Reporting discoveries...

The model of science journalism is the New York Times’ Tuesday edition. Four pages of the best science journalism usually accompanied by more topically directed health coverage. Quality is superb, because the journalists have science degrees and know what they are writing about.

There are other newspapers – West European largely – that also take science journalism seriously. Science breakthroughs make great news. Some developments, like the 2008 announcement of the particle physics laboratory called CERN, were spectacular.

Public interest in science coverage is for the high-tech junkies and for those individuals interested in health-related breakthroughs. This is why science and health journalism usually go together. More recently, with climate change issues on the rise, environmental science is increasingly popular.

Science journalism boomed in the 1990s. In the USA, 95 newspapers had dedicated science sections. It was a question of prestige – and of course profits. ‘The field’s precipitous rise’ wrote Geoff Blumfiel in Nature (19 March 2009) ‘was supported by buoyant profits.’

South Africa has not had much science media at all. Dedicated science writers are scarce. Science journalists learnt their science on their own, on the side and piggy-backed their stories on to other issues like health, the environment or, when it came to forensics, crime.

Science journalism is in deep waters today. The global economic downturn has affected circulation and advertising revenue very badly. Some of the first pages to go are the science ones. Blumfiel records that newspaper science sections have been closed one after the other.

The Boston Globe has, for example, stopped running their weekly health and science section. Television has had its casualty in the closure of the special unit at CNN. Public broadcasters like the BBC are more immune. Their Knowledge Channel is still alive with science stories.

The world-wide web has brought considerately more science to the public as has the growing number of blogs authored by scientists. Access to these depends of course on whether one is online - and on interest. The person who finds the information is the one who is specifically looking for it.

The internet is a great resource for the science journalist. More recently, beyond the internet’s features and blogs, the public relations divisions of science related companies have also populated the web with information. But information is not fact and it certainly is not knowledge.

For fact and knowledge we respectively need the science journalist and the science intellectual. We need them because we must be able to sieve through the propaganda – government and corporate - and the voluminous body of information on the internet to find meaningful insight and technical utility.

Science journalism is the only way in which ordinary South Africans can keep abreast of all the diverse array of science projects we have going in our country, whether it is in health, agriculture, energy, minerals, police and education. It is the journalist that scrutinizes information for honest numbers and facts.

It is the journalist who investigates what happens to tax-payers money spent on science projects. What for example is happening with SALT telescope? How is the competition (with Australia) over attracting the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) going? Is the money being well and properly spent?

Three or four exceptional journalists aside, the field in South Africa is in pathetic shape. A great deal of material is simply lifted from the overseas press, which is not in itself such a bad thing. But local stories can only be written by local journalists who know our local scientists and issues.

We must not be fooled into thinking that the world of science is free of corruption or poor governance. Science is big money. It brings the power of prestige to government. As always, money and power attract the greedy and unscrupulous like bees to the honey-pot of large science.

It is therefore commendable that Die Burger’s Elsabe Brits, Business Day’s Tamar Kahn and the Cape Argus’ John Yeld – there are others – do what they do and do it so well. We need a hell of lot more of their quality writing. Our media, so neglectful of science, should buck the global trend.

Why? Because science enlightens, it brings understanding, insight and knowledge about how things work. Because if properly harvested can bring about progress in human health. Above all, combined with a strong moral sense of purpose it remains the only basis for sound policy-making.