Canadians Concerned About Violence in Entertainment Review Media Mediocrity
Media Mediocrity–Waging War Against Science
How the Television Makes Us Stoopid!
As Zurawski explains, television is the lens through which we see the world. How these lens influence science and our educational choices on the topic is vitally important. Indeed, our very survival depends on it. According to Nielson reports for November, 2009, 99 percent of American households possess television sets. These are often turned on for an average of seven hours per day. Despite the explosion of social networking on the internet, patterned after reality TV programming and other incarnations such as Youtube most content on either medium is constantly being reinvented with economic imperatives ensuring that real science news seldom wiggles to the surface. Rather than television being superseded by the internet it is the other way round. Because of computers and the internet, television is evolving into a greater force than ever before.
As a meteorologist, documentary film producer, television host and university lecturer with a background in physics, Zurawski deconstructs the ways in which scientific findings are programmed, usually by people in the field with nominal if any scientific credentials themselves. They are governed by journalistic practices that aim for controversy. “Both sides” of a non existent debate are presented in ways that only serve to confuse the viewer and discredit the scientific findings. He goes to great lengths to describe “the scientific method” and how it is antithetical to simplistic reporting of news which thrives on dissent. But while his analysis of the differences and how they cloud our understanding of vital scientific information is useful, he glosses over the academic debate over scientific method, itself, and how money and political objectives can often buy findings despite application of the most conventional and sophisticated methodological practices. In my own study of the process and how it is manipulated, three rules still seem key in assessing the validity of any research findings: Who is providing the funding? What is the purpose of the project? What kind of questions are being asked? Zurawski does, however, illustrate how journalists consistently ask the wrong questions, particularly when reporting on natural disasters and climate change. Details are also provided on how vested business interests colluded with the Conservative Government of the day in discrediting the green shift election platform offered to the Canadian public by Stephane Dion as liberal leader at the time.
On the whole, he reinforces important arguments already made by many scholars, scientific and otherwise. Whether it is the evolution of Fox News programs set up for an examination of “junk science” or the constant emphasis on feeding an increasingly illiterate audience what they will watch because ratings are what count, we are in a crisis. Simply put the media, itself, must change if we are to have a sustainable future. Viewer science literacy has been shown to be linked to televison programming in general and as the bar is lowered across the board, viewer science understanding is also lowered. The dumbing down of science often includes documentaries in consolidated environments which are reduced to nothing more than glorified reality shows where the emphasis is on actors in natural, green settings. We are reminded that we cannot continue to allow confusion to be deliberately created on vital issues such as climate change, the intrusion of pseudo science into the education system, vaccinations and autism, alternate energy, space research, alternative medicine, undirected scientific research versus applied science, among others. The reporting practice of using scientists in a stereotypical fashion and only as spokespersons for one side or another of what are usually artificial arguments is counterproductive to the growth of useful knowledge essential to meeting the challenges ahead. What is advocated is a solid background in both science and journalistic practices among those who make the news, especially television programming.
Zurawski concludes with a quote from Pulitzer Prize winning author, Chris Hedges’s book The Empire of Illusion in which the growing problem of functional illiteracy in North America is discussed. Canada has an illiterate and semiliterate population estimated at 42 percent of the whole, a proportion that mirrors the United States. These are, of course, ominous trends that underscore the urgency of changing the media in order to change the world. In this context, the book is a valuable addition to a growing emphasis on the need to reform the media in order to save the world.
–by Rose A Dyson, President of Canadians Concerned About Violence in Entertainment, Vice President Canadian Peace Research Association