, it emerges that Parker helped to pioneer a branch of publishing on topics such as travel, utilizing newspaper serialization of established works followed by cheap popular reprints in book form. In addition a full physical description of the Bodleian copy of the volume (one of two surviving) is given, along with an account of its subsequent owners, notably Revd Henry White (1761-1836), an acquaintance in Lichfield of Samuel Johnson. Some of the issues raised are related to Defoe's career in the literary market-place.

Philip Merrill: Advisor, Benefactor, Friend

Philip Merrill:Advisor, Benefactor, Friend Eliot A. Cohen, Robert E. Osgood Professor and founding Director In Memoriam This past summer SAIS lost a great friend, Philip Merrill, long a generous benefactor, and most recently the donor, together with his wife Ellie and the support of their children Douglas, Cathy and Nancy, of the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at SAIS. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Philip Merrill with the 2005-2006 Merrill Scholars His was a varied career. He learned the sea the hard way, in the merchant marine, and journalism by starting at the bottom, too; he attended Cornell where he claims to have pulled off the greatest practical joke in the history of the university (alas, I never learned what it was); he served in the Army and in the foreign service; he built a fortune in publishing, including the indispensable inside-the-Beltway magazine The Washingtonian as well as local newspapers in his own Annapolis; he served his country as assistant secretary general of NATO and as chairman of the Export-Import Bank, as well as on a slew of high-level advisory panels and boards; he served his community by putting his passion and his money into rescuing Chesapeake Bay from pollution. He loved skiing and above all sailing—he would hold you in conversation in his living room overlooking the Bay, but if an elegant boat drifted across the horizon you lost him, although he made up for it the next [End Page 185] moment. "The life of the idle rich isn't appealing" he once remarked, and being idle is something Phil could not, by temperament do—but, of course, sailing in the South Seas isn't idleness, and he knew, wisely, how to combine enormously hard work with an enormously good time doing what he loved best. "Independence," he said, "was my goal; wealth was accidental." Phil was one of the most wonderful men I have ever met. Here was a diplomat who could be disconcertingly direct—and loud. I always had trouble imagining Phil in the hushed corridors of the chanceries of the Old World, although he surely flourished there. He was a newspaper owner who relished a great story even if it made powerful friends squirm, a conservative who was an ardent environmentalist, a public servant who accepted high rank without being seduced by it, a patriot who loved his country dearly while cataloguing its faults unsparingly. It is a small but telling tale that he, a connoisseur of the chocolate chip cookie, convoked an annual survey of that treat by The Washingtonian. One year, at the very bottom of the standings, delivered with scorn and contumely, were the products of Giant supermarkets—one of his largest advertisers, as it happened, and owned by a close friend to boot. Phil winced and, as always happened when a friend was being pummeled by one of his publications, took the heat with a rueful but utterly sincere defense of freedom of the press. Phil was a man not of contradictions, but rather of terrific harmonies, a balance captured in his favorite nautical saying, "a hand for the ship, a hand for yourself," which captured his philosophy of how one should shape a career. He could argue vehemently and laugh uproariously; he let you know his opinions in no uncertain terms, but was one of the best listeners I have ever met. Few men have been so loved by friends and family, employees and associates, without receiving court, or indeed signaling any desire for deference. Indeed, those close to him recollected as a kind of badge of honor their memories of getting "the full Phil." Once, after a gloomy day some years ago I wallowed at how the country was in awful shape—the politicians fools, the economy on crumbling foundations, our foreign policy headed for the rocks. The next moment there was a finger prodding me—hard—in the chest, punctuating an outraged lecture that began, "Don't you, don't you, don't you EVER sell the United States short!" What followed was the most marvelous tribute to American freedom, creativity and dynamism I ever hope to...

The Norwegian Editors' Code: The Magna Carta or the King's Mirror to Become Public Law?

In 1953, the associations of Norwegian newspaper owners and editors signed an agreement on the rights and duties of the editor: the Editors' Code. Editors consider it their freedom charter, a barrier not against government suppression, but against owner intervention. Since 1995, a proposal to elevate the Code to status of public law has been an issue on the Norwegian political agenda. By 2006, the main obstacle against legislation was finally removed: The Parliament amended the Norwegian Constitution's Section 100 on freedom of expression. The motive for the legislation is to protect editorial independence from media owners, thereby preventing monopoly control over the freedom of expression. However, will enactment of the Editors' Code really guarantee editorial independence, and will editorial independence prevent monopoly control over the freedom of expression? The answer to both questions is no.

News as a Big Business: CanWest Global’s Newspaper Ownership

Canada’s newspaper industry has experienced increasingly concentrated ownership within the last few decades. News sources’ profit-orientation and need for advertisers to generate revenue has streamlined the political views embedded in journalism. Simultaneously, newspaper readers are embracing the medium as a trustworthy source. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky offer an effective theoretical framework, the “Propaganda Model,” through which the state of Canadian newspapers can be examined. CanWest Global Communications’ current national newspaper ownership presents a case study which exemplifies Herman and Chomsky’s concerns. Viewing this company’s newspaper holdings through the perspective of the Propaganda Model should alert Canadians to the biases inherent in the news they consume. Efforts to limit or abolish monopolization of news producers in the country lie predominantly in the hands of independent lobbyists, as the views expressed by capitalist news owners often complement the interests of Canada’s dominant political leadership parties. Readers must take it upon themselves to become news savvy, critical and aware.

What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from U.S. Daily Newspapers

We construct a new index of media slant that measures whether a news outlet's language is more similar to a congressional Republican or Democrat. We apply the measure to study the market forces that determine political content in the news. We estimate a model of newspaper demand that incorporates slant explicitly, estimate the slant that would be chosen if newspapers independently maximized their own profits, and compare these ideal points with firms' actual choices. Our analysis confirms an economically significant demand for news slanted toward one's own political ideology. Firms respond strongly to consumer preferences, which account for roughly 20 percent of the variation in measured slant in our sample. By contrast, the identity of a newspaper's owner explains far less of the variation in slant, and we find little evidence that media conglomerates homogenize news to minimize fixed costs in the production of content.

Bad science in the headlines

![][1] This year has seen an intensification in the debate on how scientific stories with societal relevance are reported in the media. One cause was the Korean stem‐cell scandal, in which Hwang Woo‐Suk and colleagues claimed to have cloned human embryos. Lambasting the media for their part in distorting or sensationalizing scientific findings is not new, but recent scandals—and some not so recent—highlight the role played by elements of the scientific community itself. Ultimately, each side must take an appropriate share of responsibility for the impact that controversial or dubious research has on the public. When it comes to distributing blame for misleading the public, most scientists are quick to point to the media. In an analysis of the public reporting of science in the UK, published earlier this year by the Social Market Foundation (SMF; London, UK), the press in particular come under fire for negative sensationalism that is often to the detriment of the public good (SMF, 2006). The report repeatedly cites the media frenzy that began in 1998 when Andrew Wakefield, a UK‐based doctor, suggested a link between the administration of the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and the development of autism in children. The news reached the media through press releases and a press conference. Relentless negative press coverage over the next five years eventually led to a significant fall in MMR vaccinations in the UK and elsewhere. Many newspapers conveniently ignored expert advice on the safety of the vaccine in favour of attacking the UK government, which defended the vaccine's safety. “This mistrust of the government and its motives coupled with a sensationalist tendency in some parts of the press … lie at the heart of the problem,” the SMF report states. “Particular difficulties arise when a scientific story becomes a political one and … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif